Monica Gastel

Monica Gastel is a professional marketer with 8 years of beverage experience in brand marketing, innovation, customer marketing, and business management. Monica has been with PepsiCo for 5½ years. In her current role as Director of Customer Marketing for East National Restaurants, she’s responsible for developing the beverage strategy and executing robust marketing plans at key Foodservice customer’s such as Arby’s, which sells over 250MM servings of Pepsi products a year. Prior to joining the Foodservice team, she managed the Propel brand, where she led the repositioning of the trademark and relaunch of both the Ready To Drink and Powder businesses. During her time on Innovation, Monica utilized consumer insights to identify new white space opportunities and launched several new product and packages in market, including Aquafina Alive and the new Propel and Ethos packages. She was also responsible for developing the long term innovation pipeline for Pepsi’s Hydration portfolio, as well as helping to assess PepsiCo’s entry into the healthy kids market. Prior to joining PepsiCo, Monica spent 3 years at Kraft Foods in their Beverage Division. She held roles in brand marketing on Tang, Kool-Aid, and Tazo Tea. Monica holds a MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and a BS from Boston College. Her and her husband, Gary, and their dog, Rocco, live in Atlanta. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, trying new restaurants and cheering for the Washington Redskins.