CMO Moves Mid-October Update

The CMO hiring drumbeat kept a steady rhythm through early October, with 23 new appointments around the globe.

Again, women led the charge (17 vs. 6), though before we get too misty-eyed, it’s worth noting that only 5 of the new CMO hires were internal promotions. The rest were brought in from outside, mostly nabbed from competitors. Just one brave soul made the leap across industries—our lone “traveler” this time around, reflecting risk-averse hiring that aligns with the assignments we’ve run at Taligence this year. On a positive note, 11 of the new hires are stepping into the CMO role for the first time.

U.S. remained active, notching 15 hires, with California claiming 4 of these and the rest scattered across 11 other states. India also had a busy spell, welcoming 3 CMOs at major firms spanning Banking, Engineering, and IT. And in the global mix, Australia, England, Germany, New Zealand, and Sweden each added one to their ranks.

When it comes to sectors, Tech once again leads the pack with 7 CMO hires - no major shock there. Financial Services followed with 5. Restaurants and Retail each brought in 2 new marketing heads, likely gearing up for the year-end push. The rest were spread thinly across a range of industries: Automotive, CPG, Manufacturing, Construction, Media & Entertainment, Professional Services, and the broader BioTech, Pharma, Healthcare & Wellness space.

GENERAL MOTORS

Lin-Hua Wu just became CMO of General Motors. Yes, that General Motors, the one with century-old brands, quarterly Wall Street pressure, and a customer base split between V8 purists and EV skeptics. She now carries the weight of every badge from Buick to Hummer… while still holding down her previous job as Chief Communications Officer. If that sounds like a double shift, it is. I hope they have doubled her salary as well as her scope!

This isn’t a conventional CMO appointment because Wu isn’t a marketing lifer. She didn’t come up through auto, brand strategy, or media buys. She’s a tech comms veteran with a Stanford law degree and a resume stamped with Dropbox, Square, Google, and just enough Wall Street-savvy to float inside of GM’s C-suite. The skeptics (and the GM Authority comment section) are already foaming at the keyboard. "No marketing experience," they cry. "Still based in San Francisco!"

For those not aware, GM Authority is a weirdly influential peanut gallery of GM superfans, and while it doesn’t shape corporate decisions, it does reflect the real-world resistance brands face when they try to modernize. Her appointment lands right at the intersection of brand transformation and cultural friction.

Wu's elevation from Comms roots is about narrative power. GM is selling vision. Battery platforms. Autonomy. Software services. And none of that works without a story that scales beyond Detroit. I reckon Wu is here to stitch together a company trying to go from carmaker to tech player without losing its mechanical soul.

And if you think this is just a DEI checkbox or another San Fran import into a Midwest icon, think again. Wu is a powerhouse who now owns the storytelling apparatus of a $160B enterprise, while Norm de Greve, her predecessor and now her direct report, takes on a newly invented “Chief Growth Officer” title. In other words, marketing is being treated like a multiplier. And Wu, the comms pro with Silicon Valley instincts, just got the keys.

GM is betting that Wu is someone who knows how to shape perception across stakeholders, from shareholders to TikTok teens to regulators, and can architect a message strong enough to hold GM’s reinvention together.

Wu isn’t the obvious choice. But neither is this era in automotive. A brand once built on torque is now battling for relevance in a market obsessed with autonomy and cultural iconography. If GM wants to be taken seriously as a tech-forward enterprise, it just picked a CMO who can speak the language.

And while she’s new to the title, she’s not new to the job. Watch the 2020 interview from her Dropbox days. It was clear even then that she was operating like a modern CMO. She talked segmentation, brand voice, media strategy, emotional tone, and the tension between utility and humanity in messaging. No fluff, no jargon. Just real marketing judgment under pressure. The title’s just catching up to the scope she was already capable of handling.

OKTA

Shannon Sullivan Duffy steps into the CMO role at Okta with a pretty clear agenda: connect marketing more tightly to business outcomes, raise the company’s profile in the age of AI, and align brand, demand, and product narrative around one central idea, identity as the foundation of digital trust in a timeline where institutional trust is in very short supply.

Duffy steps into the shoes of Kerry Ok, who takes on the role of Executive Vice President of Company Planning & Operations.

Her leadership style is grounded in transparency and accountability. At Asana, she made internal marketing metrics visible across teams, set clear expectations for campaign performance timelines, and rebuilt the company’s event strategy from the ground up, starting with a 150-person proof point that scaled into a 1,000+ attendee flagship within a year. Operational discipline meets brand ambition.

Duffy also brings a defined cultural point of view. She talks about “better, better, never best” as both a creative mantra and a leadership tool. Her teams are encouraged to celebrate wins, but expected to stay in motion and be humbitious. She treats feedback as fuel, and sets a tone where experimentation is expected, as long as it's paired with sharp KPIs.

She understands the creative side of marketing, but she speaks fluently in pipeline, churn, and coverage ratios. That sort of fluency gives her teams the room to push boundaries while keeping ELT confidence high. She knows how to make the case for brand investment, billboards, events, and all, but she’s just as focused on cost-effective wins and program ROI.

At Okta, she’s inheriting a complex mandate: evolve the brand narrative to match the urgency of securing AI, deepen enterprise trust, and support a GTM model that spans technical buyers, security leaders, and increasingly, regulators. Duffy’s track record suggests she’s more than ready. She builds systems. She scales teams. And she knows how to translate marketing into momentum at every layer of the business. A 2025 Public SaaS CMO archetype, for sure.

GEICO

Arianna Orpello Lewko steps into the CMO role at GEICO this October, after a 9-month search following the last CMO’s exit. *Call Taligence next time, we could have gotten the job done in half the time 😉

She inherits one of the most iconic and heavily scrutinized marketing portfolios in the U.S. The brand poured $550 million into measured media in the first half of 2025. Yet despite the spend - and 30 years of reptile-powered recall - GEICO is under pressure. Market share is slipping. Loyalty is softening. Consumers want value, yes, but they also want more than punchlines.

Orpello isn’t new to high-stakes brand work. Most recently, global Chief Brand Officer at Goldman Sachs, she’s also held senior marketing roles at TD Bank and Capital One, where she’s known for marrying brand storytelling with measurable business outcomes.

Recent campaigns have begun broadening beyond price to spotlight service: bilingual support, 24/7 roadside, real-world utility. That track is likely to continue, but now with a stronger through-line connecting GEICO’s cultural currency to its customer promise.

I’ve worked directly with former Goldman Sachs execs, and they tend to be a ‘type’. With that in mind, I was encouraged by her talking about setting boundaries over chasing balance, of making leadership choices visible to create team cultures that are empathetic and executional. At TD Bank, she returned from maternity leave into an interim CMO role at the height of COVID, navigating both crisis and transformation with a bias toward action.

If GEICO wants to remain one of the most recognized brands in America and be seen as one of the most relevant, Orpello’s mandate is clear: sharpen the message, modernize the model, and make the work count. Let’s see if her Goldman Sachs mettle can make it happen!

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