ABOUT REFUGE
I’ve spent my career helping businesses figure out where to go next — and helping people get them there.
I’m Todd Canfield, founder of Refuge Strategies. For more than 20 years, I have worked at the intersection of strategy, execution, and leadership—building products and go-to-market plans, leading sales organizations, developing markets, and helping teams perform in complex, highly competitive environments.
Most recently, I spent nearly two decades with Johnson & Johnson MedTech, where I held senior roles across commercial leadership and strategic marketing.
Commercial Perspective
Experience across sales, marketing, product strategy, P&L, pricing, contracting, and go-to-market execution.
Practical Execution
A career spent turning strategy into operating plans, aligning teams, and creating the discipline needed to deliver results.
People & Capability
A belief that the best solution is one the organization understands, owns, and can carry forward.
A Modern Way of Working
A recurring theme throughout my career has been working through ambiguity: diagnosing why performance is off, understanding what customers actually need, deciding where to focus, aligning people around a plan, and creating the systems and discipline needed to execute it.
But good commercial leadership is not only about getting to the right answer.
It is also about helping people understand the reasoning behind the decision, giving them the tools and confidence to act on it, and creating an organization that is better equipped to solve the next problem.
I created Refuge Strategies to bring that combination of commercial judgment, hands-on execution, and people leadership directly to organizations that need experienced support — but may not need another full-time executive or the machinery of a large consulting firm.
Some clients need perspective and decision support. Others need hands-on help building the analysis, materials, process, operating cadence, customer strategy, or go-to-market work itself. Refuge is comfortable doing both.
Experience guides the work. Modern tools accelerate it.
Refuge combines experienced commercial judgment with modern analytical and AI tools to accelerate research, synthesis, scenario development, content, and reporting.
Technology makes the work faster and more flexible. Experience determines which questions matter, what the analysis means, and what to do next.
Just as importantly, the work is designed to remain understandable and usable by the people responsible for carrying it forward.
Where I can help
I’m most useful when a business is facing a growth challenge, a commercial performance issue, an unclear go-to-market decision, or a situation where leadership needs experienced outside perspective and hands-on support.
The work can range from strategic guidance to direct execution, depending on what the situation requires.
Credentials
Leadership experience includes leading commercial teams, managing large regional businesses, and holding senior sales, marketing, and strategy roles within Johnson & Johnson MedTech.
20+ years of commercial experience across medical devices, aesthetics, technology, and consumer markets, ranging from Fortune 50 organizations to emerging companies.
MBA, UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business — Finance & Marketing; BS — Biological Sciences, UC Irvine
Yoga Teacher Training, Sattva Yoga Academy — Rishikesh, India
Personal Note
Refuge grew out of a simple idea: when things get complicated, good decisions require perspective. Santa Barbara is home, and when I’m not working with clients, I’m usually on a bike or in the studio.
Not sure which engagement fits