syllabus

This moment demands brave marketing leaders. Fearless, not reckless. The modern CMO no longer optimizes from the edge. They lead from the center of growth, trust, technology, and cultural volatility, where the stakes are highest and certainty is gone. They lean in. They look to drive change, not just react to it. This summit is built for marketing leaders willing to step toward complexity and lead the evolution of the practice.

She stepped into one of the most storied marketing seats in the world — succeeding a CMO who pioneered sonic branding, dropped the wordmark from the logo, and built "Priceless" into one of advertising's most enduring platforms. In this fireside chat, Mastercard's new Chief Marketing and Communications Officer joins us for a candid conversation about honoring and evolving a legacy this powerful, what she's bringing from a decade at Accenture — where she helped nearly double the company's brand value through world-class B2B marketing — and how that enterprise expertise fuels Mastercard's expanding ambitions in commerce media and beyond. A rare inside look at what it takes to step into the center chair and lead forward from there.

How brands can authentically represent middle America and rural communities — moving beyond coastal bias to tell stories that resonate nationally without flattening identity.

Exploring executive visibility, the mantle of brand proxy, and leadership. Why the moment demands that CEOs and CMOs show up raw, human, and uncomfortably real internally and externally — and why brand and business success increasingly depends on it.

As AI reshapes workflows by the quarter, “Chief Motivation Officers” are facing a fundamental question: what does a high-performing organization actually look like right now, and how do you build one? This session tackles the hardest challenges in modern marketing leadership—from attracting and retaining talent in a function that looks radically different than it did just a few years ago to keeping teams motivated amid constant transformation, and truly understanding which skills, tools, and mindsets drive performance today.

Amid sweeping consolidation, AI disruption, and relentless cost pressure, CMOs are fundamentally rethinking what the agency relationship is and their roles and responsibilities in the partnership.

In this interactive storytelling session with the Peabody Award Winning Non-Profit, The Moth, senior marketing leaders will develop candid stories of risk, miscalculation, and reinvention — reinforcing a core summit truth: transformation rarely happens without discomfort.

A candid debate on what must be preserved, dismantled, or rebuilt in marketing education — as AI, creator culture, and C-suite evolution force business schools to evolve boldly or risk irrelevance.

A CEO-level examination of what modern marketing leadership must deliver — and what it takes to earn lasting credibility, expand influence, and evolve the role in an era of growth mandates and C-suite scrutiny. With that foundation in place, we turn to what comes next: the new ways CMOs must think about their future acts now — whether ascending to CEO, joining a board, taking the helm at a company in a completely different industry, moving to the agency side, or forging an entirely entrepreneurial path.