Torarie Durden is a solutions-focused Entrepreneur, Senior Executive, Advisor, and Innovator with more than 20 years of success across retail, management consulting, and technology. His broad areas of expertise include leadership, team building, coaching & mentoring, brand positioning, digital marketing, product roadmap, digital media, innovation pipeline, fintech, P&L, global strategy licensing & partnership, B2B & B2C/ DTC e-commerce, and customer experience.

Torarie has a deep experience base and passion for expanding educational  opportunities, particularly supporting organizations, universities and programs that support traditionally under-served communities.  For 15+ years,  he has been actively involved in programming, marketing and direct services to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, starting with signing the largest NCAA sponsorship deal between Russell Athletic and 50+ HBCUs. 

Torarie holds a leadership position as the Founder & Owner of 3rd & Birch, where he built a growth playbook and accelerated revenue capture for venture-backed companies by standing up marketing and commercial pipelines. He is also serving as the Interim Chief Marketing Officer of WELLIST, and was recruited by the CEO post $5M funding to lead customer acquisition and patient engagement for a digital health platform. Torarie has previously served as an SVP of North America Fuel Cards for FLEETCOR, where he transformed $300M FinTech & payments business P&L serving 20,000+ enterprise accounts, 100,000+ users, and 40,000+ merchants.

Prior to his role with FLEETCOR, Torarie additionally led as the VP Strategy of National Accounts for ADP, Senior Director of Healthgrades, and as the Principal Consultant of The Durden Group. He also served as a Director of Marketing for Consolidated Container Company, Marketing Director & GM for Russell Athletic, and a Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company.

Torarie earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, a Master of Science & Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Physics from Morehouse College.