Global Finalists

Gabie Boko is the Chief Marketing Officer at NetApp. She has spent over 22 years in the technology industry and led transformations in senior marketing roles for companies including Cognos, SAP, Sage and HPE. Her experience has focused on connecting customer success to innovative experiences in software applications and cloud services, and customer storytelling. Born and raised in Alaska, she’s an avid outdoorsperson, wildlife photographer and advocate for protecting our natural resources and rural communities.

Under my leadership, marketing has become NetApp’s proof point, not just its messenger. Cost per lead is down, acquisition time is nearly cut in half, and we reinvest a share of those savings back into the programs that earned them. We built an AI-made Super Bowl LX spot in under three weeks, and Ad Age named it their AI Ad of the Week. We paired that with a new NFL and 49ers partnership that puts our story inside a stadium running on live data. Every move has the same goal: prove NetApp’s case in public, not just describe it.

Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi is Chief Marketing Officer of Coherent Corp. and a board member with 35+ years of global technology experience. Since joining the company in 2003, he has held progressively broader leadership roles and was appointed its first CMO in 2019. He has helped shape strategy and guide Coherent’s transformation into a global photonics leader, contributing to 10x revenue growth through organic expansion and strategic acquisitions.

One of my greatest joys as a marketer is creating markets, not just serving them. After I delivered a keynote on next-generation communications technology at a major trade show, an industry luminary approached me with a product concept. That conversation sparked a sustained collaboration that led to a novel embedded monitoring solution for assessing the health of fiber communications infrastructure. The result was more than a successful product: it helped create a new market segment now exceeding $500 million annually, generated hundreds of millions of dollars of profitable revenue for Coherent and delivered a durable competitive advantage for many years.

Eric Schwartz is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of The Clorox Company, where he leads the company’s global marketing organization, overseeing brand strategy, consumer insights, analytics, media, digital capabilities & innovation. Since becoming CMO in 2022, he has helped transform Clorox marketing into a consumer-centered growth engine. Eric has also held senior leadership roles at Henkel, Hillshire Brands & Tyson Foods. He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson & a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz.

Our biggest accomplishment has been transforming Clorox marketing into a modern growth engine while strengthening trust in some of the world’s most iconic brands. By combining consumer-centric brand building with data, AI and personalization, we’ve built a database of 100 million known consumers, enabled 70% of media spending to be personalized and tripled our innovation pipeline. At the same time, our social-first approach is creating deeper consumer engagement and measurable business impact. The result is a faster, smarter and more effective marketing organization that is driving growth across the Clorox portfolio.