Commercial Executive | Consumer Brands | International Markets
Yadi Vilato
Commercial Leadership Across Brands, Markets & Channels.
I’m a CPG and international commercial leader with experience building brands, developing markets, and leading commercial growth across customers, channels, and geographies.
Introduction
A commercial career built across brands and borders.
I’ve spent my career learning how consumer businesses grow—from market-level execution and national accounts to entrepreneurship, commercial leadership, and international market development.
That experience has taught me to start by listening: understand what a business is trying to accomplish, evaluate the opportunity honestly, and build a commercial plan grounded in what the market can realistically support.
I believe sustainable growth comes from combining ambition with discipline, strong partnerships, consistent execution, and a willingness to keep learning and improving.
Areas of Expertise
Four disciplines, one commercial view.
Commercial Leadership
Connecting business objectives with customers, teams, markets, and the financial realities required to deliver sustainable growth.
Growth & Market Development
Identifying and developing opportunities across new markets, channels, customers, and product platforms.
Route to Market
Building the distributor, broker, retail, and channel structures required to turn consumer opportunity into consistent market execution.
Consumer Brand Building
Translating brand potential into commercial plans that connect positioning, customers, channels, and consumers.
Career Journey
Experience built from the ground up.
My career has developed progressively across consumer brands—from field execution and regional market development to entrepreneurship, national accounts, sales leadership, and international commercial responsibility.
Tortuga
Commercial Director – Global Markets
Leading commercial strategy and market development across international markets, with responsibilities spanning customer partnerships, distribution, portfolio development, forecasting, and broader commercial planning.
good2grow
National Account Manager
Led strategic retail relationships across multiple categories and markets, combining customer development with analytics, execution, and cross-functional planning.
OLIPOP
Director of Sales – East
Led commercial development across the Eastern United States during a significant period of expansion for the emerging modern-soda brand.
WETONIC
Co-Founder / Strategic Advisor
An entrepreneurial chapter that provided first-hand experience building a consumer brand from product and positioning through distribution, retail development, and go-to-market execution.
Health-Ade Kombucha
Regional Sales & Account Leadership
Managed retail and distributor development across multiple U.S. regions during a formative period of growth for the brand and category.
Boxed Water
District Sales Manager
Led market development across Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean, building retailer and distributor relationships across diverse markets.
ZICO
Area Sales Manager
Developed foundational CPG experience across field execution, retail development, distributor management, and market-level commercial strategy.
Additional commercial leadership experience includes roles with Death Wish Coffee, Royal Unibrew, and Prime Bites, further expanding my work across national accounts, distributors, emerging brands, and high-growth consumer businesses.
Commercial Philosophy
How I think about growth.
Listen before prescribing.
Understanding the real objective comes before recommending the path forward. Strong commercial decisions begin with asking the right questions and listening carefully to the people closest to the business.
Build from reality.
Ambition matters, but the strongest plans reflect the realities of the product, consumer, category, customer, organization, and market.
Progress over perfection.
Preparation and discipline matter. Experience has also taught me that businesses rarely operate with perfect information or perfect conditions. At some point, progress requires judgment, action, and the willingness to learn.
Relationships compound.
Customers, distributors, colleagues, and partners are not simply part of a transaction. Long-term commercial success is built through trust, transparency, and credibility over time.
International Perspective
“Every market has its own logic. The work is learning it before asking it to learn your brand.”
My experience across the United States, Caribbean, Mexico, and Latin America, along with broader international commercial responsibilities, has reinforced a simple lesson: successful expansion requires understanding local consumers, customers, partners, economics, and operating realities—not simply replicating what worked somewhere else.
Personal Story
The journey matters.
I came to the United States from Cuba at eleven years old. The transition was abrupt. There were no long goodbyes or much time to prepare; within a matter of days, I had left behind the world I knew and entered one that felt completely unfamiliar.
As a child, adapting to a new language, school system, and culture was difficult, but the difference in opportunity was also immediately visible to me. Even at that age, I understood that my parents had taken enormous risks and made significant sacrifices to give me a different future. That created an early sense of responsibility to make something of the opportunities I had been given.
Over time, I learned that meaningful progress rarely happens quickly. It requires patience, effort, discipline, and the willingness to continue when the results are not yet visible.
My career developed in much the same way. I entered the consumer-products industry at the market level, working in stores, managing brands through distributors, building relationships, and learning through execution. I didn’t yet understand all of the larger commercial mechanics behind the work, but I discovered something important: I genuinely enjoyed it. Even when the work was difficult, I wanted to learn more, get better, and keep moving forward.
Entrepreneurship later reinforced many of those lessons. Building WETONIC taught me first-hand that a good product—even one consumers enjoy and retailers want—is only one part of building a successful business. Capital, infrastructure, timing, relationships, and the ability to sustain the business long enough for the opportunity to develop can matter just as much as the product itself.
Today, I’m grateful to have built a career I genuinely enjoy—one that allows me to provide for my family, continue learning, and help brands and the people behind them bring their ideas to a broader market.
“Opportunity matters. What you do with it matters more.”
Education & Languages
Foundations.
- Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
FIU Chapman Graduate School of Business
Bachelor of Arts, Public Administration
Florida International University
Associate of Arts, Public Administration
Miami Dade College
- Languages
English
Spanish
Education has remained an important part of my professional development and my belief that growth—both personal and professional—requires a commitment to continuous learning.
Colleagues
In others' words.
“Yadi combines commercial acumen with analytical thinking.”
“He has a great understanding of retail and distributor management.”
“I was always impressed by Yadi’s overall knowledge of national accounts.”
Connect
Conversations welcome.
I always welcome thoughtful conversations with colleagues, industry peers, and others working across consumer brands, commercial leadership, and international markets.