Topic: How to Leverage AI to Become Better, Faster and More Impactful
Join business leaders and Visionaries Kelly Waldher, CMO at Zendesk and Ryan Gavin, CMO at Slack, plus host Kathy Hollenhorst for this insights-packaged MTM Visionaries episode live on Zoom Monday, October 21st at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET.
They will discuss, challenge and inspire all of us to envision and take action to bring AI tools into our everyday lives to increase impact. We’ll cover examples of how to increase productivity as individual contributors and as part of teams, and dive into the Future of Work for all levels of marketers.
What to expect:
- Learn more about how Zendesk and Slack are driving the innovation and adoption of AI-driven tools that improve customer service and drive efficient team-based collaboration
- Hear how the use of AI requires a changing mindset and behaviors for marketers across all functions
- Learn what you can do to upskill/reskill yourself in our new world of AI-enabled marketing
- Hear firsthand about their career journeys, their key pivot points and what they have learned along the way
- Ask questions directly to these two successful CMO’s during the Q&A period
Speaker Information
Kelly Waldher CMO at Zendesk
Kelly Waldher is Chief Marketing Officer for Zendesk and responsible for leading the company’s global marketing, communications and social impact team, building the Zendesk brand, and delivering world-class demand.
Prior to Zendesk, Kelly was Vice President for Google Workspace and responsible for global marketing, including brand, product, demand gen, growth and analyst relations. Before Google, Kelly was General Manager at Qualtrics, where he led product management; product marketing; service delivery and the profit and loss of their BrandXM and DesignXM business lines. His career also spanned 14 years at Microsoft, where he was General Manager of Microsoft 365 and Teams and responsible for global product marketing. Waldher started his career at Dow Chemical, where he spent seven years across a range of functions including sales, marketing, supply chain management, and production engineering.
Kelly holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Washington State University.
Kelly lives in the Seattle area with his wife and three children. He enjoys outdoor sports, traveling to new locations, reading, and spending time with family & friends.
Ryan Gavin CMO at Slack
Ryan Gavin is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Slack at Salesforce, where he leads global marketing efforts for one of the most innovative and beloved work platforms, reshaping team productivity in the age of AI and agents. Ryan is responsible for leading the global go-to-market functions and is accountable for driving growth, building deep trust, and fostering a genuine love for the brand among its millions of users.
The hallmarks of his 25+ year career center on delivering meaningful market impacts with the incredible people and teams he's had the opportunity to lead. Ryan is an accomplished business leader and operator with in-depth experience in all aspects of go-to-market. He's built and run new businesses at scale, established new products and industry categories, and spearheaded numerous business turnarounds.
Previously, as the Chief Growth Officer at Convoy, Ryan drove the multi-billion-dollar marketplace business, expanding margins while lowering cost to serve, improving customer experience, and growing share-of-wallet with top customers. Before Convoy, Ryan was the General Manager of AI and ML at AWS. He helped establish the AWS AI/ML category, leading to an exponential increase in portfolio adoption and a growing thought-leadership position among developers.
As a General Manager at Microsoft, Ryan led the multibillion-dollar Surface commercial business, delivering double-digit growth and bringing the world's #2 search engine, Bing, to profitability with over 5 billion monthly searches.
Ryan received his Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Management from Seattle Pacific University. In addition, he is a board member and advisor for numerous technology startups. Ryan lives in Seattle with his amazing wife, Sarah Gavin, and is the proud parent of four incredible children.
Hosted by
Kathy Hollenhorst - MTM Advisor & Chief Community Officer
Known as an intrapreneur who drives growth and excels at building the ‘next new thing,’ Minneapolis-based Kathy Hollenhorst is a long-time CMO, executive leader, and business coach. Kathy was CMO at Caribou Coffee and built a digital/consumer engagement division for Carlson—a $4B hospitality company expanding brands such as Seven Seas Cruises, TGIFridays, and Radisson hotels. She most recently owned/operated Creatis, a 150-person marketing services firm that became part of the 24 Seven family in 2021. As MTM Advisor & Chief Community Officer, Kathy is now leading the charge of building the ‘next new thing’ for the Marketers That Matter community.