Marketing operations is the full-stack marketer.

Treating it as an afterthought is backwards. It’s not just a cost center, ticket queue, and certainly not the function AI should eat first. Ahead of marketers. Ahead of engineers. Ahead of leaders. That’s the assumption putting marketing at risk for many companies.

To be successful in marketing operations, you have to understand marketing strategy and how to translate it into build requirements in existing technology, while knowing precisely where the gaps live in the data and platforms. Very few roles require fluency in all three languages. Marketing Ops requires it daily.

That’s what makes it sticky. Marketing operations is the team that rescues the poorly built AI agent. That finds the automation stacked on top of a broken process. That knows how to configure the technology to serve the business and customer. Long after AI can draft the strategy and automation can automate builds and deployment, marketing operations will be in the background reconciling every gap and every miss.

They’re the quiet, uncelebrated clean-up crew after the campaign has launched, engineering has moved on to the next priority, and analytics and reporting have pieced together disparate data for the business stakeholder. None of that shows up in a QBR. It shows up as a campaign that launched on time. Cut marketing operations and the gap shows up everywhere except on the org chart.

HOW I ARRIVED

I came to marketing, operations, and technology from defense litigation. About as far from that as you can get. I have a Juris Doctor, and I use it constantly, but not to practice law. Legal training rewires you to see systems as structures of risk and obligation rather than collections of tools.

When I made the switch, I needed to adapt my legal experience to a geographically mobile career. Sitting for the bar in every state we were stationed was not my idea of a good time, and, if I'm honest, I was bored practicing law. It stifled my creativity and felt stuffy.

My first toe dip into marketing was at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, where my husband was stationed. I landed a role in the Marketing Division focused on commercial sponsorship, which funds the morale, welfare, and recreation programs the base runs for its residents.

The saying for newcomers there is that you'll cry when you arrive and you'll cry when you leave. Despite my confidence that I would, in fact, not cry when I left, I did. 29 Palms gave me more than a preview of what marketing and operations could be. It also gave me my nickname. After I untangled a few broken parts of the division, my manager started calling me The Fixer.

I attribute my accelerated success in marketing and operations to my legal background and the way it's shaped how I approach problems. Truthfully, I never looked back. Marketing, operations, and technology gave me what the law didn't: a career where I could apply the best bits of myself.

HOW I WORK

I approach my work the same way I approach a legal problem: define the problem, understand why it’s a problem, articulate the constraints and dependencies, identify what happens if it fails, and who’s exposed when it does.

Additionally:

• I prefer to fix a process before I automate it. Automating a broken process just means the broken process happens faster.

• I’ll highlight the risks, even when it’s uncomfortable. Don’t worry, I’ll offer mitigation strategies and alternative solutions, too.

• AI can only go as far as it’s trained. AI without institutional knowledge will attempt to fill the gaps and that circles us back to risk.

• I enjoy building from the ground up as much as I enjoy refining what exists. It’s the thrill of the puzzle that keeps me coming back.

Sometimes it’s easier to share what you won’t find in my work and leadership style:

• Performative behavior when it’s inauthentic. Celebration and alignment are best received when they’re real.

• Generated energy to force performance. Urgency is reserved for true urgent needs, not to force others to deliver faster or prove I can.

• Murky direction. In fact, I once won a Team Value award for Driving Clarity.

• Shirking accountability. Owning the miss is part of the job, not merely a gesture.

• Conflict avoidance. The more responsibility, the more conflict resolution becomes critical. I approach conflict with a healthy dose of respect.