The Guru founder has spent two decades asking brands to stand for something. Now his field guide turns the same question on the people who lead them.

A former national-team sailor took over marketing at Kruger Products just as the tissue aisle became national news. Her response was to replace category polish with the useful, awkward truth of everyday life.

How a former bank communicator turned a maker of air conditioners into one of the more convincing climate stories in industrial America - and why she insists credibility is the only currency that matters.

The chief marketing officer of Principal Financial Group built a career on a stubborn idea - that an industry running on spreadsheets and fine print can still make people feel understood.

After three decades moving between agencies, consumer brands, consulting and the automotive aisle, Samantha Avivi has arrived at Bayer's global CMO seat with a durable operating idea: trust is built by listening closely, making boldly and giving teams room to grow.

Amy Williams built Good-Loop around a stubborn question: if advertising can buy attention, why can’t that attention fund something useful? A decade later, her harder project is proving that purpose belongs in the machinery of business, not at its margins.
Dan Clifford is the Chief Marketing Officer of Cotopaxi, the Salt Lake City B Corp that builds outdoor gear and directs 1% of revenue toward fighting global poverty. He leads the brand's full marketing function - creative, brand storytelling, growth, performance, and e-commerce - after two decades scaling specialty, outdoor, and luxury retail brands. Before Cotopaxi he was CMO at the lingerie brand Pepper, and earlier held senior marketing roles at Victoria's Secret, Express, and J.Jill, where he helped transform multibillion-dollar names for the digital era.

Wendy Hauteman is Chief Marketing Officer at VSP Vision, the Rancho Cordova-based not-for-profit vision care company that serves close to 90 million members through a network of 40,000 doctors. She has spent more than two decades in the optical industry, moving from senior marketing roles at Pearle Vision, ILORI and EyeMed to leading global strategic marketing at VSP before her promotion to CMO in August 2019. Under her leadership VSP shifted its message from 'we help people see' to 'empowering human potential through sight,' anchoring the brand's purpose-first playbook.