Experience
A career built around growth, change, and enterprise value.
Heather's career spans in-house legal leadership, fractional General Counsel work, emerging-company advising, transactions, and operational transformation.
In-house legal leadership
Building from inside a growth company
At Simple Mills, Heather built the legal function from the ground up and served as the company's first in-house General Counsel from 2022 to 2025. The role evolved with the business: from founder-led growth through private-equity-backed expansion, acquisition readiness, and the operating demands that follow a transaction.
She supported corporate and commercial work, governance, risk and compliance systems, cross-functional decisions, and the preparation required for the company's 2025 acquisition by Flowers Foods.
After the acquisition, Heather led complex post-merger legal integration efforts from the Simple Mills side, including change management and alignment with public-company governance and operating expectations.
- Legal function buildout
- Executive decision support
- Acquisition readiness
- Post-merger integration
- Change management
Growth-stage advising
Working across the moments that change a company
Heather's work spans emerging businesses, consumer products, food, technology, venture-backed and private-equity-backed environments.
She advises across legal operations, governance, brand and marketing review, regulatory compliance, product risk, investment readiness, mergers and acquisitions, exit readiness, and integration.
The common thread is a company becoming more complex while its leadership team needs legal judgment to become more useful, more proportionate, and more connected to business priorities.
- Food and CPG
- Risk frameworks
- Investment readiness
- M&A
- Cross-functional leadership
The operator's perspective
Responsibility changes the quality of advice.
Advice changes when you are responsible for implementation. A recommendation must work across teams, fit available resources, earn organizational adoption, and hold up when priorities shift.
Heather's operating perspective is grounded in executive communication, cross-functional work, prioritization, risk calibration, change management, and the discipline of building capability before a major event creates urgency.
- Implementation
- Executive communication
- Resource constraints
- Organizational adoption
- Internal capability
Professional timeline
The current chapter, and the operating experience behind it.
- 01
Cultivate Counsel, Inc.
Jan 2026–present
Founder & Principal
Fractional General Counsel services for growth-stage companies, with an emphasis on emerging CPG brands.
- 02
The Angel Group
Jul 2026–present
Member
A private network of industry professionals and strategic angels investing early in CPG brands.
- 03
SKU
Jan 2026–present
Mentor & Investor
Mentor to emerging consumer brands in SKU's intensive CPG accelerator program.
- 04
Simple Mills
Aug 2022–Oct 2025
General Counsel
First in-house General Counsel and leadership-team member; built the legal function through growth and acquisition.