Marketing Leadership Summit

Morning Sweatworking

5K NOLA Run

Breakfast

General Session

Summit Opener

Six Months Ago I Was Scared Too

Everyone in this room has been told AI will transform their work, and most have been handed a locked-down tool and a deadline instead. So the fear is reasonable: that everyone else has figured something out, that you're already behind, that the gap is too wide to close. John Gelb built his way out of that in half a year, and his marketing team now ships more working code than many engineers do. He'll walk through what they actually built, what it freed up, and what the first one felt like before it worked. Come with your questions. The point isn't the demo, it's what happens to your week when the grind comes off it.

Joy is Your Operating System

Lunch

Workshops Round 1

Building the Job That Isn't on the Org Chart

You are amazing at your current role, but the next step up is either just an excuse for a raise / promotion, not actually career growth or a role that just doesn’t interest you. Real growth means claiming scope that currently belongs to someone else, taking on work you have spent years being glad you didn't own, and leading experts in things you will never be the expert in. This session trades how people have built the role they wanted inside a company where they already have the credibility to survive getting it wrong: what they asked for, how they took territory without turning peers into rivals, and what they negotiated before saying yes. The honest version of this conversation, including the part where growing your scope costs somebody else theirs.

The First 90 Days, Again

Half the room is somewhere in a transition right now: acquired, acquiring, reorganized, or three weeks into a job that didn't have a description until you wrote one yourself. The work is the easy part. The harder part is walking into a team, a region, or an entire second company's culture and figuring out how to be useful before anyone has decided whether they trust you. This session trades what people are actually doing in those first months: which quick wins bought them room, how they built rapport across offices and time zones that had no reason to give them attention, what they asked for while everything was still in flux, and what they'd do differently if they had to land it all over again.

The Next Act Is Yours to Design

For the first time in a long time, the next move is a choice instead of a reaction. The kids are launching, the money question is mostly settled, you're good at what you do and nobody's rushing you. That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it deserves more than a title bump and another year of head down. This session is about what people are building with it: scope they went and invented, a company or a coast or a side of the business they'd always wondered about, the thing they want to be known for once the resume stops mattering. Bring the version of the next ten years you'd actually be excited to live, and the first move that gets you there.

Getting Known for More

You got good at something, so they gave you more of it, and now that's the story people tell about you. The opportunity is that reputations are movable, and the people who move them do it on purpose. This session is about deliberately widening what you're known for. What people took on to show range, how they got credit for work outside their lane, who they needed in their corner saying it out loud, and how long it actually takes for a room to update. Bring the label you've outgrown and the one you want next.

Talking to the People Who Fund Your Ideas

The people you have to bring along in your marketing plans do not always work in marketing. They work in finance, in operations, in supply chain, and they are motivated by things nobody taught you in this job. The marketers getting their work funded right now are the ones who went and learned that language: product economics, the P&L, what a fulfillment decision actually costs, why the ops team pushes back on the thing that seems obvious to you. This workshop is a practical trade on how to get fluent: what to ask your CFO, how to read the numbers your business actually runs on, and how to build the idea so the financial case is already in it when you walk in.

From One Person's Trick to the Team's Tool

The first automation you build yourself is the one that changes how you see the job. The second problem is everything after: fifteen people quietly building fifteen versions of the same thing, nothing shared, nothing that survives the person who made it, and a security team that shuts the door right as it gets interesting. This is a working session on both. What to build first and how to get past the blank page, then how to turn scattered individual wins into something the whole team can pick up and use. Bring what you've made, what broke, and the approval you're still waiting on.

The Sandwich Generation at Work

One report is counting down to retirement, another needs a gentle talk about what office-appropriate means, and both are on your team. Senior exits, constant reorgs, shorter tenures, and careers that started on a home laptop have broken the osmosis that used to pass institutional knowledge and culture down the line. This session trades how leaders coach professionalism without an HR script, hand off relationships built over decades to people just starting theirs, and build ownership that sticks.

Building the Brand Again

Most of you have the performance machine well tuned, yet every click gets pricier because nothing upstream is filling the funnel. Building brand equity has never been harder, with fragmented media, mass reach that barely exists outside sports, and a next generation of customers who have never heard of you. Trade how peers are building brand with the audiences they haven't won yet, and how they are getting incremental brand dollars funded.

Transition Break

Workshops Round 2

The Sandwich Generation at Work

Good Enough to Bet On

Networking Activity

Dinner

Late-Night Spot (Optional)

Morning Sweatworking

Breakfast

Shipping Desk

Workshops Round 3

Networking Break

Workshops Round 4

Lunch & Town Hall