Mountain Mike's Pizza Names Sheena Dougher CMO

A Veteran Marketer Joins the Pizza Chain

Mountain Mike's Pizza has named Sheena Dougher its new Chief Marketing Officer, pulling a marketer with more than 15 years of experience across brand strategy, media, advertising and public relations away from a decade-long tenure at Jack in the Box to steer the Irvine-based chain's national ambitions.

She steps into a role previously held by Carol DeNembo, arriving at a brand nearing its 50th anniversary and still best known for the details that built its cult following: crispy, curly pepperoni, dough made fresh daily, and pizzas so large they carry the "Mountain" name for a reason.

Her hire, first reported by the Orange County Business Journal, pairs decades of regional brand loyalty with a marketing executive whose most recent title at San Diego-based Jack in the Box was vice president of brand marketing.

Translating Local Devotion Into National Growth

The logic behind the hire is less about reinvention than translation. Mountain Mike's has spent years building the kind of guest devotion that regional pizza chains covet, and now it wants that devotion to travel.

At Jack in the Box, Dougher ran brand strategy across public relations, social media, brand content, paid media and regional marketing through several leadership stints, giving her a rare vantage point on how corporate messaging actually lands at the store level.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Metevier described the fit in direct terms: "Sheena's track record is highlighted by her ability to translate brand strategy into tangible business results, and her numerous attributes as a seasoned marketer will further strengthen our brand position, drive traffic and sales, deepen our connections in the communities we serve and help introduce Mountain Mike's to new guests and new regions across the country."

He tied that mission back to the chain's foundation, which he framed around product quality, category differentiation and the passion of its franchise partners, betting that Dougher's grasp of national-to-local marketing dynamics can quicken the brand's climb within the broader pizza segment.

A Résumé Built Across Restaurant Brands

Her résumé reads less like a straight line than a tour through the varying scales of restaurant marketing. Before Jack in the Box, she held roles at Rubio's Restaurants, Garden Fresh Restaurants and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza, working across brand marketing, product launches, digital strategy and field marketing, and the Orange County Business Journal notes she also spent time in marketing at Del Taco.

The accolades attached to her name are substantial: she led the Effie Award-winning "The Return of Mark Hamill" campaign at Jack in the Box in 2023, was named a Business Insider Brand Marketing Rising Star, received a Brand Innovators Women in Marketing Industry Innovation Award, and was named one of Reuters' Trailblazing Women last year.

That layered history across concepts of different sizes and customer bases gives her, in theory, a working fluency in how marketing execution shifts depending on brand scale and region, exactly the kind of fluency Mountain Mike's is counting on to turn strategy into measurable results.

Preserving What Already Works

Dougher's own framing of the opportunity leans on preservation rather than overhaul. "What stands out most about Mountain Mike's Pizza is the strength of the brand, the quality of the product and the genuine commitment from the people behind both," she said.

She was more expansive about what comes next: "There's a significant opportunity to deepen the foundation and amplify the Mountain Mike's narrative by sharpening what makes the brand unique, bringing a truly remarkable brand story to more people and creating stronger guest connections in the communities we serve, and I am eager to help turn the opportunity into meaningful brand and business growth."

Her language mirrors Metevier's own challenge for the chain: hold onto what already works with existing guests while stretching that same appeal into territory where Mountain Mike's barely has a footprint yet.

A Mandate Beyond Traditional Advertising

As CMO, Dougher inherits a mandate that stretches well past traditional advertising. She'll direct the chain's full suite of integrated marketing activations, with responsibilities that include sharpening brand identity in both new and established markets, deepening community ties, and supporting franchisee performance at the restaurant level.

Notably, she's also been tasked with building out business-to-business partnerships and catering as revenue streams distinct from the usual in-store and delivery channels, a dual focus that suggests Mountain Mike's wants growth that lifts its national profile and its franchise partners' bottom lines in tandem.

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A Chain Growing Fast Across New States

She's stepping into a chain that isn't waiting around for her to settle in. Mountain Mike's currently has more than 100 restaurants in development across 17 states and expects to open roughly 20 new locations in 2026, growth that would lift its systemwide footprint by nearly 7 percent, according to Pizza Marketplace.

The chain already opened nine restaurants across six states in the first half of 2026, pushing into Edmond, Oklahoma; Manor, Texas; and Nolensville, Tennessee, per Restaurant Magazine, and that pace carried into September 2026 with a seventh Oregon location in Wilsonville, an eighth Nevada restaurant in Carson City, and a 17th Texas location in Georgetown.

The brand now counts roughly 330 locations systemwide, a considerable distance from its origins as a single pizzeria that grew into a nearly 300-unit Western chain before its 2017 acquisition by Chris Britt and Ed St. Geme.

That trajectory reflects a familiar industry pattern: chains reaching beyond their regional strongholds tend to recruit executives with cross-brand, multi-concept marketing experience precisely to modernize their national voice without sanding down the details that made them distinctive in the first place, in this case the curly pepperoni and the oversized pies that gave Mountain Mike's its name.

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The Real Verdict Is Still Pending

What remains untested is how quickly any of this shows up in the numbers. Neither the company nor Dougher has detailed the circumstances of DeNembo's departure, and there's no public timeline yet for new campaigns, B2B partnerships or catering rollouts, nor any disclosed performance targets tied to her tenure.

Those gaps are ordinary for an announcement this fresh, but they leave the real verdict pending. Mountain Mike's is wagering that a marketer fluent in both national campaign polish and granular, store-level marketing can do something regional chains often struggle with: carry a strong local identity into unfamiliar states like Oklahoma, Tennessee and the Carolinas without diluting what made it worth expanding in the first place.

Whether that bet pays off will likely become visible well before the chain's 50th anniversary arrives.