Joanna McNeil is managing director of performance marketing at Directive, the Irvine, California, B2B performance-marketing agency led by CEO Garrett Mehrguth. Based in Chesterfield, Missouri, she has led media and performance teams at agencies including Ansira, Brainlabs, and Butler/Till, and at Directive she argues for judging paid media by pipeline and revenue instead of lead volume.
Media Teams at PHD and Ansira
McNeil studied at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. In a 2021 LinkedIn post she credited a team she worked with at Davinci/PHD with some of the most remarkable client work of her career, built on small budgets.
At Ansira, the marketing agency, she was head of performance marketing and vice president of client partnership from 2017 until early 2022. She hosted the agency's Rise of the Superfan podcast, including an episode with pro scouts Eric Ellingworth and Kerry Robinson on how fans shape sports scouting, and she spoke at the EiQ marketing gathering on the end of third-party cookies.
Brainlabs and Butler/Till
In early 2022 she announced on LinkedIn that she was joining Brainlabs as group vice president, reuniting with Jeremy Cornfeldt, whom she described as a visionary she had long respected. She later moved to Butler/Till, the employee-owned media agency, before joining Directive.
Pipeline Over Lead Volume at Directive
Directive's team page describes her work as bringing strategy, media, data, technology, and customer storytelling together, with a focus on mentoring teams. On LinkedIn in 2026 she wrote that "generating more leads is the easiest way to hide a performance problem," and argued that paid media should connect to CRM data so teams optimize for qualified, closed-won revenue.
Outside work she teaches Pilates, plays pickleball and golf, and is the mother of four athletes.