Sarah Lopez - CMO, Nusenda Credit Union
Sarah Lopez joined Nusenda Credit Union as a marketing coordinator in 2011 and spent more than eight years in the role before her first promotion. She became marketing communications director in 2019, then vice president of member engagement in 2022, a role connecting marketing to the experience members have once they join. When the senior marketing seat opened in 2024, she served as interim senior vice president of marketing for seven months, and Nusenda named her chief marketing officer in March 2025. Fifteen years at the credit union have given her an unusually complete view of how it reaches people, from coordinating individual campaigns to setting brand strategy. She also holds the CUDE credential, the credit union industry’s development educator designation.
Lauren Townsend - VP Brand & Communications, Nusenda Credit Union
Lauren Townsend handled Chiquita as an assistant account executive at WonderGroup in Cincinnati, then led a national pilot program for P&G Pharmaceuticals at Northlich. U.S. Bank kept her more than twelve years, from regional marketing coordinator through deposit product marketing and regional marketing director to vice president and director of digital creative. AAA followed, first as director of marketing at AAA Allied Group and then for more than five years in marketing strategy at AAA Club Alliance, rising to managing director. Cinfed Credit Union made her vice president of marketing for three years. Nusenda hired her as vice president of brand and communications in August 2025, bringing her from Cincinnati to Albuquerque after more than 25 years of financial services and member organization marketing.
Rachael Siebenaler-Garcia - SVP Marketing, Sandia Area Federal Credit Union
Rachael Siebenaler-Garcia has led marketing at two Albuquerque credit unions. At Kirtland Federal Credit Union she spent nearly three years as senior vice president of marketing, running brand management and go-to-market strategy for wealth management, mortgages, home equity, cards, deposits, and digital banking, and managing a budget above $2 million. A detour into health care marketing followed in Tampa, where she led the rebrand of the Lung Health Institute to Centers for Respiratory Health, including a new website, under FDA advertising rules. Sandia Area Federal Credit Union brought her back to New Mexico as senior vice president of marketing in February 2022. Nearly five years in, she leads marketing for one of the city’s established member-owned institutions.
Alex Sanchez - VP Customer & Market Development, Delta Dental of New Mexico
Alex Sanchez reported for KRQE News 13 for four years before moving into public service. He spent nearly three years as public affairs director for the New Mexico Corrections Department, then deputy secretary of administration there, then deputy superintendent of the state’s Regulation and Licensing Department. The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center made him a public information officer, and CNM Ingenuity a senior director of programs. BeWell, New Mexico’s health insurance marketplace, hired him as director of communications in 2023 and made him chief experience officer within a year, overseeing marketing, communications, outreach, and human resources through a period of brand reinvention and record growth. Delta Dental of New Mexico hired him in May 2026 to lead marketing and communications and named him vice president of customer and market development in September, adding sales and account management.
Neal Spero - CMO, Presbyterian Healthcare Services
Neal Spero joined Presbyterian Healthcare Services in 2009 and has led its marketing for seventeen years. Presbyterian is both a health care provider and a health plan, so his role spans marketing and sales, reaching patients choosing where to get care as well as employers and individuals choosing coverage. Few health system marketing chiefs anywhere have held the job as long. His tenure covers nearly two decades of change in how New Mexicans find and buy health care, from the arrival of the state’s insurance marketplace to the shift toward digital access.
Brian Brown - VP Sales & Marketing, Presbyterian Healthcare Services
Brian Brown graduated from Cintas’s management trainee program and spent six years in plant and service management there, leading the consolidation of two plants into one and managing more than 1,300 client relationships. Health benefits came next. American Specialty Health made him a regional account executive in Florida, and AvMed then kept him more than fourteen years, from senior client service representative, managing $12 million in annual revenue, to corporate head of group sales and retention, accountable for every employer group segment the health plan served. Presbyterian Healthcare Services hired him as vice president of sales and marketing in August 2021. He leads sales, marketing, and communications strategy and works with brokers, agents, and regulators on new ways to make coverage more accessible and affordable.
Sheila Hernandez - VP Marketing & Supplier Relations, Summit Electric Supply
Sheila Hernandez has worked at Summit Electric Supply for nearly forty years. She started as a student intern in 1987 and moved through marketing associate, marketing coordinator, and director of marketing over sixteen years. In 2004 she became vice president of marketing and held the job for fourteen and a half years. Then the company asked her to run technology, and she spent three years as vice president and chief information and technology officer, an unusual move for a marketer anywhere. A year as vice president of customer experience followed. Since March 2022 she has been vice president of marketing and supplier relations, which puts the electrical distributor’s manufacturer partnerships under the same leader as its brand. Very few marketers have seen a company from as many angles.
Ceela McElveny - VP Marketing & Communications, Visit Albuquerque
Ceela McElveny learned the trade as a copy editor, reporter, and eventually managing editor at the New Mexico Daily Lobo while at UNM. She wrote for AAA World magazine, then spent four years as a news editor at Stocks Publishing. The American Society of Radiologic Technologists hired her in 1993 and kept her nearly 23 years, first as director of communications and public relations and then as chief communications officer for the national professional association. She then spent three and a half years as vice president of operations at Albuquerque Economic Development, recruiting business to the city. Visit Albuquerque named her vice president of marketing and communications in May 2019. More than four decades of writing and editing sit behind the job of persuading people to visit.
Kristy Donahue - CMO, Slingshot
Kristy Donahue spent twenty years in banking before she moved into marketing. She managed retail branches for First Security Bank and Wells Fargo, became a retail branch executive at BBVA Compass, and then spent six years as a senior vice president and private banker at Bank of Albuquerque. Slingshot hired her as chief marketing officer in 2018. She leads planning, development, execution, and customer experience for the company’s legal services brands, Business Law Southwest and Law 4 Small Business. Two decades of sitting across the desk from small business owners in branches and private banking offices turned out to be strong preparation for marketing legal services to the same people.
Rick Casagrande - Director of Marketing, Sandia Resort & Casino
Rick Casagrande spent nearly seventeen years as executive director of marketing at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, from 1994 until 2010. Sandia Resort and Casino hired him as director of marketing in April 2011, and he has now spent more than fifteen years there. Together that is more than three decades in casino marketing, a field that runs on player databases, promotions, entertainment booking, and loyalty programs that have to work night after night. Sandia, owned by the Sandia Pueblo, is one of the region’s largest resorts, and his work there has spanned the industry’s shift from mailers and comp books toward digital player engagement.
Staying Power
A student intern who never left. Fifteen years at a credit union before reaching the top marketing job. Seventeen leading marketing for a health system, and fifteen at a casino after seventeen at another. Albuquerque’s marketers stay, and the market rewards it, because the audience is a state of about two million people who remember who has served them well. The newcomers on this list came from banks, newsrooms, state government, and Cincinnati, and most of them have joined institutions that measure their relationships in decades. In a market this size, the long game is the only one worth playing.