Photograph: Splitshire
Brand Leaders: The Makers Behind Molly Battin, Fabiola Torres, Asmita Dubey and Zena Arnold
The marketer who made Gap cool again. The producer who turned Barbie into a billion-dollar film. Ten brand leaders from retail, beauty, toys and games — including the first woman ever to run Nintendo of America.
Produced and Edited by The Bourgeois Society Staff
Part three of our three-part Brand Leaders list: ten executives from retail, beauty, entertainment and gaming who decide what America buys, plays and watches.
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
SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, The Home Depot — Atlanta, GA
Official links: Website
Image: The Home Depot
Why We're Inspired
Molly Battin joined The Home Depot in 2022 as SVP and chief marketing officer after leading global corporate brand strategy at Delta Air Lines, with earlier CMO and communications roles at Warner Media and Turner — and she brought an airline marketer's feel for loyalty and experience to the world's largest home improvement retailer.
Her remit covers branding, marketing strategy, loyalty, personalization and Orange Apron Media, the company's retail media network. Her signature stage is a Saturday one: “ESPN College GameDay Built by The Home Depot,” a sponsorship now running more than two decades that puts the orange apron at the emotional center of college football.
The honors have followed — the 2025 GeorgiaCMO “Super Global” ORBIE Award for technology executives, and the Hispanic Marketing Council's 2026 Marketer of the Year.
The Story
Home Depot reported revenue of $169.2 billion, and its brand lives or dies on pro loyalty and DIY confidence — two audiences with nothing in common except that both need to believe the person in the orange apron knows more than they do.
Battin's career across airlines, media and retail gives her a rare triple fluency: operations brands, entertainment brands, and now the store that supplies America's weekends.
Sources
GlobeNewswire — “Recipients of the 2025 GeorgiaCIO ORBIE Awards Announced”
Ad Age — “Home Depot Names Delta's Molly Battin CMO”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Jen Wilson · Fabiola Torres
Global Chief Marketing Officer, Gap — San Francisco, CA
Official links: Website
Image: Women in Retail
Why We're Inspired
Fabiola Torres became Gap's global chief marketing officer in May 2024, arriving from PepsiCo — where she was SVP and CMO of energy drinks and the Hispanic business unit — by way of Apple, where she led global marketing for Beats, after eighteen years at Nike.
She stepped into one of fashion's most famous turnaround stories and helped give it a name: “fashiontainment,” entertainment and fashion fused into campaigns built to be watched, shared and danced to.
The proof was “Better in Denim,” the Fall campaign starring global girl group KATSEYE dancing to Kelis' “Milkshake” — a film that racked up more than 34 million YouTube views and helped drive some eight billion media impressions as Gap became, improbably and then undeniably, cool again.
"This campaign was built to spark conversation and show how a pair of jeans can be a canvas for personal style,"
The Story
Gap Inc. reported revenue of $15.1 billion, and its flagship brand is the comeback case study of the decade — a legacy name that stopped apologizing and started entertaining. Torres' whole career points at this job: Nike's cultural fluency, Apple's product theater, PepsiCo's pop instincts, all in service of the most American garment there is.
Denim is a canvas; she is making sure the whole world sees the painting.
Sources
Retail Dive — “Gap, Katseye Let the Jeans Do the Talking in 'Milkshake'-Soundtracked Campaign”
Campaign US — “CMO 50 2025: Fabiola Torres”
The Advertising Club of New York — “Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month Icon, Fabiola Torres”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Molly Battin · Asmita Dubey
Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, L'Oréal Groupe — Paris, France
Official links: Website
Image: Brand News
Why We're Inspired
Asmita Dubey leads digital and marketing for the world's largest beauty company — some 10,000 marketers across 40 international brands — and she is the executive deciding how that empire uses artificial intelligence. Her platform is CreAItech, L'Oréal's in-house generative content lab, built on partnerships with the major AI labs.
Then she took the strategy somewhere no beauty executive had gone: inside ChatGPT.
In an expanded partnership with OpenAI, Maybelline New York's virtual try-on is arriving inside the chatbot, brands including SkinCeuticals, CeraVe and Garnier joined a global ads pilot, and L'Oréal began feeding verified product data directly into ChatGPT so that when consumers ask an AI about beauty, the answers carry L'Oréal's facts — while 73,000 employees get trained in generative AI to use it well.
"At L'Oréal, we believe we can be more demanding of AI to augment our beauty consumers, our metiers such as Marketing and Research and our employees. Our collaboration with OpenAI structurally supports this ambition to bring new solutions within beauty vertical."
The Story
L'Oréal reported sales of €44.05 billion, and its brands live on celebrity, creators and culture — which makes the AI question existential rather than technical. Dubey's answer is augmentation over replacement: machines for scale, accuracy and personalization; humans for taste, faces and judgment.
Whoever writes the rules for AI in beauty marketing is writing them now, and she is holding the pen.
Sources
L'Oréal Groupe — “L'Oréal and OpenAI Join Forces for Transformation in Beauty with AI” (press release)
Marketing Week — “L'Oréal's CMO on 'Permanent Transformation'”
TheIndustry.beauty — “L'Oréal Partners with OpenAI to Drive AI Innovation in Beauty”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Fabiola Torres · Zena Arnold
Chief Marketing Officer, Sephora U.S. — San Francisco, CA
Official links: Website
Image: Adweek
Why We're Inspired
Zena Arnold became Sephora's U.S. chief marketing officer in May 2023 with a career that reads like a tour of American consumer marketing — P&G, Kellogg, Google, Kimberly-Clark and PepsiCo — and she has spent the role making the boldest bet in beauty: women's sports.
Under her marketing leadership Sephora became the official beauty partner of Unrivaled, the new women's basketball league; a founding partner of the WNBA's Golden State Valkyries — a deal that includes naming rights to the team's Oakland performance center, the first time a beauty brand has held naming rights on an NBA or WNBA performance facility; and the exclusive beauty partner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League.
Her insight is demographic and cultural at once: the fans filling those arenas are Sephora's customers, arriving as a generation, not a segment.
"We are thrilled to be a founding partner of the Golden State Valkyries and support a team that is committed to women's empowerment, self-expression, and excellence,"
The Story
Sephora sits inside LVMH, which reported €80.8 billion in revenue, but Arnold's playing field is American culture — where beauty and sport have fully merged into one conversation about confidence and self-expression.
She got there early, with real money and naming rights rather than a campaign, which is why competitors are now following her into arenas she already owns a piece of.
Sources
Business Wire — “Golden State Valkyries Announce Groundbreaking Founding Partnership with Sephora U.S.”
GlobeNewswire — “Sephora Names Zena Arnold Chief Marketing Officer”
Glossy — “Sephora Strategies: Inside Sephora's Big Bets on Women's Sports”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Asmita Dubey · Asad Ayaz
Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, The Walt Disney Company — Burbank, CA
Official links: Website · X
Image: The DIS
Why We're Inspired
Asad Ayaz joined Disney in 2005 and spent eight years as president of marketing for The Walt Disney Studios — the job behind the modern era of event-movie marketing — before becoming the company's first chief brand officer in 2023.
In January 2026 Disney went further, naming him chief marketing and brand officer atop a brand-new enterprise marketing organization that unifies marketing across film, television, streaming, ESPN, parks and consumer products, reporting directly to CEO Bob Iger.
Born in Pakistan, Ayaz now runs the brand of the most storied entertainment company on earth — a company that, in his studios tenure's final year, was again the top studio at the global box office with $6.5 billion, powered by three billion-dollar films in a single year: Zootopia 2, Lilo & Stitch and Avatar: Fire and Ash.
The Story
Disney reported $94.4 billion in annual revenue, and its historic problem was riches: dozens of beloved brands marketing themselves in dozens of directions. Ayaz's new organization is the fix — one brand voice across the whole kingdom, from the multiplex to the theme park turnstile.
That the job went to a two-decade insider who literally wrote the modern Disney movie campaign is the least surprising, and most reassuring, part of the story.
Sources
Business Wire — “The Walt Disney Company Establishes New Enterprise Marketing Organization, Names Asad Ayaz Chief Marketing and Brand Officer”
The Walt Disney Company — “Disney Establishes New Enterprise Marketing Organization” (press release)
MediaPost — “Disney Names Ayaz to Lead Company-Wide Enterprise Marketing”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Zena Arnold · Robbie Brenner
President and Chief Content Officer, Mattel Studios — El Segundo, CA
Official links: Website
Image: GenHERation
Why We're Inspired
Robbie Brenner produced Barbie — the Greta Gerwig film that grossed more than $1.4 billion, became the biggest movie of its year and the 14th-highest-grossing film of all time, earned eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and turned a toy aisle into a cultural referendum. It was her second Best Picture nomination as a producer, after Dallas Buyers Club.
In June 2025 Mattel consolidated its film and television units into Mattel Studios and made Brenner its president and chief content officer, overseeing the entire slate: Masters of the Universe and Matchbox films, and an animated Barbie feature in development with Illumination and Chris Meledandri.
She joined Mattel in 2018 as president of Mattel Films and reports to chairman and CEO Ynon Kreiz — the producer who turned toys into cinema now runs the studio built on the idea.
"We all want to see the Barbie sequel. I want to see it too. I'm sure at some point, one day, there will be one."
The Story
Mattel's insight, executed by Brenner, changed what a consumer brand can be: not a licensor renting its characters out, but a studio in its own right, hiring auteur filmmakers and trusting them.
With Hot Wheels, Barney, American Girl and the rest of the toy chest behind Barbie in the queue, her slate is effectively a map of childhood for the next decade — and Hollywood is watching the producer who proved the map was a goldmine.
Sources
Yardbarker (Toronto International Film Festival) — “Mattel Studios Boss Addresses Barbie Sequel Plans”
Mattel — “Mattel Creates Mattel Studios and Names Robbie Brenner President and Chief Content Officer”
Kidscreen — “Mattel Consolidates Its TV and Film Units”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Asad Ayaz · Julia Goldin
Chief Product and Marketing Officer, LEGO Group — Billund, Denmark
Official links: Website
Image: Flickr
Why We're Inspired
Julia Goldin has spent eleven years as the LEGO Group's chief product and marketing officer, after serving as global CMO of Revlon — and in 2026 she was named the first-ever European CMO of the Year, an honor built from more than 800 nominations across 15 countries and presented at Cannes.
Her LEGO is a brand that behaves like an entertainment universe: collaborations spanning Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, Fortnite, Formula 1 and football; “Rebuild the World,” the brand's first global campaign in more than thirty years; and a Formula 1 Las Vegas Sphere launch reported to have earned more than five billion views.
Her “She Built That” campaign — reimagining K-Pop Demon Hunters' “Golden” as an anthem for girls who build — shows the house style: play treated as seriously as any product launch, because for LEGO, play is the product.
"This is a great recognition for the brand and the role it plays in people's lives. I'm deeply grateful to the many teams, partners and collaborators around the world who bring this to life every day – this honour truly belongs to them,"
The Story
The LEGO Group reported revenue of DKK 83.5 billion, up 12 percent, in a toy market that mostly isn't growing — growth powered, in large part, by the adult fans Goldin's marketing embraced instead of ignoring.
A brick is the most democratic creative medium ever sold; her job is reminding the world, in every language and fandom at once, that it belongs to them.
Sources
LBB (Little Black Book) — “Julia Goldin Named European CMO of the Year 2026”
Campaign — “Julia Goldin on Making Joy the Building Strategy at Lego”
Serviceplan Group — “European CMO of the Year 2026 Winner”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Robbie Brenner · Devon Pritchard
President and Chief Operating Officer, Nintendo of America — Redmond, WA
Official links: Website
Image: Nintendo Life
Why We're Inspired
On January 1, 2026, Devon Pritchard became the fifth president of Nintendo of America — and the first woman to lead the company in its 45-year history.
Her path was anything but the usual one: she joined Nintendo in 2006 to head its legal department, when Reggie Fils-Aimé had just taken the president's office, and crossed over into the business itself, rising to EVP of revenue, marketing and consumer experience.
That means the Switch era's launches — Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Super Mario Bros. Wonder among them — ran through her sales and marketing organization.
She succeeds Doug Bowser, who retired at the end of 2025 after steering the Switch 2's record-breaking launch, and her first public appearance in the role was a video message at the New York Game Awards, celebrating the creators and dreamers her company exists for.
The Story
The Americas are Nintendo's largest region, and the Switch family has sold more than 153 million systems worldwide — the foundation Pritchard inherits, with the Switch 2 cycle in full swing. Nintendo of America has had only five presidents in 45 years; each defined an era.
The lawyer who became the marketer who became the president now gets to define hers, with the most beloved characters in entertainment as her portfolio.
Sources
Kidscreen — “Devon Pritchard to Succeed Doug Bowser as Nintendo of America President”
VGC — “Nintendo of America's New President Devon Pritchard Makes Her First Industry Appearance”
The Spun — “New Year's Eve Goodbye: Doug Bowser Officially Steps Down from Nintendo”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Julia Goldin · Jill Kramer
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard — Purchase, NY
Official links: Website
Image: FX News Group
Why We're Inspired
Jill Kramer took over Mastercard's marketing and communications in December 2025, succeeding Raja Rajamannar after his twelve-year run — which made her the inheritor of “Priceless,” the 1997 campaign so culturally permanent it has been parodied by Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons.
She arrived with the record to handle it: a decade as Accenture's CMCO, where Interbrand brand value nearly doubled from $12 billion to $20.9 billion on her watch; agency years at BBDO and DDB before that; three consecutive years on Forbes' most influential CMOs list; and a seat on the Ad Council board.
Her first instinct in the new job tells you everything about her confidence: she asked to interrogate Priceless itself — and then rethought the iconic campaign around the small businesses commerce actually runs on.
"I felt a lot of responsibility to be true to the heritage, but also, I said to my leadership, 'Can I interrogate Priceless?'"
The Story
Mastercard's brand is an unusual asset — a logo with no name on it, a sonic identity, a word the whole world uses as an adjective. Kramer's career specialty is B2B brands punching at consumer weight, and Mastercard is where the two meet: a business-to-business network with a household name.
Questioning the untouchable campaign, respectfully and in public, is exactly the kind of move that keeps an icon alive for its next thirty years.
Sources
Fast Company — “Mastercard Is Rethinking Its Iconic 'Priceless' Campaign After Nearly 30 Years”
Business Wire — “Mastercard Welcomes Jill Kramer as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer”
Adweek — “Accenture's Jill Kramer to Succeed Raja Rajamannar at Mastercard”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Devon Pritchard · Mark Weinstein
Chief Marketing and Guest Experience Officer, Target — Minneapolis, MN
Official links: Website
Image: Adweek
Why We're Inspired
Mark Weinstein spent more than sixteen years at Hilton, the last stretch as global CMO for all 28 of its brands, the Hilton Honors loyalty program and its luxury portfolio — the man behind “Hilton.
For the Stay” — and in September 2026 he made the leap retail had been predicting: to Target, as chief marketing and guest experience officer, reporting directly to CEO Michael Fiddelke.
He was the only outside hire in Fiddelke's leadership rebuild, brought in to fill a combined role the company created for him: brand, guest experience, Roundel — Target's retail media network — and Target+, its curated marketplace, all under one executive. A loyalty specialist, in other words, now owns the Bullseye.
"Target is an iconic brand with the rare ability to be both deeply familiar and continually surprising. I'm excited to join Michael and the team as Target charts its next chapter and build on that incredible foundation in fresh, distinct and more connected ways."
The Story
Weinstein arrives as Target's turnaround is taking hold, after years of declining comparable sales — the precise conditions under which his Hilton playbook, built on loyalty, personalization and one consistent brand platform across every interaction, is meant to work.
Hotels and big-box retail turn out to be the same business at heart: guests, stays, trips, and the feeling of being known. He has a career's worth of proof he can manufacture that feeling at scale.
Sources
Retail Customer Experience — “Target Names Mark Weinstein as Guest Experience Officer” (company release)
Retail Dive — “Target Hires Ex-Hilton CMO as Chief Marketing and Guest Experience Officer”
Morningstar (PR Newswire) — “Target Names Mark Weinstein Chief Marketing and Guest Experience Officer”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Jill Kramer · Manolo Arroyo