Charleen Kao

CEO & Co-Founder

Charleen Kao is the CEO and Co-Founder of Join The Agency, bringing a history of driving growth for some of the world’s fastest-growing brands.

With marketing roots from Disney and Lionsgate, she led large-scale campaigns that connected with global audiences. Driven by innovation and the energy of startups, she joined Google to scale that impact across over 350 brands.

As one of Google LA’s first advertising sales hires, Charleen played a pivotal role growing the team and West Coast startup ecosystem – advising growth-stage ventures like ClickUp, Kajabi, ServiceTitan, and Cardiff. Through her partnerships and success helping to scale hundreds of brands across industries and growth stages, she gained a front-row seat to what drives scalable digital customer acquisition. That journey inspired her to build The Agency, founded on a shared mission: to help the next generation of brands dominate digital.

Charleen continues to shape the startup ecosystem as both an investor and advisor with Stage 2 Capital, GTMfund, Portfolia, WE Global Ventures, Capital G, and Google for Startups.