CMO Journeys

Dustin Sitar is Chief Growth Officer at BriteCo, which helps people protect their jewelry, watches, and weddings through an online insurance experience. He spent years as a professional poker player before working at Zappos, and he brings a clear lesson from the table to his marketing: judge the decision, not only the outcome.What the Conversation CoversHow poker taught him to separate a bad process from bad luck, and how he applies that to marketing testsWhy BriteCo's first influencer effort failed, and how a more manual, targeted approach made it workWhy he treats everyone as a customer, from agencies to coworkers, a lesson he took from ZapposHow BriteCo grew from seven employees to around 50, and why he lets roles fit the people who fill themWhat makes a lasting agency partnership, from sharing internal metrics to in-person offsitesGuest BioDustin Sitar is Chief Growth Officer at BriteCo, where he joined as employee number seven and previously led growth and marketing. Before BriteCo, he worked at Zappos across business development, operations, merchandising, and strategy, and before that, he played professional poker.About the PodcastCMO Journeys is a podcast from NextBigWin hosted by Christian Banach. The series features conversations with marketing leaders about the path to the C-suite, the challenges they are tackling inside their organizations, and how they evaluate agencies and strategic partners.

Julien McCluney is the Global Chief Marketing Officer of Jacuzzi Group, a company sitting at the intersection of home, wellness, and premium consumer products. The route to that role started with a plan to become a doctor, ran through a finance career in New York, and changed direction after a single branding class in business school. It's a candid look at how a marketing leader gets built out of detours rather than a straight line.What the Conversation CoversThe career pivot from finance to brand management, and the rejections that redirected the pathWhy brand management is described as the intersection of human stories and business numbersThe argument over whether marketing is an expense or a growth lever, and how to make the case to leadershipA leadership philosophy built on patience, bravery, and being the safety net for a teamHow agency partners are evaluated, why fit is the hardest thing to judge upfront, and when the work stays in-house insteadGuest BioJulien McCluney serves as Global Chief Marketing Officer of Jacuzzi Group, leading marketing across a house of brands that includes Jacuzzi, Sundance Spas, Hydropool, and Dreammaker. That background combines finance, brand management, product innovation, and P&L leadership, with prior leadership roles across brands including Monopoly, Nerf, Rubbermaid, Oster, and Crockpot.About the PodcastCMO Journeys is a podcast from NextBigWin hosted by Christian Banach. The series features conversations with marketing leaders about the path to the C-suite, the challenges they are tackling inside their organizations, and how they evaluate agencies and strategic partners.

Steve Daheb leads global marketing at Flexera, a company that helps the world's largest organizations understand and manage what they spend across software, cloud, SaaS, hardware, and AI. The path there ran through comic books, art academy offers, a psychology degree, and law classes taken at night while working full time. It is a useful conversation for anyone trying to understand how a marketing leader's instincts actually get formed.What the Conversation CoversThe career journey: an artist's start in the Bay Area, a father's blunt redirection, and a climb that tracked every major technology shift from networking to AIWhy law school turned out to be the best marketing training available, and how moot court maps almost exactly onto messaging and competitive positioningThe childhood moment that produced a lasting empathy for the customer, and how pattern recognition across past technology waves shapes decision-makingHow a marketing organization gets aligned from the inside out, and why internal partnerships across product marketing, customer success, and sales come before anything externalWhat Daheb expects from agency partners: how far the work should get in-house first, why inherited agency relationships get kept rather than replaced, and the kind of creative work that earns real enthusiasmGuest BioSteve Daheb is Chief Marketing Officer at Flexera, where the remit spans global marketing, product marketing, demand generation, and brand strategy. Prior senior roles include Oracle, where Daheb led the platform story behind the company's move to the cloud, as well as Citrix and Tanium. Outside of work, Daheb is a lifelong comic book reader, a Comic Con regular, and has built motorcycles, one of which won a national award.About the PodcastCMO Journeys is a podcast from NextBigWin hosted by Christian Banach. The series features conversations with marketing leaders about the path to the C-suite, the challenges they are tackling inside their organizations, and how they evaluate agencies and strategic partners.

Neville Billimoria is Chief Marketing Officer of Mission Fed Credit Union, a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative serving San Diego County. He built and sold his own agency before joining Mission Fed, so he sees marketing from both sides of the table. He also holds a firm belief that culture is the one advantage competitors can't copy.What the Conversation CoversHow he talked his way into an agency that had turned him down, created a biotech marketing category, and later sold his own agency to Saatchi & SaatchiWhy the first half of his career was brand as marketing, and the second half has been brand as cultureHow Mission Fed competes with fintechs and challenger brands by using technology to personalize while keeping people at the center, and why it put its brand behind a persona named EdHow martial arts shaped his view that leaders should coach, not manage, and why he makes room for well-meant risks that failHow he ran a nationwide agency search, what "show me you know me" means in a pitch, and why he respects agencies that skip an RFPGuest BioNeville Billimoria is Chief Marketing Officer at Mission Fed Credit Union. He leads marketing and works with a roster of media, print and digital, PR, and creative agency partners. At Mission Fed he has led many of the credit union's outward-facing functions. Before that, he founded and ran his own agency, which he sold to Saatchi & Saatchi.About the PodcastCMO Journeys is a podcast from NextBigWin hosted by Christian Banach. The series features conversations with marketing leaders about the path to the C-suite, the challenges they are tackling inside their organizations, and how they evaluate agencies and strategic partners.

Yama Habibzai is the Chief Marketing Officer of Aptean, a global provider of industry-specific enterprise software for manufacturers and distributors. He joined a company built from more than 70 acquisitions and 135-plus products, and he treats that complexity the way an engineer treats a hard problem: something to be taken apart and solved. His perspective is valuable because he has spent a career turning highly technical products into clear growth stories.What the Conversation CoversHis path from Kabul to Maine to the marketing C-suite, and how an accidental start pulled him into marketingWhat engineering taught him about breaking a complex, multi-brand business into solvable partsWhy he defaults to building marketing capability in-house, and when he will actually bring in an agencyWhat he learned in an operator's seat as president and COO, and why he chose to return to marketingHow customer empathy shapes his work, from reading a cold email to deciding which problems are worth his timeGuest BioYama Habibzai is Chief Marketing Officer at Aptean. He studied engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and began his career in technical marketing at MathWorks, the makers of MATLAB. He has since held marketing and operating roles at technology companies, including NetCordia, Infoblox, ScienceLogic, HiveIO, and Device42, where he led marketing through the company's acquisition by Freshworks, often helping smaller companies grow toward an acquisition or a public offering.About the PodcastCMO Journeys is a podcast from NextBigWin hosted by Christian Banach. The series features conversations with marketing leaders about the path to the C-suite, the challenges they are tackling inside their organizations, and how they evaluate agencies and strategic partners.