When Tara Rush first joined Audi of America in April 2019 as SVP-Chief Communications Officer, she was the only woman on the automaker’s leadership team at the time.

When COVID-19 drastically impacted grocery & convenience store purchase activity, checkout aisle mainstays like Mars Wrigley’s M&M’s should have been among the most adversely affected by the overnight shift. 

Elizabeth Drori arrived at Wolverine World Wide’s iconic shoe brand Sperry in November with a resume tailor-made for the brand: she spent the last 11 years in senior marketing roles at Converse, Shoes.com and Walmart, where she most recently served as head of fashion marketing. 

Christina Smedley barely had four months under her belt as chief marketing officer at stock-trading app Robinhood before the avalanche of activity now described in media circles as “The GameStop Saga” occurred.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first led to nationwide lockdowns in March 2020, it became clear pretty quickly to Vistaprint chief marketing officer Ricky Engelberg that his company’s core product offerings of printed designs, signs and business cards might not be readily relevant to the new market conditions. 

In the weeks leading up to Super Bowl LV on February 7, Cadillac’s chief marketing officer Melissa Grady hadn’t nailed down a strategy for her brand on TikTok, a platform known for helping branded content go viral with Gen Z and millennial consumers with the right approach. But based on overnight evidence from family members who saw Cadillac’s “Edward Scissorhands”-themed spot starring Timothee Chalamet pop up on the app following its premiere, a TikTok strategy suddenly started creating itself.