
After a year away, the Toronto CMO returned to an industry being rewritten by AI. Her answer is the same operating discipline she has carried from music to loyalty to SaaS: connect the creative work to revenue, tell the truth about the numbers and keep enough nerve to trust your gut.
Karen Lithgow is the Chief Marketing Officer of Goodwill Industries of South Florida, the Miami-based nonprofit that employs roughly 3,600 people and reports annual revenue near $196 million. She arrived at Goodwill after a corporate and consulting career that included brand and marketing roles connected to P&G, Disney, ADT and Western Union, followed by partner-level brand strategy and interim CMO work at the consultancy Chameleon Collective. At Goodwill South Florida she oversees marketing for an unusually wide portfolio: a chain of donation centers and thrift stores, an e-commerce operation, and Blue Box Solutions, the organization's B2B manufacturing and logistics arm that produces tens of millions of dollars of military apparel each year. Her public message centers on a single idea she has stated plainly - focusing on abilities rather than disabilities.