Rebekah Elgin Council - SVP & CMO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama
Rebekah Elgin Council found Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama through the University of Alabama’s career center in 1994, and she has never worked anywhere else. A first-generation college graduate, she earned her bachelor’s at Alabama and an MBA from UAB, and spent 22 years leading marketing as vice president before the company named her senior vice president and chief marketing officer in January 2016. Thirty-two years in, she leads marketing for the state’s largest health insurer, a company that calls itself “The Caring Company.” Her community work runs nearly as deep. She sits on the boards of the United Way of Central Alabama and the Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering, serves on the University of Alabama’s President’s Cabinet, and has served on the boards of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the World Games 2021 Organizing Committee. She is an alumna of Leadership Birmingham.
Edna Boatright - VP Marketing, Protective Life
Edna Boatright has spent 35 years making direct marketing measurable. She started at AT&T Universal Card Services in 1990, running portfolio activation, usage, and retention programs. Wachovia and NationsBank followed, where she built calling strategies for merger-driven branch closings. At Citicards she was responsible for more than $2 billion in cash receivables growth on a budget above $50 million. Riggs Bank then hired her to move the business to fact-based, profit-driven decisions, and she built its marketing database, profitability models, and customer segmentation. Synovus gave her marketing for 60 mortgage branches across six states. At Harte-Hanks she led 30 people and managed more than $36 million in client revenue, and at BBVA Compass she established the bank’s test-and-control discipline. Protective Life hired her in 2012 to lead customer relationship marketing and named her vice president of marketing in 2018. Fourteen years at the insurer have made her its resident expert on segmentation and test design.
Shannon Vann - SVP Marketing, Vehlo
Shannon Vann started as editor and events coordinator for the Greater Birmingham Association of Homebuilders, laying out its magazine and coordinating volunteers. Publishing came next, as publisher of the Birmingham Apartment Guide for Primedia, then direct mail at The Birmingham News. MailSouth, the shared mail company that became Mspark, gave her seven years across two stints, from inside sales manager to director of marketing, and she grew the subscriber base of its DealSpark deals product 21% in five months. In between she built the marketing function at McKinney Capital for businesses including Landscape Workshop. Therapy Brands then hired her as vice president of marketing in 2019. She built the department, integrated acquired companies, and was part of the team when KKR acquired the business, before moving to VP of sales enablement. Vehlo, which makes software for the automotive aftermarket, named her senior vice president of marketing in June 2023.
Lauren Thomason - Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Ascension Alabama
Lauren Thomason learned the trade at two of the Southeast’s largest public relations agencies. She joined McNeely Pigott & Fox in 2007 as a staff associate, rising to assistant account executive, then moved to Intermark Group as an account executive, with clients across health care, education, government, entertainment, and construction. St. Vincent’s Health System hired her in 2012 as manager of marketing and communications and promoted her to marketing director in 2016. When the system became part of Ascension, she was named chief marketing and communications officer for Ascension Alabama in March 2018. Her remit spans media relations, digital strategy, brand management, internal communications, and advertising for one of the state’s major health systems.
Cooper Killion - CMO, Shook & Fletcher Services
Cooper Killion came to marketing from the contract side of industrial construction. He spent four and a half years as a subcontract administrator at The Shaw Group, then three years as business development director at Sunbelt Industrial in Charlotte. Shook & Fletcher Insulation brought him to Birmingham as marketing director in 2015, and he became chief marketing officer in 2020. He now holds the CMO title at Shook & Fletcher Services, Vulcan Industrial Contractors, and Vesta Industrial, marketing industrial contracting services to plant owners and operators. It is a niche where buyers judge vendors on safety records and craft labor rather than campaigns, and his background in contracts and business development fits it closely.
Doug Schneider - CMO, Balch & Bingham
Doug Schneider ran store operations at Kmart in 1990, when it was the country’s largest retailer. Fruit of the Loom then kept him twelve years, rising to senior vice president of marketing responsible for the financial and brand management of Fruit of the Loom, BVD, and private label apparel, and staying through the company’s acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway. Saks Incorporated hired him next as vice president of marketing across the Saks Fifth Avenue and Parisian nameplates. Bayer Properties then gave him sixteen years. As senior vice president of marketing he led new business development and consumer communications for a national developer with more than 10 million square feet of commercial property, including its signature shopping destination, The Summit. He later became executive vice president of operations and marketing, also overseeing human resources and technology. Balch & Bingham named him chief marketing officer in 2023, bringing consumer brand training to a law firm.
Karly Field - CMO, Finovifi
Karly Field has been marketing software to banks in Birmingham since 1997. She started as a marketing coordinator at SBS Corporation, then became vice president of marketing at Brasfield Technology in 2001 and kept the role after Metavante acquired the company. At TriNovus she ran marketing for its financial institution technology and produced a quarterly compliance magazine. NXTsoft then made her marketing director, where she launched its fintech marketplace for the API connectivity company linking fintechs to banks and credit unions. Since 2017 she has been chief marketing officer of Finovifi, leading go-to-market, positioning, demand generation, and sales enablement for technology serving community banks and credit unions across core banking, fraud prevention, compliance, and payments. She architects the company’s HubSpot system herself, and her stated standard is a CRM that sales and leadership actually use.
Claire Connolly - VP Marketing, Southern Energy Credit Union
Claire Connolly interned in public relations at the Greater Columbus Georgia Chamber of Commerce, designed performance support materials at TSYS, and spent three years as an associate account executive at ADCO in Columbia, South Carolina. Books-A-Million then hired her as online marketing manager. Mspark gave her ten years across six roles, from strategic account manager through client engagement, digital customer relationship management, marketing operations, and demand generation to senior marketing manager. Southern Energy Credit Union hired her as marketing supervisor in 2022, promoted her to marketing manager the next year, and named her vice president of marketing in October 2025. The credit union serves the energy-sector workforce, and she leads its marketing after building most of the function’s operations herself.
Jim Hardy - CMO, Gabriella White
Jim Hardy helped launch Ralph Lauren’s Madison Avenue flagship in the Rhinelander Mansion, then was personally selected by Ralph Lauren to run the company’s London business. He spent eleven years there as managing director of what he describes as the most productive Ralph Lauren store in the world, then took on Paris as well before returning to New York to lead US flagships, then 65 freestanding stores and 1,500 people, then the Rugby brand. That was 25 years. He started as an executive trainee and menswear buyer at Brooks Brothers. After Ralph Lauren he was US president of Jack Wills, division president of the luxury outdoor furniture maker Brown Jordan, and interim president of One Kings Lane, leading it through its sale during the pandemic. He joined the board of Gabriella White, the Birmingham maker of Summer Classics, Gabby, and Wendy Jane, in 2020, served as interim CMO, and was named chief marketing officer in February 2026.
Built Over Decades
Few cities produce careers this long in one place. Thirty-two years at the state’s Blue Cross plan. Fourteen at Protective. Nearly three decades selling software to community banks without changing cities. A decade at a direct mail company where two of these marketers learned to tie every piece of communication to a response. Birmingham’s industries reward that kind of patience: insurance, banking, health care, and law all sell trust, and trust takes time to build. Even the exception proves the point. The Ralph Lauren veteran joined Gabriella White’s board six years before he took the marketing job.