fractional-cmo
(46)
Kate Twist and the space between a promise and a customer
Before co-founding Ever/Body, Kate Twist learned how to get a brand’s moving parts to work together. Her career since then has taken that lesson from global marketing to a SoHo storefront and into other founders’ businesses.
Jana Wilhelmus and the Art of Finding Your Way In
From international brand campaigns to an Amsterdam billboard, Jana Wilhelmus has spent a career helping people get noticed. At AI4ALL, she is helping them find a place in the conversation about artificial intelligence.
Melea McRae-Hall and the art of making herself less necessary
She built Crux KC by listening to what business owners needed. Ten years later, a month away gave Melea McRae-Hall a different measure of what she had built.
Art Saxby and the value of an empty chair
After years inside Frito-Lay, Kellogg’s and Coca-Cola, Art Saxby found his opening in the companies that could not afford him full time. Chief Outsiders grew from that awkward gap between a CEO’s ambition and the people available to carry it out.
David Mink and the Business He Learned Between Classes
Before he ran Avalaunch Media, David Mink was a law student answering mattress orders in empty classrooms. His career has been a long attempt to make marketing work better for the person paying for it.
Vic Noble Built a Career by Making the Complicated Feel Human
She spent decades turning regulated, technical products into brands people could recognize. Now the former Shire executive is applying the same instinct to independent advising, board service and the stubbornly human business of connection.
Joanna Lord and the Strange Luxury of Starting Small
After five CMO seats and two decades scaling other people's companies, Joanna Lord is building one careful black jumpsuit in Miami. The smaller canvas has made her ambition more exact, not less.
Michael Taylor Draws a Straight Line Through Complicated Business
The Atlanta fractional CMO has spent three decades turning dense professional services into propositions people can see, remember and buy. His tools range from dashboards and productized offers to an unexpectedly serious devotion to doodling.
Kay Kienast Built a Career for the Moment the Marketing Plan Stops Working
From consolidating a seven-distributor channel to teaching AI-era teams to recognize the right buyer sooner, Kay Kienast has made a specialty of marketing when the company, the market, or both are in motion.
Alina Dykuha Turns Marketing Into a System People Can Actually Use
From chatbot flows to conference floors, the Ukrainian marketing executive has built a career around one practical question: how can a complicated system become useful to a real person?
Michael Letschin Learned Marketing From the Server Room
Before he shaped campaigns, Michael Letschin designed data-center systems. That technical apprenticeship still defines his work as a fractional CMO: get close to the product, listen to the customer, and make the complicated useful.
Kevin Rockmael Has Spent a Career Marketing the Thing Education Cannot Buy: Trust
Across Kaplan, Guild, Sounding Board and now Proctorio, the fractional CMO has kept returning to one difficult brief: make institutions more useful, more credible and more open to the people they routinely overlook.
Elizabeth Abrams Sells the Least Fashionable Thing in AI: Proof
The Greenwich-based fractional CMO has built a career around a stubborn corporate problem: getting people to trust, understand, and actually use new systems. At Sequentum, that assignment has become a message for the AI era - evidence before enchantment.
Christel Billault Planned a Pause. Then Mentoring Changed the Plan.
After 25 years in B2B SaaS, Billault set out to trade the operating cadence for advisory work, family travel and a little French sunshine. An unexpected invitation from Chronus turned the pause into a new chapter in mentoring and HR tech.
David Cardiel Builds Marketing That Can Take a Punch
Across two decades of B2B software, the Austin executive has kept returning to the same unfashionable idea: marketing should be useful, measurable and sturdy enough to survive the boardroom.
Tracy Pullman Took the Layoff Personally - Then Built the Job She Had Never Planned to Want
A pub job led her to HTML, HTML led her to Apple, and a layoff led her somewhere stranger: into a business of her own. Tracy Pullman’s career is a study in doing the uncomfortable thing before certainty arrives.
Christina Mautz Builds Marketing Around the Customer, Not the Fashion of the Moment
Across Yahoo, Amazon, Moz and a succession of Seattle startups, Christina Mautz has kept returning to one unfashionably durable idea: growth begins with understanding the customer.
Neely Thomson Is Building Marketing Departments Designed to Run Without Her
After two decades in software, nonprofits and fintech, the Atlanta operator has made an unusual promise: in 90 days, the client should own the system - and the consultant should be able to leave.
Leslie Hahn Has Spent 25 Years Asking the Question Growth Teams Avoid
After two decades inside ecommerce, agencies, platforms and operating teams, Leslie Hahn has built a practice around one unfashionable discipline: deciding what matters before the marketing machine starts moving.
Jessica Deckinger Built a Career by Refusing to Stay in One Lane
From coconut-scented perfume to cloud software, Jessica Deckinger has made a specialty of crossing borders - between industries, functions, and the false divide between B2B and B2C.
Brandon Ridley Builds Marketing Teams With an Expiration Date
He began at a soldering bench, built a power-electronics test instrument, and crossed into industrial marketing. Now his pitch to hardware founders is unusually finite: give him six months to build the function, then let him leave.
Yael Tarlo Makes Complicated Technology Sound Like a Human Decision
After two decades translating dense technology into clear choices, the founder of MarketingByMonday is applying an operator’s discipline to the everyday stakes of fleet safety.
Nicole Zheng Knows What Comes After the Big Launch
She helped turn a networking startup into a $55 million public company. Now the engineer-turned-CMO works on the quieter machinery of growth: judgment, positioning, and the leaders who must carry both.
Alon Waks Wants B2B Marketing to Stop Chasing Sardines
SpotDraft's CMO has spent two decades stripping the theater out of enterprise marketing. His prescription is unfashionably practical: choose the buyer, reduce the noise, earn trust, and measure what comes back.
Suzanne Behrens Spent 30 Years Making Government Technology Feel Human
She helped scale Microsoft's public-sector business from $100 million to more than $3 billion, then spent her final CMO chapter replacing mass marketing with precision. Her enduring idea is simpler than the software: sales and marketing should share the work, the numbers, and the consequences.
Ken Dec Has Spent 40 Years Turning Technical Products Into Stories People Trust
The fractional CMO at TruVideo built his career where brand, demand and sales meet. His durable lesson is disarmingly simple: serve the customer, tell the truth well, and make marketing prove its value.
Bari Abdul Has Spent a Career Selling the Invisible
From Pepsi and video games to firewalls and attack surfaces, the engineer-turned-marketer has made a specialty of translating risks people cannot see into choices they can act on.
Raji Behniwal Wants Marketing to Grow Up - and Keep Its Taste
After two decades spent translating new technology into stories people can trust, the former Datassential CMO is building a sharper model for executive marketing - one where judgment matters more than volume.
The Marketing Paratrooper Who Finally Chose to Stay
For a decade, Tanya White entered technology companies during their messiest chapters, steadied the marketing function, and handed it back. Then OpenSesame gave the self-described paratrooper a reason to unpack.
Elizabeth Stephenson Built a Career Making Other People’s Work Legible
From teaching abroad to boardrooms in British Columbia, the Canadian communications executive has built a portfolio career around one practical skill: turning complicated organizations into stories people can act on.