Consulting on brand, marketing, and creative operations
Boutique attention.
Enterprise-level expertise.
BizLift is a partner-led consulting firm with two practices. The in-house capability practice designs and strengthens the marketing and creative functions companies run themselves: video, audio, podcast, and photography studios; creative and social media teams; and the integration of artificial intelligence into marketing and production workflows.
The fractional leadership practice provides senior marketing and production leadership, including brand evaluation, marketing strategy and research, review of the marketing and advertising work in market, and executive production oversight, delivered as ongoing fractional roles or as defined projects.
Led directly by the partners
BizLift has two partners, Elena Gonzalez and Francisco Vargas, and one of them leads every engagement. There are no intermediating teams, junior consultants, or delegated work. The partners have built and operated the capabilities they now advise clients on, and they perform the work themselves.
Both partners bring more than twenty years of senior leadership experience — Elena in marketing strategy and organizational transformation, Francisco in production for global consumer brands.
How engagements are structured
The firm's engagements fall into three categories, each addressing a distinct stage in the development of in-house marketing and creative capability.
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Establishing new in-house agency, production, or creative capability where none exists today.
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Improving the performance of existing in-house teams, studios, or agencies that are not delivering what the business requires.
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Fundamentally redesigning the marketing organization for a changing competitive environment.
Within each engagement type, the specialty work spans three practice areas: the design of in-house studios, the design and staffing of creative and social media teams, and the integration of artificial intelligence into marketing and production workflows.
Fractional leadership
For organizations that need senior executive direction without a full-time hire, Elena leads fractional Chief Marketing Officer engagements, covering brand evaluation, marketing strategy, marketing research, and review of marketing and advertising work in market. Francisco leads fractional Executive Producer engagements, covering production strategy, executive production oversight, and specialized services such as Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program applications. These engagements frequently precede or accompany Build, Optimize, or Transform work.
The partners
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Elena Gonzalez is a senior marketing executive with more than two decades of experience leading marketing strategy, brand management, and large-scale transformation programs across global technology and growth-stage services companies.
Her career includes thirteen years at Hewlett-Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where she led integrated marketing campaigns and product positioning for the Business PCs portfolio, executed the global digital content rebranding following the company's split, and led change management for HP's largest organization through its digital transformation. She also led annual C-suite events and partnered with Human Resources to drive employee engagement programs across a sizable global workforce. Notable work includes developing the "world's most secure PCs" positioning still in use today, delivering three million dollars in cost savings through an offshore digital publishing model, and leading a global training program that reached 3,800 employees across 39 locations.
As Director of Marketing and Customer Engagement at Ambassador Services USA, Elena led the company's marketing strategy, brand revamp, and external communications across vertical segments. Her work drove thirty-one percent revenue growth and helped position the company among the top five percent of fastest-growing businesses nationwide.
Elena currently serves as fractional Chief Marketing Officer across a portfolio of operating companies, advising on brand, marketing strategy, and execution. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Our Lady of the Lake University and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is fully bilingual in English and Spanish.
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Francisco Vargas is a senior production executive with more than twenty years leading video, audio, and photography production for global consumer brands. His work combines creative judgment with operational discipline, from the creative brief through budget, production, and delivery.
His work spans operational ownership of production at Fortune 500 scale, including seven-figure budgets, multi-country campaigns, and high-volume concurrent workloads. He has designed and implemented in-house creative studios that deliver more than 1,000 assets annually, materially reducing client dependency on external agencies. He has built production systems and teams designed to scale, working closely with senior executives, creative leaders, and external production partners across regions and concurrent productions.
Francisco has produced work for Adidas, Bank of America, Budweiser, Chevron, Foot Locker, Gatorade, GEICO, Honda, Hyundai, Microsoft, the NBA, Reebok, SAP, Shell, Stellantis, Visa, and Walmart, among others. His campaign and music video productions have featured Travis Scott, Drake, One Direction, J.J. Watt, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, Yao Ming, Maxo Kream, and Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge.
Fully bilingual in English and Spanish, Francisco has extensive international production experience across Latin America. He serves as the USA Hispanic Representative to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and as Executive Director of CÃrculo Creativo USA, where he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Filmmaking Program at Houston City College.
How the partners work together
Elena leads engagements focused on brand, marketing strategy, and the marketing organization. Francisco leads engagements focused on production strategy and operations, in-house studios, and executive production oversight. Many engagements involve both partners because in-house marketing and creative capability often spans both areas.
Where an engagement clearly falls in one partner's specialty, that partner leads the work directly. Where an engagement spans both, one partner leads while the other contributes on specific dimensions. In either case, the client works directly with the named partner throughout the engagement.
How the firm operates
Independence
BizLift does not sell talent, technology, equipment, or vendor services, and does not accept referral fees or maintain financial relationships with vendors it may recommend, including providers of AI platforms, camera and audio equipment, systems integration, staffing and recruiting firms, or any of the other specialist providers involved in building in-house capability. When an engagement identifies the need for new partners, systems, staff, or vendors, recommendations are made independently, based on what serves the client's business. Compensation derives from the advisory fee alone.
Confidentiality
All engagements are conducted under strict confidentiality. Client relationships, work product, and commercial terms are never disclosed. The firm does not publish case studies, share client work, or reference engagements in social media or business development materials. Work is referenced externally only when it is already in the public domain and the client has provided written permission. The firm serves multiple clients concurrently, and these obligations apply to every engagement regardless of industry overlap.
Who the firm works with
The firm advises founders, chief executives, and executive leadership teams at brands, agencies, and production companies. Clients range from well-funded start-ups establishing their marketing and creative foundation, to growth-stage organizations building marketing operations for the first time, to mid-market companies restructuring how marketing and creative work happens, to established enterprises transforming in-house capabilities for a new competitive environment.
The firm works with companies that treat brand and creative work as central to business performance rather than as support to it. The common characteristic across clients is the recognition that senior strategic judgment, applied at the right moments, changes how a business performs.
Get in touch
BizLift accepts a limited number of new engagements each year. Elena and Francisco respond to inquiries personally within two business days.