Wellness Pet hires a CPG marketer to fix a positioning problem

A 20-year CPG marketer with stops at Kellogg, Kraft, and most recently Bob's Red Mill is the new CMO at Wellness Pet Company — the kind of hire a sponsor-owned brand makes when the next 18 months matter more than the last five. Wellness has been squeezed between premium-natural insurgents and value-premium incumbents, and Clearlake Capital is running out of patience on the squeeze.

Wellness Pet names Allyson Borozan CMO from Bob's Red Mill

Wellness Pet Company named Allyson Borozan Chief Marketing Officer on May 12, 2026. Borozan joins from Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, where she most recently served as Chief Growth Officer and previously as Senior Vice President of Marketing.

Before Bob's Red Mill, Borozan spent more than a decade at Kellogg Company, working on innovation and marketing for the snacks and crackers businesses. Prior to that she held innovation and brand management roles at Kraft Foods Group, now part of Kraft Heinz. She holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.

The release positions Borozan's brief as overseeing brand strategy, marketing, and consumer experience across the Wellness portfolio. The company did not name an outgoing CMO or describe a reorganization.

Wellness Pet is the renamed entity for WellPet, the holding company that contains the Wellness, Holistic Select, Old Mother Hubbard, Sojos, and Eagle Pack brands. Clearlake Capital acquired the business from Berwind Corporation in November 2020. In June 2025, Bloomberg reported that Clearlake-backed Wellness Pet completed the first step of a debt restructuring in which lenders accepted cuts — a public marker that the financial sponsor was extending the holding period and negotiating room with creditors rather than running an exit.

CEO Camelle Kent-Rizkalla remains in her role.

Why a CPG marketer signals a category repositioning

CMO transitions at sponsor-owned pet brands are leading indicators. They usually precede one of three moves: a portfolio re-tier, a major innovation launch, or an exit prep cycle. Borozan's resume points away from exit prep. Sponsors marketing a business for sale typically hire CMOs from inside the pet category to keep narrative continuity and reduce time-to-pitch. Hiring a CPG generalist from outside pet is the move a sponsor makes when the brand needs to be rebuilt before it can be sold.

The Wellness portfolio is caught in a structural squeeze that's been visible for three years. On the premium-natural end, fresh and lightly-processed entrants — Open Farm, Stella & Chewy's, Sundays, The Farmer's Dog — have taken share by selling differentiation at price points Wellness can match but not undercut. On the value-premium end, Blue Buffalo (General Mills) has used trade promotion and shelf depth to defend its mass-channel position. Wellness sits between them with a "natural-since-1926" heritage story that crowds at PetSmart and the natural channel respect but rarely cite.

Borozan's specific track record at Bob's Red Mill is instructive. Bob's is a heritage brand with a strong natural-food story that successfully extended into the mainstream channel through innovation and brand work — exactly the playbook Wellness needs. At Kellogg, she ran innovation for snacks and crackers, a category where shelf position is brutal and house-of-brands portfolio logic dominates. That's closer to the Wellness operating environment than most pet-category CMOs would arrive with.

What this hire signals to operators: expect a Wellness brand refresh, an innovation slate emphasizing functional or fresh-adjacent SKUs, and a media-mix shift away from heritage messaging toward outcomes-focused positioning. Agencies on the roster should expect a review.

For competitors, the read is that Clearlake is not going to let this asset drift into managed decline. The debt restructuring last summer bought time. This hire is what they're spending it on.

What the next twelve months tell us about the playbook

The first visible decisions land on packaging and shelf. A CPG-trained CMO walks into Wellness with a 90-day plan that usually starts with consumer research and brand architecture, then moves to in-market changes by mid-2027. Operators selling adjacent categories — supplements, treats, fresh — should expect Wellness to re-enter or expand in functional segments where they're currently under-represented.

Innovation pipeline: Watch for a Q4 2026 or early 2027 SKU launch positioned around a specific health outcome (joint, gut, skin, longevity). That's the easiest first win for a new CMO at a premium-natural brand with a deep R&D bench.

Distribution depth: Wellness's PetSmart and natural-channel position is durable but capped. A move into Tractor Supply, Costco, or further Amazon SKU build-out is the kind of channel decision that requires CMO sign-off and would show up in retailer trade press by Global Pet Expo 2027.

Agency review: Borozan's media-mix preferences at Bob's Red Mill leaned toward retail media networks and creator-led content. Wellness's incumbent agencies should expect a pitch within six months.

The Clearlake clock: The fund that holds Wellness was raised in 2018-2020 vintage. Standard PE hold periods put a transaction window in 2026-2028. A rebrand-and-relaunch cycle is consistent with grooming the asset for a 2028 process.

Related Analysis

Source: Wellness Pet Company Names Allyson Borozan Chief Marketing Officer via PR Newswire