How did you originally get into marketing and make your way to Oracle?

I started my career with the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts over 20 years ago, where I was focused on marketing along with a focus on providing the very best customer experience— two areas I am still passionate about today. I began to focus more closely on digital marketing as email and ecommerce was taking off in 2004, which is when I had the opportunity to lead National Geographic’s email marketing program. From there, I further branched into the agency and tech world working across different clients and industries while advancing in all things digital and technical.

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What are you most excited about in your new role as our agency’s Group Vice President?

There are so many things, but the one thing I am most excited about is continuing to bring the very best strategies and solutions to our incredible clients and teams across Oracle. Our team of digital marketers and consultants bring unique insights and ideas with the sole purpose of enabling our clients to grow their businesses and enhance their customers’ experience.

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What are the key components of a successful digital marketing strategy?

Every successful strategy starts with a purpose in determining what you are trying to convey. Once you have your purpose and know who you want to target with your message, it comes down to several key components: clean data, an understanding of your customer and their propensity to engage and by what channel, a compelling narrative and content, and meeting your customer or prospect where they are in their journey with your brand. The most critical of all is technical access to data, actionable data, and valid data.

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What current trends in digital marketing do you find most exciting or impactful?

More than ever, marketers have copious amounts of data at their fingertips with an ability to centralize it and organize it. The impact of this is huge. Yet, few have been able to center their focus around organizing their data to truly determine how to use it to enable the best customer experience possible — along with all of the other ways it may increase revenue, save costs, and build brand loyalty. This is exciting as it will open the door for many opportunities. Those that capitalize on this in the near-term will be significantly ahead of the competition in 1–2 years.

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Looking back on your career, what are you the proudest to have worked on?

Picking just one client, or even industry or campaign, would be like picking my favorite child! While I am so proud of the work my teams and I have done throughout my career, it is the relationships built that I am most proud of, whether with current and former clients, colleagues, peers, and competitors. The marketing community is shockingly small, and so many move on throughout their careers. It’s always a happy moment to see people time and again in different places.

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How do you handle it when something doesn’t go as planned for a customer?

Unfortunately, in technology and in business, things do not always go as planned. I lead these conversations and guide our teams with honesty and integrity so that all groups may work together to find a common understanding of the challenge and move toward a solution.

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How do you find AI factors into the services you provide?

Our organization is lucky to be a part of Oracle, which is at the forefront of AI innovation. As a company, we put it at the forefront of all that we are doing and embed it within our platforms utilized by thousands of clients globally. From a services standpoint, we are in the midst of employing AI to ease process workflows and to more rapidly access and review standardized metrics. As these capabilities are rapidly evolving for all of us, we’re focused on areas where we may bring further innovation to our teams and our clients. It’s an exciting time to be in marketing.

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What is the one thing about you that might surprise people?

There is an old Ben & Jerry’s bumper sticker that I have from college in Vermont. It says, “If it’s not fun, why do it?” and I love to live and work by that adage. Marketing, branding, and customer experience is FUN! We have a great time on our team, we love our clients and our work, and driving success for our clients and their businesses is at the root of all that we do.

Ben & Jerry’s bumper sticker