Hello, and welcome to The Get.

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

This season we examine the relationship between CMOs and Boards.

How can that relationship go from fraught to functional,

and maybe even to fantastic?

Today, we hear from Sandra Lopez.

She is a marketing dynamo who has been in marketing, leadership, and general manager

roles in many of the world's biggest and most influential tech companies

like Adobe, Intel, and Microsoft.

She recently served as co-chair for the World Economic Forum for

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

She also serves on the Board of Directors for Junior Achievement USA and PureRED.

She's an advisor for Cabra Sports and is the co-chair for

Sports Integrity Global Alliance.

You'll hear about how to educate the Board on how long things take in marketing.

As she says, it's hard to educate someone in thirty minutes, so

you have to think creatively.

You'll also learn about how to prepare for a Board position and

how to put your best foot forward when you interview with a Board.

And, we discuss how nonprofit Board work, chosen wisely, can be a great

segue to for-profit Board work.

Here we go.

Sandra Lopez, welcome to the show.

Glad to have you on The Get and excited to hear your perspectives.

Thank you for having me on board.

Looking forward to having this conversation.

Maybe you could just start by sharing an overview of your

career path, cuz it's been such an interesting path that you've followed.

You know, you know your B2B marketing, you know your B2C marketing, you know brand,

you know demand, like the whole shebang.

Can you kind- kind of just, you know, coalesce it a little bit?

I always like to say I was kind of born and bred in Silicon Valley,

so technology at the heart of everything.

And I always had the aspiration to be a Chief Marketing Officer.

And, without anybody telling me as a mentor or sponsor, I just

wanted to do my own journey.

I wanted to create my own music, and so I created my own songbook in terms

of what could that possibly look like.

And what I knew is that whenever I became a CMO, I really wanted to

understand the various solutions of what entailed marketing.

So I jumped from small company to large company, did everything

from lead generation to brand strategy, worked in New York

City, came back to Silicon Valley.

And so I would say that my career trajectory, I always have to

say the analogy, in, like, ways.

I directionally knew where I wanted to go, but I also allowed myself to

explore the unexpected neighborhoods.

And that's where I did a pivot into the business unit, running a

division, in particular wearables.

And then I went into sports media.

And a couple things I learned from that pivot.

One, I learned things about myself that I didn't know I was capable of,

whether it's business development, effectively managing a P&L.

And then how important it was to understand business language when

it came to leading a marketing organization and driving those

conversations to a C-level leadership team and/or your Board of Directors.

And so I'm unconventional.

Typically know where I wanna go, but I allow myself to explore

and, and I will continue to do so.

I love this ways analogy.

I think that's great.

Do you think everybody who's an aspiring CMO should take a GM role,

or do you think it's, like, enough for them to kind of take a GM perspective

within their marketing domain?

Listen, I think everybody has their own journey, and all I can share

is my particular point of view based on the type of leader that I want to be.

So if I'm a CMO focused on tangible business, we know that oftentimes when

we're on an economic pitch, what happens?

Your budget's decreased, headcount marketing's one of the first organizations

that are going to be impacted.

But if you change the conversation and be able to illustrate how

marketing drove tangible growth and/or helped enter into adjacent

markets, I do believe understanding running a P&L is very, very important.

You're much more attuned to, we're gonna do a brand strategy.

Let's think about potential ASP uplift.

Let's do some financial modeling, work very closely with the CFO.

Um, and not working closely with the CFO in the context of like,

what's your, you know, above the line, below the line budget.

It's a very different conversation.

If you wanna be a CMO that's really leaning into creativity, then maybe

not necessarily you don't have to become a GM and you're looking at

more psychology, sociology, and becoming much more of a culturist.

So I think it really depends on what type of CMO you wanna be.

And I try to do a hybrid of growth that in order to be a great CMO,

you need to understand your consumer and where they're going and what's

happening around them, both for business customer and/or a consumer customer.

And at the same time really understanding like, how do you drive marketing as a P&L?

Makes sense.

Can you share, since we're talking a lot about, you know, CMOs and

Board relationships, can you share a hard-won lesson you have had, um,

from interacting with, with a Board?

Any Board?

I always like to say strategy without

execution's pure hallucination.

So I like to be a strategist and be able to execute with my team.

The role of a Board of Directors is ask the hard questions so you can help guide

them and advise them towards, you know, their overall trajectory in terms of

whatever their strategic imperatives are.

And so moving from the doing and advising and knowing when to step

back has been the mental rigor and challenge that I've had to take on.

So it's really about asking the right questions and providing point of view,

and, ultimately, it's the C-level and the leadership team that have to decide

what's best for the organization.

So that shift was a struggle for me, and I still find myself sometimes wanting

to, like, roll up my sleeves, help drive some of the strategies to execution.

Is there something you tell yourself when you're worried that

you're gonna kind of dive into execution and, and, but you want, really wanna

come up with a good question instead?

Yeah.

I have to remind myself every single time when I'm either part of the

committee conversation and/or at the Board meeting, and we're having the

one-to-one with the CEO, remember, my responsibility and accountability is to

advise them towards the right path based on the goals that we have all agreed to,

and knowing when to take a step back.

And so I do that in every single interaction.

A lot of it's just practicing, right?

So I'm fairly new about a, you know, over a year in, in Junior Achievement,

which is a nonprofit, less than a year with the private Board.

And I do think it takes conditioning just like anything.

And so I'm just, you know, practicing my trade, learning how to be the

best Board of Directors for the companies that I said I would like to

participate and believe I can add value.

Can you talk about how you've educated a Board about marketing,

if you have, and what that looks like?

What teaching like, because many, many Board members don't have

marketing backgrounds and they might think that they know more about

marketing than they actually do.

Right.

Interesting.

And we were talking about this earlier, that apparently there's only about

forty Board members with marketing pedigree for Fortune 1000 and above.

And so it's not familiar with the Board of Directors, right?

There's a lot of people, the CEO, supply chain officers.

And so when you're asking questions when it comes to marketing, this is where my

P&L general management come into play.

I don't ask the traditional brand awareness questions.

I think about, let's take a look at our revenue growth year projection.

So I translate a lot of what is important to marketing in the language

that will be familiar to CEOs, CFO.

Cuz you have to remember, like your Board of Directors and your fellow

colleagues come from a different pedigree.

And so as a CMO marketer, you find yourself oftentimes translating the

language of marketing into vocabulary in which the CFO and CEO can really get

behind and lean into the conversation.

The worst thing is you bring a point and everybody just dismisses you.

Mm-hmm.

And so how do you bring a point that has people thinking and really

leaning in so that we can advise the CEO and/or the leadership team in terms

of possible paths to move forward with?

And do you feel like CEOs and CFOs sometimes glom onto certain

terms of marketing but not others?

You know, so in another one of these podcasts we talked about how there

are some terms that people just get.

You know, they get ICP, they get persona.

They get positioning more than they get branding, you know?

And, and have you, have you found that to be the case where there's,

like, some terms that, that fly and that other marketing terms just flop?

I mean, I think it's one of those things that's just

the perception that we have, right?

So I do believe what transpires is there's a perception of marketing.

Marketing is about value proposition, positioning, logos, the PowerPoint

presentation, helping sales sell n.

And that's all familiar.

And where you start to kind of gloss over is when you start to think about, uh,

you know, they're all familiar with CTR.

They've evolved one part of the digital transformation, but you

start to think about well, long-term value to customer acquisition,

and then you start to translate that and a CFO gets it right away.

So I do think there is this bias, you know, talking about customer

segmentation and new customer.

They get all of that.

Yeah.

And then the question is, well, how is that going to translate

to meaningful business impact?

Cuz oftentimes in the Board of Directors, you're there to help grow.

Mm-hmm.

And so when you're thinking about questions that you wanna ask,

and I oftentimes think about like, how am I gonna frame this question-

Hmm.

-so that the CEOs of other companies that are part

of Board of Directors or CEOs understand what I'm trying to get at?

Mm-hmm.

Is there any other example of, like, a before and after

framing that comes to mind?

It's easy to say, hey, we're gonna go upmarket and reach a

particular new customer sec- section.

Sure.

And I'm just gonna be careful I'm not disclosing

information of confidential, so I'll give you just like a generic example.

We're gonna go after this new customer segment and then the question will

be, well, let's think about that segment and the cost of entry.

Right?

What will be the ROI?

What is the additional revenue that could be generated if we're

gonna bring on this new customers?

This customer segment carries this.

This is the demographics.

This is the attitudes.

This is what we think of the market opportunity at a high level.

But like you gotta keep on pushing.

Hmm.

Yeah, this is maybe a market size that represents

$1 billion, potentially.

That's a total tamp.

But how, have we done the analysis of what this segment will bring from

additive revenue over the next five years?

How much do we need to invest?

What does that investment strategy look like?

So that goes back to the the, to eventually capture that.

What happens from an operations standpoint?

What happens from customer service?

This new customer segment is radically different from our current

customer base, which means that we have to operate differently.

So this is not just an exercise around new customer segmentation.

This is like operations.

You have to think about customer service.

There are so many elements that come into play, and so that's one example

that I always like to use is that it's easy to have the CMO come in, talk

about new market segment, and then it's your job as a Board of Directors.

And being a marketer, like many of us have gone through this before.

We know that it's just much more than doing effective direct marketing

and using digital marketing.

There are elements that come into play that touch other organizations.

Mm-hmm.

So really thinking about that and kind of framing

those conversations is like another example that I like to use, typically

marketers are really good at, is in terms of knowing your customer,

what does segmentation look like?

But what does it really mean to enter into that market segment?

Yeah.

Do you need to hire different types of personnel in terms

of driving conversations with them?

So really framing it, going back to, I always like to say, like, you

just go back to think like a CFO.

Yeah.

I think that really helps.

And we, because we have only forty or so CMOs in the Board of Directors,

we have the responsibility on our shoulders to illustrate that we

can drive very meaningful business.

Have you seen a really good way of learning how to

be that CMO who thinks like a CFO?

You know, is it shadowing the CFO?

Is it, um, I, I don't know.

Like, asking for, you know, like, you know, sharing goals and, and,

and coming up with some kind of, like, translation dictionary or

something like, like, like is there anything that comes to mind there?

I love all your ideas.

So shadowing's always great.

And then oftentimes, you know, they're not necessarily available

cuz you have a busy calendar.

So you have to kind of be realistic in terms of what's feasible.

And so if you think about an exercise that you're doing in marketing, so

let's think about the hottest thing in performance based marketing.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Everybody's talking about that.

It requires digital transformation, which oftentimes means you

need to sit down with your CTO.

Can you sit down with your CFO and agree on the L to beta cap ratio?

What does that mean?

And what does that look like?

Can you start modeling P&Ls?

I always like to tell individuals, kind of hate the word performance marketing,

cuz the reality is you're a mini GM.

You're responsible for revenue and hitting targets, and in order to

drive performance-based marketing, you have a Mar- MarTech stack

that's underneath, which actually costs me whether it's licensing-

Right.

Whether you're working with your IT department to build out

some technology and features, which they're gonna charge back to you.

And so that to me is like, it's the spirit of like, there's cost, there's

revenue, there's efficiencies, and there's margins that you have to [inaudible].

So performance-based marketers, to me, I always tell 'em like,

you guys are running a P&L.

Like reframe what your accountability responsibility is.

And I know if you have, if you're co-dependent, if you have a sales

department and they're not getting the lead flow, they're gonna point

fingers at you because they need that.

And so you're directly tied to revenue.

And so that's one example that I think you can sit there with your

CFO and you bring them along the journey and build a relationship.

And so you have to meet with your CFO then on a monthly basis and/or

like a weekly basis, depending on how you're looking at your numbers.

And then you start to, like, have those times to ask curiosity and

ask them about different things.

Oftentimes, when you are looking at brand architecture strategies and

you're redeveloping an entire, you have multiple logos you're trying to simplify.

Mm-hmm.

Will that impact in terms of lesser choice?

Is it gonna cannibalize one or the other products?

That's yet another opportunity to bring a CFO into the journey and talk

about, let's do some modeling together.

Oftentimes what I had seen is brand architecture strategies that

talk about the business rationale, but there's no financial number.

They'll talk to you about what it's gonna cost, what it's gonna cost to

overhaul the entire thing and all the collateral that needs to get

updated, both analog and digital.

Yet I never see if we were to simplify the brand, what could this

look like on the financial side?

Or if we're gonna do a massive brand transition and reposition

the brand in its totality from one point to another point, will it

alienate your existing customer base?

And if so, well what, what could that be from a sales perspective?

So you can model all this stuff.

You can, sitting down with the CMO, there are tools and there abilities.

I've done this before.

Mm-hmm.

And so I would say to any CMO or any marketing person that's eager

to go into a Board seat and starting to, like, practice the language of the CFOs,

take some existing projects where you're like, wow, if I were to do this with a

CFO, what could we model financially?

Hmm.

And then over time, your CFO becomes your mentor and an advisor to you.

And, and that's what happened to me when I was at Intel I had an invi-

individual helped guide me as we were going through marketing strategy,

repositioning efforts, and really understanding the overall business.

So CMOs can fail, as you know, um, because Boards and

CEOs have these expectations of, you know, you should be able to do

marketing, you know, overnight and turn around something overnight.

And then CMOs, so there's this debate about, you know, like,

oh, you should do this faster.

And then a CMO will say, oh, it, it takes time.

How do you think marketing leaders can kind of manage those expectations with

Boards about how long things take?

You're absolutely right.

Uh, there's a lot of education and oftentimes, we've had this

conversation in the past, that everybody feels they can do marketing.

Yes.

You know, I learned a framework that I thought was very helpful

that came from [inaudible], which is the strategic decision-making framework.

If you're going on a journey and you're seeking to solve a problem,

oftentimes, like, your C-level, and yourself, you're not on the same page

of what problem you're trying to solve.

So go in and understand, like, what problem are we solving?

Are we, are we on the same position?

Mm-hmm.

The other thing, too, is, like, and what are the milestones?

Here's why it takes time to do market research, right?

Mm-hmm.

We want to capture, not only part of our customer segment,

we are a global brand by very nature.

We have to go to Europe, we have to go to, like, Asia, and

we want to enlarge sampling.

And we also wanna pivot along the way as we're learning about some

research around specific focus groups.

And we wanna get this right.

Because once you get the idea, then you go into execution and it's gonna

cost much more if we get it wrong.

So there's going to be five-month window of market research, and then

they'll, you go into production and, like, why does production take forever?

And you just have to explain in terms of what you're trying to get accomplished

and how you're gonna pull it out.

And so oftentimes what I find myself learning is that you have to bring

your C-level onto the journey.

And I always like to do, like, here's critical milestones.

Hey, we learned this from this focus group in the United States and in Europe.

Here's what we're learning.

It didn't necessarily, necessarily align to our hypothesis.

We think we're gonna pivot.

Here are three options.

What are your thoughts?

Hmm.

So now a person's, like, actually joining you

on your journey and as part.

And you help educate along the way.

So you've gotta look at these big, strategic initiatives as

opportunities to help educate and bring them along the journey.

And I always do check checkpoints.

And I know sometimes my team members are like, you're slowing down the process

because you're sitting down with your C, you know, C-level, and I'm like, no,

actually I'm speeding up the process.

So when we're down the road and my CEO has some feedback, which

requires us to go back and redo production, that elongates the process.

So, thinking about these check-ins with your senior leadership is important.

Mm-hmm.

Realize it's always an education and ask a lot of

questions like, why do you think focus groups should take point?

How do you think the process is?

Mm-hmm.

Well, let me tell you why the process is the way

it's, it is, and we're learning and adjusting and we'll do technology

to move the process much faster.

It used to be, you know, eight months, now we're doing five months.

So I, I do think, like, also asking why do they believe something should

be done a certain way helps strive self-awareness that they really

don't understand the underpinnings.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That's really smart.

And the, the idea that people don't learn something in half an hour, right?

It's like in, in the way you educate somebody is not by saying like,

everything you're doing is wrong.

This is how you should do it.

It's, it's almost like you kind of sidle up to them and you're like, oh,

eight out the ten things, ten ways you see this are right, and then here

are the remaining two need to be, you know, kind of adjusted in this way.

I do think it's much more of a discussion.

Listen, you're on the same team.

I mean, fundamentally like you and your leadership are on the same team

and you're creating the playbook.

And so sometimes like the playbook, like, oh, you know what?

Your C-level has a point of view that I could have overlooked.

And you're like, you know what?

Your point's extremely valid.

I'm gonna take that in.

Mm-hmm.

And in some cases, they have a very strong point of

view, and based on all your history and knowledge, you're like, this is

gonna send us in the wrong direction.

And you just have to take time and say, let me show you the pros and cons.

Yeah.

What I've learned is like, don't say no right

away to your leadership.

Provide the framework, help them understand so that you can land in

the best outcome for the shareholders.

I always say, like, at the end of the day, we're on the same team.

It's about the shareholders, and when I say shareholders, it's the, your

employees, the C-level, the Board of Directors, if you have stock, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Let me segue a little bit here, and I would love to hear your thoughts

about nonprofit Boards as a way for marketing leaders to kind of

get some practice and transition towards being on for-profit Boards.

Listen, I've had amazing mentors helping me guide me through

the path to Board of Directors.

And I started, I was three years before I landed my first Board.

And everybody has a different point of view, everybody's gonna advise you.

And so again, I'm gonna provide one perspective.

I was o- open to a nonprofit Board, but I've also worked on nonprofits

before in terms of giving my time.

Mm-hmm.

And so you have to pick judiciously.

What do you wanna get out of it?

So I wanted to get my practice in a, yes, I've done some Board readiness

programs, but nothing, like, you can do all the training, but it's

nothing like showing up and planning.

Yeah.

And so, I looked at who was leading the Board.

I looked at the Board composition, and they were all highly successful

C-level executives that have Board experience of private and public.

And I knew that in how they run their operations gave me the feeling

of a private and/or public Board.

So I decided to do that.

That was the right thing for me.

And so when I tell people, like, really think about the Board that

you wanna join your first one.

Look at what you're trying to get out of it.

And so in this profit one, it aligns to my values in giving

back to the future generation.

So synergistically, I'm like, yes, love Junior Achievement.

They were part of my life when I was growing up.

Two, I look at the composition.

What does it look like?

And three, how do they function?

And they function very akin to a private Board.

And so that gives me the exposure, the experience, and bringing that value to

another private Board in terms of just getting that practice in and knowing what

I'm responsible for as Board of Directors.

How did you figure out how they functioned?

There's a lot of Board readiness curriculum

that exists out there.

Sure.

So you have the National Association of Corporate Directors.

You take a look at them.

They have some programs.

Julie, who's the CEO of How We Lead here in San Francisco, has

a robust Board readiness program.

And you learn.

You learn what's expected of you.

You also learn the liability that you have for publicly traded companies.

You also learn the time required.

Everybody's, like, thinks that you're gonna be there for the one supporter.

And no, it's a lot more that you have to contribute.

You have to be well-read.

You have to read the materials in advance.

You have most, part of a committee.

So if you're part of the committee, you have to meet outside of the Board meeting.

And so my recommendation is participate in Board readiness programs.

Mm-hmm.

And you'll meet, will build your network and some of them will

land Boards and a lot of that landing a Board is not dissimilar from a job in

terms of the power of the networking.

If somebody's gonna recommend you for a particular Board,

and that's how the doors open.

So both of the Boards that I've landed have been part of my network.

Mm-hmm.

Not been me necessarily knowing that Board positions open and

reaching out to the CEO and the chairman.

It has been through my network.

Let's talk about interviewing with Boards, like whether

that's for a Board seat or a CMO seat.

How should they, uh, kind of prepare?

How should they appear, and what questions might be most, you know, surprising,

you know, based on your experience?

At least in my experience, it's so different

from delay landing you a job.

Yeah.

Because they've already identified you based

on the background and pedigree.

In most cases, they already know, and that you've already been highly recommended

by somebody in your network that, you know, Sandra would be a very great fit.

Here's her pedigree.

Here's what she's done.

She's really great for digital transformation.

You know, she's an advocate for the underrepresented community,

and so she can add value from an people, culture standpoint as well.

They know you're background.

Right.

It is all pretty much done.

So you're just sitting there and you're having conversations just to see can,

can I sit there with you for a couple hours and have meaningful business

conversations during the Board meeting?

Can I sit there and have that dinner conversation with you?

Oftentimes, there's a dinner the day before, the night of.

It's about clicking.

You have to click as a Board and you are also personality wise, can I

get along with the various members?

And you interview with a couple, you know, not all of 'em, and you have conversations

about your personal life, philosophies.

And I would, what I'd suggest is like just be yourself.

Just be yourself.

They'll get to know you.

They're just getting to know you.

You're getting to know them.

Yes, prepare about the company.

People will say, take every Board interview because you expand your network.

I've taken a different approach, like I've, people reached out to me for

various Board positions and I remember one, it was all about supply chain

and it was about transportation.

And I was so honored that they considered me and they were considering

me from a digital transformation, but I was looking at the Board

requirements and the skillsets that they were looking for, the top three,

and I'm like, I have none of that.

And I said to the, uh, individual that was recruiting for him,

I'm like, you know what?

Super honored.

Yet it's not gonna be the right fit because I will not add

value for what they're looking for from a talent perspective.

And yes, could I appreciate networking with them?

Yeah.

But I'm also, time is very, it's the most precious commodity.

If I already know I'm not gonna be the right fit, I decided to bow out.

And so people are gonna give you different advice.

Other people would say, like, you should have taken, you know,

you should have gone through the interview process and met more people.

And I'm like, that's okay.

The time is too precious.

So we have all different ways of how to land Boards and recommendations.

Mine is one recommendation of many on your journey to be a Board member.

Then, I would say, look at the requirements.

Know what your contribution is going to be.

Mm-hmm.

Be very crystal clear about that because they're gonna

look to your filling an important role and oftentimes when, in some

of the Boards they're gonna pay you.

Think about the ROI that you're delivering.

Are they getting every dime's worth out of what they're compensating

you for to be at Board of Directors?

Yeah, and I feel it's the same thing when you're

interviewing for a CMO job, right?

If you get a, a, you know, approached about a job and it's not quite the right

fit for you, it's probably better to kind of educate whoever it is, the recruiter,

the CEO, you know, whatever, because it's, it's, it's like good karma, you know?

Like you, you know, the person might then say, oh, okay, this

is maybe not the right fit.

But then there's something else that, you know, like the recruit, like

I've had that conversation with, with candidates where they're like, okay, no,

sounds like you're looking for A, B, C.

I'm more X, Y, Z, and then I might call them up in a month, like,

oh, actually you said X, Y, Z.

You clarified and, and you know, here we have something

that's a little more aligned.

A hundred percent agree with you.

Very, I mean, I think ultimately you wanna set yourself up for success.

You wanna land a Board seat, so then you're recommending somebody

else for yet another Board seat.

And that's how the flywheel affects.

Mm-hmm.

And eventually, like, you know, we retire from your full-time job.

And so when you're looking for Board seats, you also, like, try to find

somebody, it's called "over-Boarded" where some, somebody has way too

many Boards and Board opportunities will come to him, she, her, they.

Mm-hmm.

And they'll say, I'm already like, I'm Boarded up.

And then they'll say, hey, but I know somebody else that's interested.

Mm-hmm.

And so look for those individuals that are Boarded up

that are passing on opportunities cuz they have too many Boards.

That's a great way just to start to open up the doors.

Oh yeah.

Boarded up.

That's funny.

Yeah, and I, it's funny you say that cuz I give that same feedback to

people who are looking for CMO jobs.

I say like, you know, identify, you know, I don't know, three, five,

ten CMOs who have the job you want.

Right.

Because they're probably going to get pinged about

roles that you would want too.

And maybe they don't want that role or the timing isn't right or the

location isn't right or whatever.

But you know, you want them to pass on to you what they are saying no to themselves.

And it's, and it's, it's funny.

And you say that system to people and people are like, oh, wow,

I hadn't thought about that.

So...[light laughing]

No, it's true.

And you're absolutely right.

Any other thoughts about how a CMO should be

interviewing, uh, with the Board?

Aside, aside from, you know, kind of making sure that there is that click

and aside from, you know, having the, the things that you wanna get out of it.

Anything else that a CMO should be kind of alert to as they're

interviewing with a Board?

I would say, like, have the conversation around like, hey,

there's not a lot of CMOs in Board seats.

Why is that?

Yeah.

What are you guys looking for?

Mm-hmm.

Why are you considering myself that has a pedigree?

And what is of interest to you?

Like those, I think those are interesting, very interesting conversations.

Mm-hmm.

Oftentimes as CMOs, like one thing that we've had to go

through over the last decade or so or more is digital transformation.

That is a skill set that many companies continue to look for.

Right.

And so think about like, let's put like that part of your job.

You could add value, like to help me understand where the organization

is from a digital transformation.

Hey, I have expertise in X, Y, Z.

Do you think that could be of value to the organization or the Board?

So I would say digital transformation is a hot skillset that all industries are

looking for to see and understand, and we as marketers have had to go through.

And then the other thing too, like it's often overlooked that I would say

great marketers, agnostic of B2B and B2C, we know where the puck is going.

We're very in tune with like society and human beings and how they

interact and how they like to buy.

That intuition, a CFO does not usually- maybe a CEO from a visionary standpoint.

Steve Jobs is a perfect example.

But we as marketers have such a solid understanding and saying, do you

understand what's about to happen to your business with generative AI and

what we're seeing and how it's gonna impact the- your customer set, and/or

you internally within the organization and driving those type of conversations.

Those are really good in terms of bringing that expertise that you have

as a marketer around culture, society, buying habits that helps inform when

a company's going through, like, an organizational transformation.

Yeah.

And oftentimes we're finding ourselves going through organizational

transformation at an accelerated rate.

We just got outta Covid.

We tried to figure out hybrid.

We're still trying to figure out hybrid.

And now generative AI is on the horizon, so it's nonstop.

Your value will always be there, and I think a lot of it is framing

of the conversation that we as marketers need to do a better job on.

My final question is just any thoughts on how we can

increase that proportion of Board seats that are filled by marketers?

I just don't hear that the marketing community talking about it.

It's ironic.

I was at, on a, a podcast and we were talking about this very, and I, I

rarely, when I interact with my fellow marketing colleagues at various levels,

Boards are not on their list of kind of professional development lately.

And I'm like, well, why not?

So I think we as marketers have the opportunity to drive a greater

conversation at the various marketing conferences that exist in terms of

why CMOs need to have a seat at the table from a Board perspective and

articulating the business rationale.

I just don't, I don't hear it.

Yeah.

And you look at marketing conferences that exist and the CMO

Council and all the, we know together from a smaller community, and I look

at the paneling, I look at programming.

When have you seen programming around why don't CMOs have a seat

at the table of Board of Directors?

It's rare.

I don't think I've ever seen it.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think it starts with us in terms of

driving the conversation and then challenging the industry at large.

I mean, we're marketers.

We can come up, if we can unify and come up with campaigning and get

executive recruiters and get, you know, chairmen and CEOs to think about us.

Yeah.

Maybe we'd see more from forty.

Like, you know, I'm a very big, like, OKR, KPI, can, so we have forty now, can we,

can we look at let's adding twenty more.

Right.

By the end of the year.

Right.

And the only way do that is through creating, which we

all know, awareness and converting awareness to action, which is landing

a couple of people on Board seats.

So I'm happy to assist, provide guidance.

I'm a very big believer that we need more marketers in Board seats.

That is part of diversity of thought.

We talk about Board composition and we need diversity anchored on ethnicity.

Mm-hmm.

I think ethnicity, disability.

And different functions represented.

Makes sense.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining this show, Sandra.

It's been great to have you.

Likewise.

Thank you so much, Erica.

Thank you for leaning in and helping drive awareness and hopefully

we'll see twenty more CMOs on Board seats by the end of the, the year.

That's the KPI.

All right.

Awesome.

Sandra Lopez, thank you.

That was Sandra Lopez.

Now that you've heard from her, think about what steps you can take this year

to prepare yourself for Board service.

And how can you add to the momentum of more marketing leaders in Board seats?

Next time on The Get, your guest will be me.

We're going to review the top themes from this season, the key ahas and

tips on how CMOs can best interact with Boards from before they join a company

to while they're in the CMO seat, to when they join Boards themselves.

Don't miss it.

Thanks for listening to The Get.

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and

leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top

marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

If you liked this episode, please share it.

For more about The Get, visit thegetpodcast.com.

To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the

make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on

LinkedIn or visit theconnectivegood.com.

The Get is produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Productions.