Photograph: Splitshire
Brand Leaders: The Marketers Behind Leslie Berland, Sean Gilpin, Mike Tripp and Frank Cooper III
Twitter's first CMO, now rebranding Verizon. A Visa chief who came up through Motown and Def Jam. Ten executives steering the brands America drives, watches and pays with.
Produced and Edited by The Bourgeois Society Staff
Part two of our three-part Brand Leaders list: ten more chief marketing officers and brand chiefs — from telecom, autos and payments to streaming and the biggest brand-builder of them all.
Selected on the role's scale, the story behind it, and the culture it shapes — and fact-checked line by line, with sources linked under every profile.
The full list: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3
EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Verizon — New York, NY
Official links: Website · X
Image: Verizon
Why We're Inspired
Leslie Berland is the marketer brands call when the story has to change. She was Twitter's first chief marketing officer — a role she later doubled with chief people officer — then Peloton's CMO, after a long run as an American Express EVP, before Verizon named her EVP and chief marketing officer in January 2024.
She moved fast: a rebrand that leaned into social and creator marketing, and a Super Bowl presence built around fan experience rather than a single spot. Her peers keep voting her onto the lists that matter — Campaign's CMO 50, and Forbes' CMO Hall of Fame, which inducted her while she was still mid-career.
At Verizon she leads global brand and marketing strategy, creative, consumer insights, media and customer experience for one of the most valuable brands in telecom.
"Verizon's brand is at an exciting inflection point as the fundamental need for human connection has never been more critical. What we offer today and what we're building for the future is rooted in Verizon's commitment to bring people closer together and enable them to thrive."
The Story
Verizon reported $138.19 billion in full-year revenue, and its brand competes as an entertainment bundle as much as a network — partnerships and packages spanning Netflix, Max, Disney+ and Hulu.
Berland's specialty across three famous brands is the same move executed three ways: take an institution people think they already understand, and make it feel personal, present and worth choosing again.
Sources
Verizon via Nasdaq — “Verizon Appoints Leslie Berland as Chief Marketing Officer” (company release)
Campaign US — “CMO 50 2025: Leslie Berland”
Verizon — “Leslie Berland” (executive biography)
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Kellyn Smith Kenny · Sean Gilpin
Chief Marketing Officer, Hyundai Motor America — Fountain Valley, CA
Official links: Website
Image: Digiday
Why We're Inspired
Sean Gilpin became Hyundai Motor America's chief marketing officer in August 2024, stepping over from Innocean USA, Hyundai's agency, where he was chief business officer — and he also serves as VP of global sales marketing at Hyundai Motor Company.
His defining work so far is “Next Starts Now,” a fully integrated U.S. campaign built for Hyundai's role as Official Mobility Partner of FIFA World Cup 26: a 60-second film following five next-generation soccer players, a cameo from Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot, and a media strategy built entirely around live soccer.
He also showed a CMO's reflexes in a crisis, answering tariff chaos with a one-week price-protection campaign that told buyers exactly what Hyundai would guarantee while rivals were still drafting statements.
"As the Official Mobility Partner of FIFA, Hyundai isn't here to watch–we're here to play, and we wanted our U.S. media strategy to reflect that we're ready NOW to share what's next with fans everywhere."
The Story
Hyundai Motor posted revenue of about KRW 186.3 trillion — roughly $162.8 billion — on 4.14 million vehicles sold worldwide, and the U.S. is its most contested market. Gilpin's approach treats sponsorship the way a player treats the pitch: not signage, but participation.
A car company showing up to the World Cup with robots, rising stars and a point of view is a brand refusing to be background — and that's precisely the job he was hired to do.
Sources
Baret News (PR Newswire) — “The Future of Soccer and Mobility Are Here with Hyundai's 'Next Starts Now' Campaign”
Marketing Dive — “Hyundai's CMO on How to Make the Most of an Official World Cup Sponsorship”
Campaign US — “Robots, World Cup Culture: Hyundai on Driving What's Next in Its US Growth Strategy”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Leslie Berland · Mike Tripp
Group Vice President, Toyota Division Marketing, Toyota Motor North America — Plano, TX
Official links: Website
Image: Dallas Innovates
Why We're Inspired
Mike Tripp is Toyota's top marketer in North America — group vice president of Toyota Division Marketing since October 2023, with a remit spanning advertising, merchandising, media, incentives, analytics and motorsports — and he got there the long way: six years in the Army National Guard, a brief turn as a Walt Disney World cast member, then a Toyota career that began in 1995 and never really left.
MediaPost named him its 2025 Automotive Marketer of the Year, and his biggest calls have been bold ones: trading the Olympics sponsorship for the NFL, where Toyota now sits as the league's official automotive partner, and a Super Bowl film, “Superhero Belt,” that put a grandfather and grandson in a 1997 RAV4 and its 2026 hybrid descendant and let reliability do the storytelling.
The Story
Toyota sold 2.5 million vehicles in the U.S., up 8 percent, in a year when loyalty was supposed to be dead. Tripp's argument is that trust is the media plan: show up in the moments families actually live in — football Sundays, road trips, the truck that outlasts the kid it carried — and the brand compounds.
Thirty years inside one company gave him the conviction to spend its biggest budgets on patience.
Sources
MediaPost — “Toyota's Mike Tripp Named MediaPost Automotive Marketer of the Year”
Toyota USA Newsroom — “Mike Tripp” (executive profile)
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Sean Gilpin · Frank Cooper III
Global Chief Marketing Officer, Visa — San Francisco, CA
Official links: Website · X
Image: Fast Company
Why We're Inspired
Frank Cooper III has the most interesting résumé in marketing, full stop: Harvard Law, senior executive roles at Motown and Def Jam, co-founder of the trailblazing Urban Box Office Networks, then CMO of PepsiCo's beverage business in the Beyoncé era, and CMO turns at BuzzFeed and BlackRock before becoming Visa's global chief marketing officer.
At Visa he runs sponsorship as cultural strategy. When the company's league-wide NFL deal expired, he pivoted Visa into direct partnerships with 13 NFL franchises — trading one big logo for deeper local roots — while keeping the crown jewels: top-tier sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup 2026, the Women's World Cup 2027 and an Olympic partnership running through LA28.
"Our focus is on creating meaningful participation, not just visibility."
The Story
Visa reported $40 billion in annual revenue, and its brand shows up wherever money and culture meet — stadiums, festivals, feeds. Cooper's through-line, from the record business to the payments giant, is a belief that brands earn attention by contributing to the culture rather than renting space inside it.
The NFL pivot is that philosophy with a budget attached: fewer billboards, more belonging.
Sources
SportsMint Media — “Visa Shifts NFL Strategy from League-Wide Rights to Team-Level Partnerships”
Reuters via KTWB — “NFL, Visa to End League-Wide NFL Sponsorship; Eyes World Cup, LA28 Push”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Mike Tripp · Elizabeth Rutledge
EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, American Express — New York, NY
Official links: Website
Image: Ad Age
Why We're Inspired
Elizabeth Rutledge joined American Express in 1990 and became its chief marketing officer in 2018 — and then spent eight years quietly modernizing one of finance's most storied brands.
Her “Powerful Backing” platform reframed the company around a single promise, while the growth engine shifted to millennial and Gen Z customers won through experiential marketing: premium dining access, entertainment moments, and an expanded global Formula 1 partnership that put Amex inside the paddock culture its younger members love.
In October 2026 she announced she will retire in March 2027, closing a 37-year run at the only company she ever worked for — a tenure almost unheard of in modern marketing, spent entirely in service of one brand's members.
"Almost 37 years ago, I walked into the American Express Tower in New York City to fulfill a dream: to work for a company known for its iconic brand, marketing prowess, and extraordinary people. In March 2027, I'll walk out of that same tower, over three decades later, having fulfilled that dream and so, so much more."
The Story
American Express reported $72.2 billion in revenues, and its premium model runs on exactly the currency Rutledge trades in — membership, belonging, experiences worth bragging about. Her retirement letter, posted for the whole industry to read, reads like a graduation speech rather than an exit memo.
She hands her successor a brand that skews younger than it has in decades, which is the finest farewell a CMO can leave.
Sources
exchange4media — “American Express Global CMO Elizabeth Rutledge to Retire in March 2027 After 37 Years”
Adweek — “Meet Elizabeth Rutledge, American Express' Chief Marketing Officer”
Impact Magazine — “Elizabeth Rutledge to Retire as American Express Global CMO in March 2027 After 37 Years”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Frank Cooper III · Marian Lee
Chief Marketing Officer, Netflix — Los Gatos, CA
Official links: Website
Image: TheWrap
Why We're Inspired
Marian Lee joined Netflix as CMO in 2022 from Spotify, where she was VP and co-head of music, and she has since been ranked the world's most influential CMO by Forbes three years running — a streak no other marketer can currently claim. Her doctrine is that culture is the main character and fandom, not funnels, is the engine.
The proof is physical: Netflix House, permanent fan venues in Dallas and King of Prussia, outside Philadelphia — with a third, on the Las Vegas Strip, on the way — alongside a brand-partnership playbook that produced things like Wednesday's “Meal of Misfortune” with Wendy's, a collaboration that generated 2.6 billion earned media impressions by treating a menu as a story fans could eat.
"I hate a logo slap. It has to feel genuine, right? And if it doesn't feel that way, it's just not worth doing."
The Story
Netflix reported $45.2 billion in revenue and more than 325 million paid memberships — which means Lee markets to an audience larger than most countries, using the product itself as the medium. Her partnerships work because she starts where fans already are and refuses anything that feels bolted on.
In an industry built on interruptions, she built an empire on invitations.
Sources
License Global — “For Authentic Marketing at Netflix, Fans Are the Starting Point”
Fast Company — “Brands That Matter 2025: Netflix's Marian Lee, CMO of the Year”
Due — “Forbes Ranks Netflix CMO No. 1 Again”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Elizabeth Rutledge · Marc Pritchard
Chief Brand Officer, Procter & Gamble — Cincinnati, OH
Official links: Website
Image: Informa Connect
Why We're Inspired
Marc Pritchard joined Procter & Gamble in 1982, became its chief marketing officer in 2008, and then stepped into a title the company invented for him — chief brand officer — from which he has set the multi-billion-dollar media, marketing and brand-building strategy for the largest brand-builder on earth for nearly two decades.
He is the industry's conscience and its professor at once: the leading voice for brands as a force for growth and a force for good, and a relentless champion of creative craft, pointing to consistent, long-lived work — from Old Spice's reinvention to Pampers — as the engine.
His most quoted lesson is almost embarrassingly simple, which is why it keeps being right: campaigns wear in with repetition long after the marketing team has tired of them.
"We fall out of love with our campaigns long before consumers do. Repetition is how ideas wear in, not wear out."
The Story
P&G's portfolio — Tide, Pampers, Gillette, Old Spice, Olay and dozens more — anchors family life and routinely anchors entertainment and sports sponsorships, on sales of $84 billion. Pritchard has spent four decades proving that the biggest company in the room can also be the most disciplined creative one, and that people don't buy marketing — they buy brands.
Every CMO on this list works, knowingly or not, in a profession he helped define.
Sources
The Drum — “Marc Pritchard: Why Marketing's Old Rules Still Work in a New World”
Ad Age — “Marc Pritchard on P&G's AI and Modular Agency Model” (Cannes Lions)
MediaPost — “P&G's Pritchard: Campaigns Wear In, Not Out”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Marian Lee · Nicole Hubbard Graham
EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, NIKE, Inc. — Beaverton, OR
Official links: Website
Image: Nike
Why We're Inspired
Nicole Hubbard Graham came home to Nike in January 2024 as EVP and chief marketing officer, after some 18 earlier years at the company and a stint co-founding her own agency, Adopt — and she was handed the hardest brand brief in sports: get the swoosh its swagger back. Her answer was to recommit to athletes and audacity.
The Paris Olympics became Nike's comeback stage; “So Win,” the brand's first Super Bowl film in some 27 years, put women athletes at the center of the biggest night in advertising; and “Why Do It?” reframed the most famous slogan in sports as a question a new generation has to answer for itself.
In Nike's 2025 leadership shake-up her remit widened again — she now leads marketing across Nike, Jordan Brand and Converse.
"'Just Do It' isn't just a slogan, it's a spirit that lives in every heartbeat of sport. It's the belief that, together, we can inspire, unite and elevate ourselves beyond what we thought possible,"
The Story
Nike reported $46.3 billion in annual revenue, and its brand remains the benchmark every other marketer measures against. Graham's revival works because it refuses nostalgia: the slogan stays, but the meaning is re-earned in public, on the biggest stages, by the athletes the next generation actually worships.
Stewarding an icon is harder than building one — you can break it by changing it, and break it by not changing it. She is threading that needle in prime time.
Sources
Marketing-Interactive — “Nike Revives Its Rallying Cry with 'Why Do It' Campaign”
Adweek — “Nike Names Nicole Graham Chief Marketing Officer”
YesPress — “The Sport Spirit Driving Nike — Nicole Graham”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Marc Pritchard · William White
SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Walmart U.S. — Bentonville, AR
Official links: Website · X
Image: Adweek
Why We're Inspired
William White became Walmart U.S.'s senior vice president and chief marketing officer in May 2020 — arguably the worst month in modern retail history to take the job — and responded by turning parking lots into gathering places, launching drive-in movies and tailgate events that gave locked-down America somewhere safe to be together.
Forbes ranked him the world's most influential CMO in 2023, and No. 4 in 2024. Under his watch Walmart launched Walmart+, the membership program that anchors the company's loyalty future, and grew e-commerce 79 percent in his first year.
He arrived with a rare dual pedigree: seven years at Target and a run at Coca-Cola, where he helped scale Coke Zero — a marketer fluent in both the mass store and the iconic brand.
"We recognized there was a vital need we could play for our customers, because they were looking for togetherness."
The Story
Walmart is the largest company on earth by revenue, and its marketing chief's audience is, functionally, everyone. White's philosophy — access, affordability and experiences that bring people together — reads simple until you price the logistics of delivering it to hundreds of millions of shoppers.
The pandemic parking lots were the tell: when the brief is a nation's morale, the world's biggest retailer can still act like a neighbor.
Sources
YesPress — “The Together Marketer — William White”
Walmart — “William White” (executive biography)
Marketers That Matter — “How General Mills & Walmart CMOs Are Redefining Brand Strategy”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Nicole Hubbard Graham · Jen Wilson
EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Lowe's — Mooresville, NC
Official links: Website
Image: Adweek
Why We're Inspired
Jen Wilson spent more than twenty years climbing Lowe's from inside — brand, merchandising and marketing roles across the company — before becoming chief marketing officer in June 2024, which makes her reinvention of the brand an insider's job.
She launched MyLowe's Rewards, built out the retail media network, tied the brand to the NFL with “Earn Your Sunday,” and then made the move the whole industry copied: the Lowe's Creator Network, the first creator program in home improvement, launched with MrBeast and more than 17,000 creators in beta.
The network's second act, “Creator: Into the Blue,” goes further — inviting creators to pitch actual products for Lowe's to develop and sell, turning influencers into inventors.
"We've been thinking about this evolution of our creator network as taking it from content to curation to creation,"
The Story
Lowe's posted fiscal sales above $86 billion across more than 1,750 stores, and home improvement runs on trust — nobody wants a sponsored-feeling answer about a leaking roof. Wilson's insight is that the people homeowners already trust are creators with workshops, not spokespeople with scripts.
Handing them the product roadmap is the boldest version of that bet any retailer has made.
Sources
Retail Dive — “Why Lowe's Wants Content Creators in Its Network to Pitch Product Ideas”
Marketing Dive — “Why Lowe's CMO Jen Wilson Added Digital, Commerce to Her Portfolio”
Chain Store Age — “Lowe's Invites Creators to Help Design, Launch New Products”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · William White · Molly Battin