feisty
Australian women in marketing are directing brand strategy at ASX-listed companies, building independent agencies, and leading the commercial conversations that shape what consumers buy and how they feel about it. The discipline has historically been treated as adjacent to real power. That framing is changing fast, and the women below are a large part of why.
Why marketing leadership matters at the board level
Marketing sits closer to revenue than most functions outside of sales. A CMO who understands growth economics and customer data has become a serious boardroom asset. When the chief marketing officer gets a seat at the table, it signals a specific shift in how a company defines competitive advantage: away from operational efficiency and toward customer-led growth. The women below are in that conversation every day.
The practitioners shaping Australian marketing
Brent Smart's predecessor in integrated strategy: Cindy Gallop
Cindy Gallop spent her formative years in Australian advertising before building a global reputation as a strategist and founder. She ran Bartle Bogle Hegarty's New York office and later founded IfWeRanTheWorld, a platform for shared-value business models. Gallop is among the most cited practitioners on the business case for diversity in creative work, and her influence on a generation of Australian strategists is direct.
Bev Salmon, CMO at Coles Group
Bev Salmon leads marketing for one of Australia's two dominant grocery retailers. At Coles, the marketing function is not a brand exercise. It touches pricing communication, loyalty economics, private-label growth, and media investment at a scale few Australian CMOs ever operate at. Salmon has been central to the retailer's shift toward data-led personalisation across its Flybuys program.
Liz Moore, head of brand and marketing at ANZ
Liz Moore leads brand and marketing at ANZ, one of the country's four major banks. Financial services marketing operates under tight regulatory constraints, which means the craft sits in making complex products feel accessible without overpromising. Moore has overseen the bank's brand work during a period of significant sector scrutiny.
Danni Fayad, CMO at Menulog
Danni Fayad runs marketing for Menulog, the food delivery platform owned by Just Eat Takeaway. She joined from a background in FMCG and has built a team focused on performance marketing and cultural relevance in equal measure. Menulog operates in one of the most competitive and economically exposed categories in Australian consumer tech.
Sian Whitnall, founder and CEO of 303 MullenLowe
Sian Whitnall built 303 MullenLowe into one of Australia's most-awarded independent agencies. She leads an agency that has held Lotterywest, RAC, and a number of government clients for years. Her work is notable for consistently treating purpose and commercial performance as the same thing rather than separate mandates.
Jenny Williams, CMO at Tabcorp
Jenny Williams leads marketing for Tabcorp, the ASX-listed wagering and entertainment company. Gambling marketing in Australia carries both regulatory weight and public scrutiny. Williams navigates that environment while keeping the brand commercially active across sport sponsorships, digital channels, and loyalty programs.
Suzanne Harman, director of marketing at Transport for NSW
Government marketing is its own discipline. Suzanne Harman leads marketing for Transport for NSW, which means reaching every demographic across the country's largest state with messaging that changes behaviour, not just awareness. Her team handles campaign work across infrastructure launches, safety programs, and public information.
Annabel Herd, chief brand officer at Telstra
Annabel Herd leads brand at Telstra, which is one of the country's most watched corporate identities. Telstra's brand has navigated network controversies, pricing pressure, and competitive disruption from TPG and Optus. Herd has been responsible for repositioning the brand around reliability and customer commitment in that context.
Bree McKinlay, head of marketing at Afterpay
Bree McKinlay led marketing at Afterpay during the period when the buy-now-pay-later category was simultaneously inventing itself and defending itself from regulators. It's a narrow window in which to build a brand, and McKinlay's team built one that became a global template for the category.
Roshni Hegerman, CMO at Tourism Australia
Tourism Australia markets a country to the world. Roshni Hegerman holds a role that is partly government brief, partly global brand strategy, and partly crisis communications every time a natural disaster or geopolitical event reshapes travel sentiment. The campaigns produced under her watch compete for attention against every major tourism board on earth.
What the pattern shows
These women are not concentrated in one sector or one type of organisation. They span retail, financial services, government, technology, and tourism. What they share is a common argument: that marketing done at this level is a commercial function first and a creative function second. That argument is increasingly what gets a CMO a seat on the executive committee.
The data on representation in senior marketing roles tracks broadly with Australian women in communications and public affairs, where women hold strong mid-level numbers but thinner ranks at the most senior positions. Marketing is slightly ahead of PR in terms of C-suite representation, but the gap at board level remains wide. None of the women above sit on the boards of the companies they market for. That's a separate conversation. It's starting to happen.
How to follow their work
The best way to track these practitioners is through the work itself. Campaign Brief Australia and AdNews both cover the local industry with enough rigour to follow strategic shifts, not just creative awards. LinkedIn has become the primary platform where Australian CMOs articulate their thinking in public. For the agency side, the Effie Awards Australia offer the clearest view of what is actually working commercially rather than just winning at Cannes.