Ashley Buehnerkemper is Director of Marketing at VitalSkin Dermatology, where she has led marketing and brand strategy since the company's inception in 2019, growing the platform from its earliest locations to more than 40 today. Her role spans far beyond traditional marketing: as a member of VitalSkin's executive leadership team, she owns the martech stack, performance reporting, and brand governance across a fast-growing, multi-brand dermatology group, with a particular focus on driving tight alignment between marketing and operations.

Before joining VitalSkin, Ashley spent 11 years at Heartland Dental, the largest dental support organization in the country, where she rose from managing marketing for a handful of offices to leading corporate communications and brand management across a network of 800+ locations and $1B+ in annual revenue. There she led a multi-million-dollar corporate rebranding initiative and built the systems that fueled acquisition growth, learning firsthand that marketing only works when it's built in true partnership with operations.

At VitalSkin, that philosophy has shaped her approach to scaling a company built through partnership with strong regional dermatology practices, each with its own identity and community roots. Ashley is known for pairing data-driven rigor with an insistence on keeping the patient experience personal, never letting scale come at the cost of the local relationships that make each practice trusted in its market.

She lives in Effingham, Illinois, with her husband Jay and their two daughters.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

  • How VitalSkin manages multiple local and regional brands while maintaining consistency and a local presence.
  • VitalSkin's strategy for supporting numerous clinics effectively, including the use of standardized MarTech stacks and templated resources.
  • Why collaboration across teams like marketing and operations is essential to delivering a seamless patient experience.
  • Best practices for selecting agencies and vendors that can support long term growth.
  • How AI is streamlining operations while leaving creativity and storytelling to people.
  • How patient feedback, online reviews, and local search strengthen both reputation and brand, including strategies for gathering and maintaining them.
  • How playbooks, templates, and local ownership create consistency across a growing network of practices.

Additional resources:

  • Ashley Buehnerkemper on LinkedIn
  • VitalSkin's website
  • Josh Dougherty on LinkedIn
  • Josh Dougherty's speaking site
  • A Brave New's website