Gulden is a partner at FHS Capital Partners, an investment firm focused on early-stage professional service and technology businesses that deliver high-value niche expertise to chief communications and chief marketing officers. Gulden is an award-winning C-Suite executive and change agent who excels at counseling leadership and influencing business strategy to reinvent how companies communicate. She has successfully led high-performing communications, public affairs, branding and marketing organizations at Pfizer, Abbott, AbbVie, and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). Her achievements have earned her numerous honors, including Marketer of the Year (PM360), Top Women in Retail (Mass Market Retail), Top Women in PR (PRNews), and Top 30 Health Influencers (PRWeek). 

Most recently, Gulden was the Chief Communications, Marketing, Culture, and Experience Officer at City of Hope, the only U.S. national health system solely focused on cancer research and care. Under her leadership, City of Hope rose from #13 to #5 in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, and her communications team was named “Best In-House Team” by PRNews. Prior, she worked for Walgreens Boots Alliance as the Chief Communications Officer for Walgreens, the largest pharmacy chain in the United States.

 Earlier in her career, Ms. Mesara spent 14 years at Pfizer where she held local, regional, and global positions in communications, public affairs, and marketing.  She later joined Abbott Laboratories where she led global public affairs for the $14 Billion pharmaceuticals business and was subsequently mapped to AbbVie, following the company’s spin-off. Ms. Mesara was part of the core team that helped launch AbbVie as a new global biopharmaceutical company in 2013. She served as Vice President of Global Commercial and Health Communications, where she built and led a 200-person global public affairs, product communications and patient advocacy team across all of AbbVie’s therapeutic areas, products, and geographies.

Ms. Mesara holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University; an MS in Public Relations from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University; and a BA in Political and Administrative Sciences from the University of Marmara in Istanbul, Turkey. She is a member of the Arthur Page Society and serves on several boards including SUPSAN (a European auto parts company), the Center for PR at the University of Southern California, and the Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation. She has lived and worked in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brussels, Geneva, Istanbul, and Dubai. She currently lives with her family near Chicago.