Twelve years, a major rebrand, and a working relationship neither of them planned to turn into a business. So Clever's real asset was never the idea, it was the two of them.
There is a particular kind of shorthand that only develops after twelve years of solving other people's problems together. Sarah Hodgkins and Zoe White have it, though neither predicted it back in 2014, when they were two marketers among many inside Lendlease.
What followed was not a straight line. Over the next decade they moved through a national property business in tandem - different roles, the same instinct for a problem worth solving, and the same bond that brought them together. By the time Lendlease's retirement living arm separated and re-emerged as Keyton, Sarah was CMO, with Zoe leading brand and digital strategy alongside her. Between them, a thirty year old business had to convince seventeen thousand residents that a new brand meant something better.
It worked. Keyton launched across seventy five communities and became, within three years, a business people recognised. It wasn't simply renamed, it was rebuilt from the inside out.
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Ask around Keyton and a pattern emerges quickly.
Sarah is the one who moves things. Ask her a question and she's already three steps into how to answer it - a habit that took her from managing a shopping centre on the Sunshine Coast to running a national marketing function, turning a modest lifestyle festival into a sixty stop program worth $340,000 in earned media. Her old chief executive put it plainly: she blends strategic thinking with execution, and her impact goes well beyond marketing. A colleague on the same team once said her impact is felt not just in results, but in the people she elevates along the way.
Zoe moves differently. Where Sarah is already building, Zoe is still asking what the brief actually means. She built the Kinma Valley brand from nothing but a story worth telling, years before a single home existed to sell, then led Keyton's digital transformation after the rebrand. A colleague from those years remembers her as a creative problem solver who "embraces big challenges, brings people with her, and leaves a lasting legacy." An outside partner put it differently: as comfortable in the strategy as she is "getting her hands dirty" and seeing it through.
None of this happens only in a boardroom. Most weekends, the two of them are deep into a trail run through the Sunshine Coast hinterland, working through whatever's stuck that week. More often than not, that's where the best thinking happens, a long way from a laptop.
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Neither description alone explains why So Clever exists. Put together, they start to.
For twelve years, one of them has been asking why while the other asks how, sometimes about the very same problem, in the very same meeting. It's easy to say two people complement each other. Harder to prove it over a decade. Apart, they're two capable operators. Together, something closer to a powerhouse.
So Clever wasn't built around a framework, or a slide with a proprietary name, it's something closer to muscle memory: get close enough to a business to understand what's actually happening, connect the pieces usually kept in separate meetings, and do something about it. They've spent their careers inside complicated businesses, and know the magic that strategic clarity can bring.
That, in the end, is the whole proposition. Not two resumes stapled together. Two minds that bring out the best in each other, and in the businesses they work with.