Kristi Brown - CMO, EPIC iO Technologies
Kristi Brown started in marketing operations at AT&T in 1995, then spent nearly seven years at XO Communications as national director of field marketing. Wireless came next as director of marketing at Clearwire Wireless Broadband. Telesphere hired her as VP of marketing in 2008, and after Vonage acquired it she stayed on, putting in thirteen years in all and finishing as senior director of marketing. Built Technologies brought her to Nashville as VP of marketing in 2021. EPIC iO named her chief marketing officer in June 2023, where she leads go-to-market for AI-powered visual intelligence and enterprise wireless connectivity, with a particular focus on critical infrastructure. Her remit runs across direct, channel, ABM, digital, and event marketing, plus product marketing, brand, and the revenue operations and sales enablement systems behind them. Three decades in telecommunications and connectivity sit behind the job, most of them spent where, in her words, the playbook isn't always written yet.
Alexi Hatch - CMO, Acoustic
Alexi Hatch began as a marketing coordinator at an architecture firm in Salt Lake City, building proposals that won secondary meetings 93% of the time and projects 78% of the time. MRM//McCann followed, where as a media planner she helped drive an 8% year-over-year sales increase for Verizon Wireless in 2014 and onboarded a brand safety program that returned 600% on its investment. At Workfront she built the ad tech stack, cut paid social cost per lead 50%, laid the foundation for the company's account-based marketing, and moved a flagship event to virtual in three weeks during the pandemic, lifting influenced pipeline 66%. Adobe acquired the company while she was there. Quantum Metric hired her in 2021 and promoted her to vice president of global growth marketing, where she nearly doubled average deal size and raised opportunity conversion from the low teens to a consistent 20% to 25%. Acoustic named her chief marketing officer in March 2026. She credits her design background for how she thinks about structure and systems.
David Peterson - CMO, MedeAnalytics
David Peterson sold kitchen electrics and fitness equipment through international channels at American Harvest in Minneapolis before he moved into market research. Eight years at Ceridian led to WebMD, which became Emdeon and then Change Healthcare, and he grew with it: from building its market strategy and research function to running an award-winning product marketing team to chief marketing officer over 35 people and a $10 million budget, part of the leadership that turned a legacy healthcare clearinghouse into a platform. SpecialtyCare made him CMO and SVP, where he rebuilt the brand from a commoditized message into a clear value proposition. A year at CVS Health running a new commercialization group followed. At AccuReg he was on the executive team that sold the company at a high ARR multiple. Edifecs then made him CMO, where marketing contributed to half of qualified pipeline and two-thirds of closed-won deals at nearly a 6:1 ROI, and the team's employee NPS rose 90 points in two years. MedeAnalytics named him CMO in 2025.
Scott Farace - CMO, Celero Commerce
Scott Farace spent the 1990s in sports marketing, first as a VP at Octagon and then as partner and VP of North American business development at The GEM Group, building sponsorships and partnerships for national brands. Chase Paymentech then made him group executive of strategic marketing and public relations for five years in the payments business. He founded OneUp Marketing in 2006 and ran it for more than seven years, generating over $1 million a year in fundraising and sponsorship for the Texas Stampede, repositioning Taste of Dallas, and working with ESPN on the Cowboys Classic college football game. The American Heart Association then hired him as deputy executive director and later SVP of development for its Southwest affiliate, where annual revenue grew from $8 million to more than $11 million in two years. Celero Commerce named him chief marketing officer in January 2019. He has since led brand architecture across the payments company's acquired businesses and built the marketing organization through a period of acquisition-driven growth.
Todd Schlosser - CMO, Care Predictor
Todd Schlosser promoted rock bands to European magazines for nine years, running his own firm that represented three artists and placed them in titles including Classic Rock. His day job for a decade was senior trainer at Verizon Wireless, designing the sales and support training for annual iPhone releases and delivering it nationwide. Content became his lane after that. He co-founded two creative consultancies, built podcast brands to millions of downloads across more than 850 episodes, and spent five years as director of content marketing at SpecialtyCare, where marketing-sourced leads grew 97% and recruiting leads 299%. Sunwave hired him as VP of marketing in 2023. Over 25 months the behavioral health software company roughly tripled its ARR and closed an acquisition, while he sustained seven-figure quarterly pipeline for six straight quarters and lifted competitive close rates from 24% to 35%. His Sunwave Speaker Series returned $164,000 on a $30,000 investment. Care Predictor named him chief marketing officer in March 2026.
Jemina Boyd - VP Marketing, PairSoft
Jemina Boyd interned in marketing and sales at Universal Music Group, then started her career as an administrative assistant at SCRI, working up to program development and project coordination. Crowe hired her in 2011 to coordinate ERP implementations, and she spent ten years there moving from project work to Microsoft Dynamics sales and marketing coordination, then marketing and sales management, and finally assistant director of marketing. That decade inside software implementations gave her an unusual grounding for an ERP marketer. PairSoft brought her on as director of marketing in 2021 and promoted her to vice president in January 2024. Her work centers on the platform relationships behind the business, with campaigns tied to Microsoft, NetSuite, Sage, and Blackbaud. Boyd describes her specialty as building structured go-to-market engines inside private equity-backed portfolio companies, and cites recent work that includes an exit to a major private equity firm with year-over-year growth in the high teens.
Danielle Porter Condon - VP Marketing, LASSO
Danielle Porter Condon planned the University of Pennsylvania's $3.5 billion campaign kickoff, including a 2,500-person seated gala running alongside a celebration for 6,000 students and alumni. She produced more than 200 events a year there, then moved to Los Angeles to run film premieres, festival events, and award show parties for Benarroch Productions. Nashville software came next. At LeanKit she led content and brand marketing for five years, growing traffic from 1.2 million to 2.9 million visitors year over year while cutting paid media 60%, and building a partner program worth more than $1 million in recurring revenue in its first year, before Planview acquired the company. Built Technologies made her head of marketing over a 17-person team, and she says that work helped the company reach a $1.5 billion valuation. After a year as VP of marketing at Sendlane, she joined LASSO in October 2023, leading marketing for the live events workforce platform. Events, in other words, came full circle.
Faith Benson - VP Marketing, SimplyAgree
Faith Benson taught composition at KIPP Nashville after two years as a Teach For America corps member in the city's public schools. Before that she interned at the United Nations in Geneva, representing a human rights organization at conferences, and helped newly arrived residents in Buffalo find housing, work, and schools. Startups came next. At Dormigo she built a short-term rental hospitality operation in Nashville from the ground up and created a ten-person communications team. Gun.io then hired her as growth manager and promoted her to director of growth marketing over nearly five years at the developer talent marketplace. SimplyAgree made her head of marketing in 2023 and vice president of marketing in 2024, where she markets software that helps transactional deal teams simplify the closing process. Her own stated mission is making business, startups, and technology less exclusive, which tracks with a career that started in a classroom.
Phillip Cordell - VP Marketing, Visionary Solutions
Phillip Cordell wrote and starred in a feature film called Clone Cops. He also made a comedy series called Nashville Dads Club and an EP of original songs about audiovisual technology. His career started pulling cable. He joined M3 Technology Group as a technician in 2007 and spent nearly thirteen years there, moving through lead technician, programmer, engineering manager, and director of engineering to vice president of technical operations. Alongside it he built a following as HiPhi The A/V Professional, a comedic character covering the pro AV industry, and hosted The AV App Show on AVNation TV for six years. He founded HiPhi Productions in 2020 to write, produce, and act in original content, and he says its viral social campaigns have drawn more than 50 million views. Visionary Solutions, which makes AV-over-IP technology, named him vice president of marketing in July 2026. Few marketers in the category can explain the product from the installer's side of the wall.
Denise Barfuss - Director, Client Engagement, AutoMobility Advisors
Denise Barfuss spent 31 years with Nissan and Infiniti. She started in regional sales and marketing in the Mid-Atlantic in 1993, then moved into corporate planning at Nissan Motor Acceptance Corporation in Los Angeles, general management of a Nissan subsidiary, and business strategy and execution. Infiniti made her chief marketing manager in 2012, followed by a stint as regional product specialist. Her longest single role came last: nearly ten years in Franklin as senior manager of vehicle information technology and connected services for Nissan Americas, leading a cross-national team on marketing strategy, customer experience, and the analytics behind the connected services program. Since November 2024 she has worked with AutoMobility Advisors, providing fractional CMO services, marketing, and technology consulting to SaaS and automotive clients. She is also fractional CMO for Golf Rocket, a golf course and tournament software startup, and mentors through the Women Automotive Network.
The Show Business Instinct
Most marketing careers learn storytelling late. Several of these learned it first. Promoting rock bands to European magazines, staging film premieres, building sports sponsorships, making comedy videos about audio cables: none of that looks like preparation for selling ERP tools or behavioral health software, and all of it turned out to be. The rest of this list brings the counterweight, decades inside healthcare technology, payments, and automotive, where the products are complex and the buyers check every claim. Nashville's best marketers tend to combine both, and the combination shows up in the work: an event that fills pipeline, a podcast that becomes a revenue channel, a speaker series that returns five times its cost.