Jennifer Cortez - CMO, Lytx
Jennifer Cortez started a company's social media presence from nothing. At Transplace in 2009 she implemented the first Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages, took Twitter from zero to more than 1,600 followers and LinkedIn from under 100 to over 2,000, and launched the thought leadership blog that followed. She spent nine years there, rising to VP and head of marketing and communications, and was in the seat when TPG Capital acquired the logistics company in a deal reported near $1 billion. Alkami Technology then gave her seven and a half years and five titles. She joined as director of corporate marketing in Plano, worked on IPO readiness before the company's Nasdaq listing, built demand generation for enterprise digital banking, and became chief marketing officer in late 2025. Lytx, the San Diego fleet video telematics company, hired her as CMO in May 2026. Her stated standard for the work is that marketing should be impossible to ignore and harder to outperform.
Don McGuire - EVP & CMO, Qualcomm
A $55 million annual loss became a $25 million profit in eighteen months, and Don McGuire was one of eight executives on the team that did it. At Kyocera Wireless he built the first functional marketing organization inside a $1.6 billion mobile device division, led 35 marketers and 50 sales people, and moved the company from sixth to third in US market share and eleventh to seventh worldwide among CDMA device makers. Unaided brand awareness went from 3% to 15%. He also ran the first fully integrated cross-branded phone experience with Virgin Mobile and MTV. Before that he spent four years leading sales and marketing at Cricket Communications through its multi-market US launch, and helped launch two Latin American wireless carriers. Amp'd Mobile made him CMO, where he participated in a $57 million raise and built the first pre-launch campaign with MTV Networks. He also founded a digital comics startup and ran his own consulting practice for five years with clients including Dell, Motorola, and Intel. Qualcomm hired him in 2016 and made him EVP and chief marketing officer in July 2021.
Katelyn Zborowski - CMO, Jack in the Box
Online dating and career schools came before fast food. Katelyn Zborowski spent two years as digital marketing manager at QC Career School in Ottawa and two more at Lavalife in Toronto. Taco Bell Canada hired her in 2015 for brand and digital marketing, and she moved to Irvine two and a half years later. Eight and a half years at Taco Bell took her through four titles, ending as director of brand marketing. Pizza Hut then brought her to Dallas as head of brand strategy and integrated marketing for two years. Jack in the Box named her chief marketing officer in April 2026. She describes herself as a commercially minded executive with a record of category-defining innovation and record-breaking sales growth for iconic restaurant brands, which is a specific claim about a specific corner of the industry.
Bob Maggiore - EVP & CMO, TaylorMade Golf
"I can now say I have the coolest job in the world...again." That is how Bob Maggiore marked his return to TaylorMade in February 2015, and the "again" carries the story. He first joined in 2004 as director of marketing and climbed through senior director, VP of marketing communications, and VP of brand and product marketing before becoming chief marketing officer in 2011. That job covered a $1.8 billion business and three golf brands at once, TaylorMade, adidas, and Ashworth, with a global working budget above $200 million and a direct line to the CEO. He left in 2014 and came back within a year. More than twenty years at one company in Carlsbad have made him a product launch specialist above all, and he frames the work as building a brand golfers aspire to belong to, a place where everyone can feel like an insider.
Anne Santoro - SVP Product Marketing, Dexcom
Anne Santoro spent seven years in San Diego advertising agencies handling Odyssey Golf, Toshiba, Scripps Health, and enterprise software clients. Healthcare marketing followed, first for four years at UC San Diego Health System and then as brand manager at UCHealth in Denver. Dexcom hired her in 2016 as a patient marketing manager. Ten years and six promotions later she is senior vice president of product marketing. Her path through the company is unusual for its breadth: she ran customer experience as a director, then as senior director, then as vice president of global customer experience, before moving to product and channel marketing and then the SVP role in January 2025. Marketing continuous glucose monitoring means selling to patients, clinicians, and payers at once, and her background covers the hospital side of that equation as well as the device side.
Mike Frankel - CMO (Former), Petco
Mike Frankel is between roles, which makes him one of the more interesting people to watch in San Diego right now. He spent four years at Petco, arriving in 2021 to run paid member programs, then becoming vice president of membership, then SVP of marketing and membership, then interim chief marketing officer, a job covering acquisition, CRM, loyalty, e-commerce, subscriptions, and customer experience for a business spanning more than 1,500 locations. Subscription and loyalty economics run through everything before that too. He spent four years at Amazon as vice president of marketing and subscriptions, ran global advertising at TripAdvisor, led marketing at Tablet Hotels, and spent five years at 1-800-Flowers ending as VP of marketing. His earlier career included American Express, Wunderman, and Accenture. What he does next will say something about where consumer growth marketing is heading.
Christa Carone - Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, LPL Financial
Christa Carone was Xerox's chief public relations strategist and spokesperson during the company's turnaround in the early 2000s. She spent nearly thirteen years there in total, ending as corporate vice president and chief marketing officer with responsibility for global brand management, advertising, experiential and sponsorship marketing, public relations, Xerox.com, and the trademark protection that guards a multibillion-dollar brand name. Fidelity Investments then made her EVP of marketing and communication, where she integrated disparate brand, communication, and events teams into a single 200-person function and advised the board on a high-profile succession plan. She was CMO of the Boston 2024 Olympic partnership, then president of Group Nine Media, then president of CSM Sport & Entertainment's North American operations, then president of Infillion. She also ran her own advisory practice for eight years. LPL Financial named her managing director and chief marketing and communications officer in March 2024.
David Miller - CMO, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Giant pandas returned to the San Diego Zoo after 21 years, and David Miller built the global campaign that announced it. Theme parks trained him for it. He spent five years as VP of advertising and creative services at Universal Studios Hollywood in the 1990s, working on the launch campaigns for Waterworld and the Back to the Future and Jurassic Park rides. Then came four and a half years marketing the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, and two years as director of marketing and sales at Four Seasons. Universal brought him back in 2009 as senior vice president of marketing communications and strategic partnerships, a twelve-year run that produced a national brand campaign positioning the parks against Disney, the Jurassic World ride launch, and a Halloween Horror Nights spot directed with Eli Roth. He joined the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance as chief marketing officer in February 2021, where his recent work includes the campaign for Elephant Valley at the Safari Park.
Christina Volgyesi - CMO, Dr. Bronner's
Christina Volgyesi co-founded a hemp foods company and ran it for five years as president before selling soap. Living Harvest Foods gave her that first chapter, and she stayed on as VP of marketing after stepping back from the presidency. A stint coordinating Hemp History Week for the Hemp Industries Association followed. Dr. Bronner's hired her as director of marketing in September 2010 and she has been there sixteen years, through nine years as director, five as vice president of marketing in Vista, and since October 2024 as chief marketing officer. The job is unusual because the company is unusual. Brand strategy sits alongside cause marketing and advocacy, and Volgyesi describes her work as global brand building and activism that drive growth, in that order. Her competencies list includes public speaking and advocacy next to channel management and budgets.
Karen Possemato - SVP Corporate Marketing and Communications, Veracyte
Karen Possemato started at the lab bench. She held technical services and technical writing roles at Invitrogen in the early 1990s, then spent eight years at QIAGEN rising from associate product manager to market manager for North America while revenue grew from $54 million to $380 million. Illumina recruited her in 2004 to run product marketing and communications with a team of two. She stayed sixteen years, and the team and the company both grew considerably: she built the corporate marketing group, inspired the "Genetic Energy" rebranding concept, served as chief of staff to the office of the CEO through a leadership transition, established the formal corporate communications function, and co-founded the Illumina Women's Leadership Network. Revenue over her tenure ran from $50 million to $1.42 billion. Seer then made her SVP and later CMO. Veracyte hired her in December 2023. Thirty years in biotech, all of it spent translating science for audiences that include scientists.
What Two Industries Built
San Diego's marketing bench reflects a city that runs on two engines. Wireless and semiconductors produced people who can explain 5G to carriers, retailers, and consumers in the same week. Genomics and medical devices produced people who can explain a diagnostic to a patient and a payer without losing either. Neither group talks much to the other, but the skill underneath is the same, and it shows up in the consumer brands too. Whether the product is a driver camera, a glucose sensor, a golf driver, or a bottle of peppermint soap, the job is making something technical feel obvious. This city has been teaching that lesson for decades.