Via Emily Kramer of MKT1 & Dear Marketers

On becoming Head of Marketing: “Your thinking […] needs to become a bit more expansive because you’re on two teams now. You’re on the marketing team but you’re also on the executive team. It changes the scope of what you’re focused on.”

— MKT1 Gen Marketer Summit | Roundtable with marketers from Clay, Bridge by Stripe, and Pear VC/Vanta, at 8:16

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When you move from functional specialist to Head of a function (e.g., Head of Marketing), the fundamental nature of your job changes in ways most people don’t anticipate.

Zena Davé (Head of Marketing at Bridge) puts it this way: “You’re on two teams now. You’re on the marketing team, but you’re also on the executive team.”

Key shifts that happen:

• You’re no longer paid to be a niche functional expert—your value shifts from deep expertise to broad vision and cross-functional orchestration
• Decision-making becomes multi-dimensional—you’re constantly weighing trade-offs: “Should I spend $200K on this event sponsorship or give that budget to engineering for another headcount?”
• Retaining talent becomes a core responsibility—creating an environment people want to join and stay at is now part of your job
• Context switching intensifies dramatically—you move from tactical to strategic to people management constantly throughout each day

Being an executive who leads a function requires thinking expansively about what’s best for the entire company, not just your function. This means sometimes advocating for resources to go to other departments if that’s what drives the most business value.

See also: Team #1