Darius Meadon - CMO, Mirakl
Brand work came before technology for Darius Meadon. He started in market research at Kantar, running studies for GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble and General Motors, then led strategy at The Jupiter Drawing Room in Cape Town and Johannesburg on accounts including Virgin, Coca-Cola, Hyundai and Unilever. At Landor & Fitch he was global strategy lead on three of the firm's top ten accounts, with naming and positioning projects for Etihad, Paramount, Barclaycard and Sainsbury's. Founders Factory then put him inside the startup world, where he renamed 12 portfolio companies and rebranded 28. Five years at Owkin followed. Meadon joined the agentic AI company as CMO in 2021, grew the team from three to 12, launched two AI-powered diagnostics across Europe and the MOSAIC spatial omics database, and published Humanity, a book about the people behind AI-augmented healthcare. Owkin was named to the Forbes AI 50. He became CMO of Mirakl in January 2026.
Michele Rousseau - CMO, Starling Bank
Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ all launched while Michele Rousseau was managing director of the company's services marketing organisation. Her 12 years at Apple ran through London and Cupertino before Los Angeles, covering hardware brand marketing, advertising and retail communications. Before that she spent eight years at Microsoft as head of integrated marketing for Xbox. Expedia Group hired her in 2021 as SVP of global marketing and creative, where she built a global creative team supporting its travel apps. Starling Bank named her CMO in November 2024. She sits on the executive committee and owns brand, creative, storytelling, product marketing, customer acquisition and retention. Her brief includes deepening customer relationships around products such as Starling's Easy Saver and sharpening the bank's focus on small business and commercial customers.
Lara Dewar - CMO, GSMA
Not many CMOs have signed a duchess. Lara Dewar has negotiated partnerships with Twitch, Universal Music and Omaze over her career, and attracted ambassadors including Meghan Markle, Nav Bhatia and Tom Cochrane. Her route to telecoms ran through banking, media and the charity sector. At Crossroads Media Group she arrived after a serious reputation problem and took responsibility for 70% of the workforce. World Vision Canada gave her a $300 million annual portfolio and a team of 300 across acquisition, retention, communications and product development. She then moved to World Vision's global communications role, covering a $2.5 billion enterprise in 100 countries, and launched Popullo, the first internal platform connecting all 38,000 employees. Dewar joined GSMA in 2020 to run PR and communications and became CMO in June 2022. Her work there has included full organisational transformations, a Martech upgrade and rebuilding in-person events after COVID.
Margaret Franco - CMO, Duco
Margaret Franco began her career managing inventory at Halliburton, running time-motion studies and building an automated control programme. Hewlett-Packard hired her in 1996, and she spent nine years there, ending with the product marketing team for mobile business PCs and managing the HP-Compaq merger product lines to number one global market share. Dell was next. She led a global $12 billion notebook business, repositioned a $15 billion commercial desktop franchise around customer lifecycle management rather than total cost of ownership, and later ran commercial marketing across Asia Pacific from Singapore and then EMEA from Twickenham. A stint at AMD in between had her leading a 100-person organisation and cutting agency numbers for 30% year-on-year budget savings. Financial technology came later. Franco was CMO at Finastra for three years, where she was named a Top 25 Woman Leader in Financial Technology in 2022, then at Kinaxis, and has led global marketing at Duco since February 2025.
Rina Hahn - CMO, Flo Health
Rina Hahn started in paid search. At Big Fish Games she handled all non-English PPC, then joined Blue Nile as a search marketing analyst, expanding campaigns into Canada, the UK, Australia and Hong Kong and launching Chinese-language paid search. Seven years there took her to director of marketing, running acquisition and retention across paid, owned and earned channels for the US and international programmes. Remitly hired her in 2018 as director of digital marketing. She climbed to VP of growth and then CMO, staying nearly eight years in total and leading marketing as the company went from fast-growing disruptor to a Nasdaq-listed business expanding globally. Her focus was deepening customer trust while keeping growth sustainable. Hahn became CMO of Flo Health in August 2026 and serves as an independent board member at Anyfin in Stockholm.
Sophie Chesters - CMO, HiBob
Medallia listed on the NYSE in July 2019, and Sophie Chesters was on the executive team that took it there. She had joined as VP of marketing for EMEA in 2017 and became SVP and CMO a year later, leading global marketing strategy through the IPO. Before Medallia came nearly nine years at Google, where her roles spanned agency programmes in London, Google Analytics marketing in Mountain View, country marketing for Canada and ads marketing leadership. She arrived there through DoubleClick, which Google acquired while she was leading acquisition and retention for DART Search and establishing a European footprint for Performics. UserZoom made her CMO in 2021, where she ran global marketing and sales development before the company merged with UserTesting. Chesters then spent two years advising instead of operating, working with Atomico's portfolio, Sure Valley Ventures, early-stage companies in Manchester and Leeds, and Personio's CRO. She has been CMO of HiBob since July 2025. Sustainability and the circular economy are a parallel interest, backed by several certifications.
Brandon Mavleos - CMO, Silobreaker
Brandon Mavleos sold to Fortune 500 companies before he marketed to them. Three years at Morgan Stanley had him opening accounts worth more than $300 million in assets under management. He moved into product strategy at American Express, then JPMorgan Chase, where he built the division's first voice-of-customer programme and cut onboarding time by seven days. Datasite gave him his first product marketing leadership role. He launched the firm's first product outside its core offering and built its first ROI tool to shorten sales cycles. Five years at Elastic followed, covering go-to-market product marketing and then strategic enterprise growth marketing. Silobreaker appointed him CMO in September 2026. The platform connects cyber, geopolitical and physical risk signals, and added agentic AI capabilities through Silobreaker Mimir in April 2026. Translating technical complexity for security leaders, risk teams and executive stakeholders is the job, and his years spent inside banks and enterprise software give him both sides of that conversation.
Carole Zibi - CMO, Diginex
Disney licensing franchises were where Carole Zibi began, managing brand marketing across EMEA in the late 1990s. Eight years at Yahoo followed, leading consumer and B2B marketing in France, then a stint as managing director of Condé Nast Digital France with P&L responsibility for vogue.com, gq.com and glamour.com. LinkedIn recruited her in 2010 to help open its French office. She stayed nearly a decade, ending as marketing director for brand, product and content across EMEA and LATAM. Climate tech came next. Zibi joined Plan A in 2023 to lead marketing for its science-based decarbonisation platform, making climate accountability practical for European businesses. Diginex acquired Plan A in January 2026 and made her CMO of the Nasdaq-listed parent in June. For nearly nine years she also taught a course on redesigning brands in the digital age to master's students at Sciences Po.
Sarah Whipp - CMO, Elliptic
Sarah Whipp came to marketing partway through her career, after running software businesses at Merisel and Action Computers with full P&L responsibility. McAfee then kept her for nearly ten years, where she owned the global online acquisition number. Symantec made her regional CMO for EMEA, a job that covered both the Symantec and Norton brands and a team that ranged between 80 and 280 people. She was seconded to Bain as global marketing lead on a worldwide transformation programme. At S&P Global Ratings she balanced growth targets against regulatory obligations as global VP of marketing, strategy and planning. Callsign followed, where she positioned a hyper-growth company as both an investment proposition and a credible supplier to the world's largest banks. She then spent nearly two years at Spendesk, ending as CMO and chief sales officer. Elliptic has been her home since February 2025. Hot Topics named her a Top 100 Global CMO in 2021, and she is a charity trustee.
Tony Marlow - CMO, Genius Sports
Tony Marlow spent seven years in research before marketing, first at Jones Donald Strategy Partners in Australia, then as an online research director at Nielsen. Yahoo hired him in 2010 as director of strategic insights. By 2016 he was effectively CMO of its B2B business, leading roughly 120 people across B2B marketing, product marketing, insights and measurement, and sales learning and development. Four consecutive CMO roles came after that, each in data and advertising technology: Data Axle, then Integral Ad Science, where his team won a Comparably Best Marketing Teams award in 2022, then LG Ad Solutions for more than three years. He joined Genius Sports as CMO in April 2026. Marlow describes himself as a trend spotter and a digital nerd, which fits a career built on turning audience research into commercial positioning.
The Case for Clear Explanation
Look at what these companies sell and a pattern emerges: decarbonisation data, crypto compliance, identity verification, supply chain reconciliation, threat intelligence, menstrual health. Almost none of it explains itself. The marketers here have spent careers on that problem, often after starting somewhere else entirely, in research, in sales, in operations or in front of a classroom. London gives them a market where financial services, health technology and enterprise software sit close together. The work gets easier to do well when the buyers are that demanding.