Michelle Holmes - CMO, Triumph Financial
"It Can Wait" was Michelle Holmes' campaign. She led the strategy, creative, and cross-functional integration behind AT&T's distracted driving effort, which drove millions of DriveMode app downloads and millions of pledges. Her thirteen years at AT&T also produced "Rethink Possible" and "Power of &," the latter created for a $70 billion B2B business where she managed a nine-figure budget and a 60-person marketing organization. She built a digital print-to-production tool that became standard across all AT&T business units, delivering eight-figure savings. Then she changed sectors entirely. As VP and CMO of the AT&T Performing Arts Center she led a nine-person team through the pandemic, building brand strategy that drove incremental contributed income when venues were closed. Healthcare SaaS came next at Smartlinx, where she rebranded the company and introduced a staffing marketplace to the sector. Triumph Financial hired her as CMO in February 2024, marketing payments, factoring, and banking technology to the trucking industry.
Michael Williams - CMO, Zimperium
Cybersecurity has occupied Michael Williams for more than two decades. He held senior roles at McAfee and then Blue Coat Systems, where as senior VP of marketing he ran global strategy, branding, corporate communications, demand generation, and field and channel marketing. Symantec made him CMO in 2016, where he led the company's return to pipeline and enterprise growth. Two years at D2iQ followed, marketing enterprise cloud platforms in San Francisco. Then KnowBe4, the security awareness training company, where he helped lead the business through an IPO and an acquisition while delivering ARR growth and top rankings in industry reports. Between jobs he did something unusual for a CMO. He took an eight-month sabbatical, spending time at the track with his sons and describing it as a deliberate break to learn new things and reignite his appetite for growth. Zimperium hired him as CMO in June 2024 to market mobile threat defense across Android, iOS, and Chromebook endpoints.
Caroline Clayton - SVP Communications & CMO, American Airlines
Publishing and film came before aviation. Caroline Clayton worked as assistant to the president and editor-in-chief at Miramax, then as assistant to the publisher at HarperCollins, both in New York. Weber Shandwick gave her nearly seven years and four promotions, from senior account executive to vice president, handling communications for national and global brands. American Airlines hired her as director of corporate communications in 2014. Twelve years and four more titles later she runs global marketing, brand strategy, communications, and digital engagement as senior vice president and chief marketing officer, a role she took in February 2025. The timing matters. The airline approaches its 100th anniversary, and her brief includes shaping how it tells that story to customers and to its own employees. Clayton holds dual bachelor's degrees in international advertising and public relations and in English literature from Texas Christian University.
Kellyn Smith Kenny - Chief Marketing & Growth Officer, AT&T
Four years as a technology consultant at Accenture started Kellyn Smith Kenny's career, followed by a brief stint in product marketing at American Express. Microsoft then kept her six years in product management and marketing. Capital One made her SVP of brand management and product marketing for five years, and Uber brought her in as VP of marketing during its steepest growth period. Hilton named her global CMO in 2018. Since 2020 she has been chief marketing and growth officer at AT&T. The recognition has followed at a steady clip: Forbes, Adweek, and Brand Innovators have named her among the Top 100 Most Innovative CMOs in the World, a Top 50 CMO, one of the Top 20 Most Tech Savvy CMOs, and one of the Top 100 Women in Brand Marketing. She has also been named Working Mother of the Year.
Sabrina Callahan - SVP, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer, Southwest Airlines
E-commerce is where Sabrina Callahan built her foundation. She spent nearly seven years at Hilton in Addison, moving from managing franchise e-commerce to owned and managed properties to senior manager, then to director of global social media strategy and innovation. Sam's Club hired her in 2019 for brand and social marketing and promoted her twice, ending as vice president of e-commerce. AT&T then recruited her as VP of digital customer growth and within eight months made her head of digital. Southwest Airlines named her senior vice president and chief digital and marketing officer in February 2026, with digital, e-commerce, marketing, media, and brand strategy under her. Fifteen years in, her record covers Hilton, Walmart, and AT&T. Callahan also served a year as board chair of SocialMedia.org. She lives in Dallas with her husband and their three children.
Drew Panayiotou - Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer, Keurig Dr Pepper
Drew Panayiotou describes himself as a graduate of Alphabet, Disney, and Coca-Cola, and the phrase is earned. At Chick-fil-A he spent nearly four years as president of Red Wagon Ventures, the company's new business incubator, building and commercializing new retail concepts. Google then made him CMO of Verily, its life sciences arm, where he led branding, B2B and consumer marketing, corporate communications, and digital across a software and AI portfolio, and sponsored collaboration with Google Health and Google Cloud including a L'Oréal partnership. Pfizer hired him as its first chief marketing officer, a job with more than 1,400 people and a mandate to transform every marketing function in the company. Keurig Dr Pepper brought him to Frisco in October 2024 as chief marketing and innovation officer, responsible for Keurig, Dr Pepper, 7UP, Snapple, Green Mountain Coffee, Squirt, A&W, Bai, and Core. Forbes named him one of its Most Influential CMOs for 2024, and he sits on the Wall Street Journal's CMO Council.
Melissa Abola Friebe - CMO, Pizza Hut
Nacho Fries, the Naked Chicken Chalupa, Quesadillas, and Freezes all came out of Melissa Abola Friebe's time at Taco Bell. She spent more than two decades there, and the first three and a half years were in finance, as an analyst and then senior analyst. From there she moved into product marketing and innovation, rising through six titles, then ran consumer insights, then built and led the Insights Lab as vice president. Her final role was chief brand strategy officer, owning strategic brand development and every associated performance metric. Pizza Hut hired her as chief marketing officer in June 2024. Her focus there is brand transformation and accelerating the e-commerce and digital experience so the chain shows up wherever people order. Friebe frames the discipline as living at the intersection of math and magic, with the math keeping everyone honest about performance.
George Felix - EVP & CMO, Brinker International
Colonel Sanders returned on George Felix's watch. As director of brand communications for KFC US he led the campaign that won four Cannes Lions and an Effie, was named Ad Age's Campaign of the Year, and helped produce four consecutive years of same-store sales growth. Ad Age named him Brand Marketer of the Year in 2018 and had already put him on its 40 Under 40 list in 2016. Before KFC he spent nearly six years at Procter & Gamble, where his Old Spice work included the "Smell Like a Man, Man" campaign that drew more than 40 million online views, lifted retail sales 20%, won ten Cannes Lions and two Effies, and took the Emmy for Best Commercial. He later led mobile marketing strategy for all P&G brands and managed the company's global relationship with Twitter. As CMO of Pizza Hut US he introduced the "Newstalgia" campaign with Craig Robinson and delivered three consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth. A year at Tinder followed, where he established the app's first brand positioning and grew revenue 22% and payers 16%. Brinker made him CMO of Chili's in 2022 and EVP and chief marketing officer of the parent company in March 2026.
Arik Flanders - CMO, Tyler Technologies
Arik Flanders sold advertising for a radio company in Bloomington before he sold anything else. Sarkes Tarzian gave him his start in marketing and promotions, then as an account executive, and a digital marketing role at a consulting firm in Indianapolis followed. Texas Instruments hired him in 2009 to run corporate social media and community, and he stayed fourteen years. He managed campaign marketing for analog power products, spent four months building digital marketing for Asia Pacific from Shanghai, then directed brand and product marketing for the analog power business for more than five years. His final TI roles covered brand marketing, digital media and advertising, analytics, and e-commerce, plus a global marketing operations department spanning integrated marketing, sales enablement, analytics, and trade shows. Tyler Technologies brought him in as VP of marketing in 2023 and promoted him to chief marketing officer in January 2025. Fifteen years in, his specialty is B2B and business-to-government technology.
Aimee Berger - VP Marketing, Michaels
Licensing programs for Disney, Marvel, Mattel, Lucasfilm, and professional sports leagues have all passed through Aimee Berger's hands. Her career began at Allied Integrated Marketing in 1998, then moved into retail, where she spent most of the next two decades. Gap kept her across three stints covering brand management, global marketing for Banana Republic, and global marketing for the parent company, with a detour to Williams-Sonoma running brand marketing for PBteen. Sephora then gave her nearly six years, ending as senior director of marketing in San Francisco. Field marketing at Sally Beauty followed, then retail marketing at Afterpay. Michaels hired her as director of brand marketing in March 2023 and promoted her to vice president of marketing seven months later. She spearheaded the retailer's 2023 brand evolution, launching new positioning and visual identity across every customer touchpoint. Berger has managed budgets above $40 million covering media, event activations, influencers, and celebrities.
What Scale Teaches
Almost nobody here started in marketing. A finance analyst at Taco Bell. A book publisher's assistant. A consultant at Accenture. An account executive at a Bloomington radio station. What they share is a decade or two spent inside organizations where a campaign reaches tens of millions of people and a bad one is visible immediately. That is a specific education, and Dallas-Fort Worth offers a lot of it, between the airlines, the restaurant groups, the telecom giant, and the retailers. The lesson these records suggest is that a brand at this scale is less about invention than about knowing exactly which lever moves the number, and having the nerve to pull it on a national stage.