Dorian Kendal - Fractional CMO, Kendal Solutions
Unity's online business went from zero to $38 million in two and a half years, and Dorian Kendal built the go-to-market strategy behind it. As general manager of online sales and marketing he led more than 50 people across six offices in five countries, launched the company's first web store and billing infrastructure, and ran lifecycle programs with open rates above 60%. He then built a global team that lifted first-time user success more than 20% and day-7 and day-30 retention more than 25%. Operations came first. At Google he designed a forecasting system managing more than $1.2 billion in annual server and networking spend, and at Trulia he ran enterprise applications processing nearly $300 million in revenue. Netlify made him CMO, where he repositioned the company for enterprise, led a complete rebrand, and grew pipeline despite a 40% cut in operating expenses. Since January 2025 he has run his own fractional practice for B2B SaaS companies. Kendal chairs the ML20 board of the Maurice Lucas Foundation, which supports under-resourced youth.
Adam Boettiger - Head of Growth, ProductPlan
Adam Boettiger was a core member of HARO, Help a Reporter Out, when it grew from a four-person startup to an acquisition, building relationships with more than 30,000 reporters and 100,000 news sources as VP of marketing. He spent twelve years in parallel as a domain name investor. His career otherwise runs through Portland agencies and companies: CMD, where he generated more than $1 million introducing pay-per-click for clients including Microsoft, HP, and Intel; Trial Guides, where digital strategy lifted sales 20% to 30% among trial lawyers; and a search marketing role that placed 1,605 key phrases on Google's first page. As CMO at Galorath he increased lead generation 30% and cut acquisition costs 20%. Boettiger founded Firefall in 2025 to help SaaS teams fix broken go-to-market systems, teaches in Portland State's School of Business, and spent six months on the floor of an Apple store. ProductPlan hired him as head of growth in July 2026, reporting to the CEO.
Mike Hamilton - VP Corporate Marketing, Exterro
Mike Hamilton went to law school and did externships at adidas and at Kroger's Fred Meyer division before finding marketing. Exterro hired him in 2010 as a product management analyst, and sixteen years later he is still there. He moved into e-discovery market analysis, co-edited the company blog, and hosted so many webcasts that by 2013 they were its primary lead source. Demand generation and partner marketing followed, then director of marketing, then senior managing director, then vice president. He integrated marketing through three acquisitions, and in 2023 marketing-generated opportunities accounted for more than half the company's pipeline. In 2024 he served as interim CMO, leading a 23-person global team through an executive transition and growing marketing-generated pipeline 10% on a budget cut by 20%. Since November 2024 he has led corporate marketing for Exterro's legal AI platform. Hamilton also co-created E-Discovery Day, held every December 1.
Mike Nierengarten - CMO & Founder, Obility
Mike Nierengarten ran a nightlife marketing company in Las Vegas before he ran a B2B agency. Direct Entertainment Marketing handled social media and interactive work for nightlife and lifestyle brands for nearly five years. He founded Obility in Portland in 2011, and the agency now generates marketing-led opportunities through paid search, paid social, and SEO for business-to-business companies. Nierengarten says the agency has grown at least 20% every year of its existence, that 90% of that growth comes from referrals, and that his team's work supported clients including Snowflake, ZoomInfo, and Cloudflare before they went public. Obility has appeared on the Inc. 5000 and won a PBJ Lighthouse Award. He moved from president to CMO in 2021. Outside the agency he runs Dregs Vodka, which donates 100% of profits from its potato vodka to charities supporting low-income youth, and he spent four years on the board of Portland YouthBuilders.
Karen Wood - CMO, Bill's Bridge
Karen Wood taught high school English in McKinleyville, California, before she marketed software. A sales trainer role at a bank followed, then SurfControl and Websense in product marketing, launching hosted email and web security products. Tripwire, CNET, and Webtrends came next, then a string of Portland marketing technology companies: Ensighten, where she rebuilt pricing and packaging, and AgilOne, where as head of marketing she built a 50-member customer advisory board and helped grow the customer data platform category. She ran product marketing for Acquia's CDP and marketing cloud, then led marketing at Windfall and product marketing at Infopro Learning. Treasure Data promoted her twice in two and a half years, from head of product marketing to chief marketing officer, and she relaunched the company under the name Treasure AI. Since September 2026 she has been CMO of Bill's Bridge, a startup bringing information and people together for cancer patients and their families.
Kristi Flores - CMO & CRO, International Sales and Partners, Accruent
Kristi Flores spent fourteen years at Tektronix in Beaverton and held eight jobs there. She arrived in 2008 developing launch campaigns, then ran marketing communications for North America, where marketing came to drive 32% of sales and her ROI calculator for marketing spend stayed in use for years. Global digital demand followed, then global content marketing, where she launched the 5 Series product, which exceeded revenue goals and became a case study for parent company Fortive. A rotation leading innovation projects across Fortive companies came next, then director of marketing for the Americas with a 16-person team, then vice president and chief marketing officer. Accruent made her CMO in November 2022 and added international sales and the partner program in 2024, with teams across the US, Brazil, Australia, and Europe. Her career began in inside sales at Planar Systems.
Katie Sadler - Founder & Principal, SDLR Consulting
Katie Sadler spent six and a half years in Copenhagen at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, leading on-site marketing and teaching a course on international advertising to American and Chinese university students. Back in Portland she worked corporate accounts at Icebreaker, then turned that channel into her own business, Saddle and Stone, consulting for premium outdoor brands until Icebreaker brought its territories in-house. Live video at Brandlive, retail at Evelyn & Bobbie, and volunteer management software at Collaboratory followed. At DigiSure she rose from director of product marketing to head of marketing and growth and tripled new deals in 2023. She was CMO of CLARA Analytics before founding SDLR Consulting in January 2026. Her clients typically sell into regulated industries like insurance, and her work centers on a new problem: buyers are already using AI to research vendors whose content was never built for it.
Kaley Hurst - CMO, Side
Kaley Hurst designed shirts, skirts, and dresses for more than five years at Coldwater Creek, handling external procurement and internal tech packs, then became a merchant for the factory store business. The games industry came next, in an unusual way. Hurst joined PTW in 2015 as an executive business partner, then moved into marketing as a manager, then senior director of marketing and sales, then vice president, then chief revenue officer. Over that decade they partnered with the C-suite on double-digit year-on-year growth for an external games development and services company. In June 2026 the company, now Side, named Hurst chief marketing officer. They led Side's global rebrand and co-authored the 2026 XDS Insights Report on external development. Hurst also sits on the advisory sub-committee for the External Development Summit. A background in design shapes how they build the brand.
Jonas Allen - Founder & CMO, GSD Marcom
Jonas Allen started as a magazine writer, contributing to Hemispheres and copy editing for Travelin' before moving into public relations at Fleishman-Hillard's Portland office and then six years at MAP Communications. Cricket Wireless made him area marketing manager for the Pacific Northwest, where his franchise programs across more than 200 stores drove Family Plan sales 800% above the national average and secured sponsorships with the Trail Blazers and Winter Hawks. At the Green Electronics Council he spent six years as director of marketing and communications, growing purchasers 550% and channel partners 450%, and running co-marketing with Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung, and other manufacturers. Media including the Chicago Tribune and Voice of America have quoted him on sustainability and electronics. Wipro then took nearly five years, ending as global head of marketing for its $980 million consulting business, after a stint in which automotive software grew 50% year over year. At Sand Technologies he built the global marketing function while the AI company scaled from $15 million to $70 million in two years. Allen founded GSD Marcom in November 2025.
Jessica Strom - VP Marketing (Former), PDQ
Jessica Strom is between roles, which makes her one of the more interesting Portland marketers to watch. At PDQ she led a 31-person team through a platform transition, scaling a next-generation endpoint management product 12.5 times while managing a large legacy base, and ran marketing integration for two international acquisitions. Mineral trained her before that. She joined in 2015 to launch Mammoth HR, and her team drove a 300% increase in company revenue with a 7x return on marketing spend. She later built the company's first product-led growth infrastructure and led growth marketing through a merger and a successful exit. In between she built the first marketing function at Delap, one of Oregon's top accounting firms, including a brand refresh, a website, and a podcast. Her career started in employee benefits. Outside work Strom competes in dressage from her horse farm, and says the discipline it takes to ride well isn't far from the discipline of building a marketing team.
Building From Zero
Count how many times these ten built something that wasn't there before. Unity's first web store. Netlify's first enterprise event. Mineral's first product-led growth motion. Delap's first marketing department. Sand Technologies' global marketing function. E-Discovery Day. Several agencies and consultancies, and a vodka brand that gives its profits away. Portland's marketers are comfortable at the starting line, and they keep returning to it, whether that means founding a practice, joining an early-stage company, or rebuilding a function inside one they've worked at for a decade. That habit runs through nearly every career on this list.