Large Corporate Finalists

John Brown is chief marketing officer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he leads the firm’s marketing and business development efforts. Since joining Wilson Sonsini in 2002, he has built the organization into a high-performing team supporting the firm’s growth across technology, life sciences, and emerging industries. With more than 30 years of marketing experience, John has also held roles at Fox Broadcasting, Bank of America Securities, and The Kennedy Center.

I’m thrilled the ORBIEs are recognizing professional services CMOs; our marketing challenges differ from other industries, yet remain just as critical to the enterprise. Over five years, Wilson Sonsini’s marketing team has become high-performing, more than doubling headcount and growing budget by 110%, while spearheading efforts in space, foundational AI, quantum computing, and digital health. Wherever a bleeding-edge industry emerges, this firm is at the center of its legal issues. Wilson Sonsini remains the premier firm for technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises, outpacing peers in revenue and profitability. Our marketing efforts have been paying off for years.

Tricia Gellman is Chief Marketing Officer at Box and is responsible for the company’s global marketing strategy. She has 20+ years of marketing experience building brands and leading change at companies like Apple, Adobe, Salesforce, Checkr and most recently Drift. Throughout her career, Tricia has been a builder, storyteller, and public speaker using her expertise in operations, demand generation and product marketing to create value for companies resulting in hypergrowth and positive exits.

Under Tricia Gellman’s leadership, the Box marketing team successfully transformed marketing into the company’s primary growth driver. By repositioning Box as an AI-native leader, they broke down silos across GTM functions to tell a unified Content + AI story, supporting 100 major product launches. This strategic alignment generated millions of impressions, secured top-tier media coverage, and achieved a 4x increase in brand awareness. Consequently, AI offerings became Box’s second most recognized capability. These efforts accelerated deal velocity, driving an FY26 growth rate of 8% and culminating in an outstanding 11% year-over-year growth rate in Q1 FY27.

Mark Klein is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at El Camino Health, where he leads marketing, communications, brand, digital engagement and reputation strategy. He has deep experience using brand, communications and stakeholder strategy to build trust, sharpen market position and support growth. Mark serves as a trustee of the Institute for Public Relations and is active in the Arthur W. Page Society, The Seminar and APCO’s International Advisory Council.

At El Camino Health, our marketing team helped advance the organization’s growth strategy and strengthen its ability to compete above its weight in a challenging healthcare market. We launched Togethering Heals, a new brand strategy built on the truth that people are healthier together, while scaling precision marketing, digital engagement and attribution. The work contributed to a 60% increase in unaided awareness and measurable new-patient growth. Most importantly, it gave a community-rooted health system a clearer, more human and differentiated way to compete, grow and extend its excellence to a broader audience.

Amber Minson, Chief Marketing Officer for Sleep Number, leads integrated marketing strategy, driving sustained demand generation, enhancing brand visibility and delivering media efficiency. Most recently, Minson served as CMO of Casper Sleep Inc. under a contract agreement. From 2022 to 2024, she served as Chief Revenue Officer at Blue Apron. She also built and scaled high-performance marketing organizations for companies including Intuit, Alibaba, Home Shopping Network (HSN) and Comcast NBCUniversal.

Since stepping into the CMO role in May 2025, my team rebuilt Sleep Number’s marketing engine to support the company’s broader turnaround. We modernized how the brand identifies, attracts and converts customers, shifting from feature‑heavy messaging to a clear, benefit‑led narrative centered on personalized comfort, value and durability as life changes. As a result, we are seeing stronger reach and brand awareness. We also launched Sleep Number’s first fully integrated brand campaign in several years, “To a Good Life’s Sleep,” marking a pivotal moment in the brand’s evolution and providing a cohesive platform across brand, product and digital experiences.

Carol Carpenter is CMO at Cohesity. A seasoned leader with CMO, GM & CEO experience at both large enterprises and high-growth companies, she has built, scaled and transformed marketing organizations at VMware, Google Cloud, Trend Micro & more. Carol mentors emerging leaders through the HBS Women’s Entrepreneurship Program and Monte Jade. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Following Cohesity’s acquisition of Veritas, Marketing drove progress across brand, demand generation, and operations. The team earned a Leader position in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Protection Platforms, with strong momentum against competitors, plus multiple Leader distinctions across Gartner’s vendor comparisons. The "Resilience Everywhere" campaign spanned customer stories, out-of-home, and digital channels, backed by dozens of field events. Social engagement and following grew significantly year-over-year, while demand generation delivered record lead volume and stronger sales contribution. The team also built lasting operational infrastructure and embedded AI across workflows, improving efficiency while stabilizing through organizational change.