Steve Olenski
The CMO Whisperer
The CMO Whisperer, hosted by former Forbes writer Steve Olenski, is a curated executive platform and marketing leadership podcast where CMOs, brand leaders, and senior operators share candid insights on leadership, brand strategy, and growth. Spanning business, sports, and media, it goes beyond marketing to reveal how top leaders make decisions and perform at the highest levels.
Where to listen?
Podcasts in the app Replaio Radio Coming soonPodcasts are coming to the app soon. Install now and be the first to see a whole new take on podcasts
Episodes
Advertising Can Save Lives - Kris Johns 10.07.2026 28:07
My guest today is Kris Johns, founder and CEO of AdGood, and somebody whose career sits right at the intersection of innovation, media, and impact. Kris has spent more than 15 years helping shape the streaming and ad tech world, building platforms and businesses that transformed how audiences discover content and how companies create growth. He helped scale AdPool into one of the world's largest C...
Why Rebrands Actually Fail - James Maddison 07.07.2026 32:00
My guest today is James Maddison, CMO at blockchain.com, and this is one of those stories where the path to the top doesn't exactly follow the neat little roadmap that career counselors hand you in school. James has worn a lot of hats on the way. Journalism, entrepreneurship, brand building, marketing leadership, and figuring out how to connect storytelling with growth in industries that move fast...
AI Won't Replace Leaders - Barry O’Reilly 03.07.2026 31:26
My guest today is Barry O'Reilly, an entrepreneur, executive advisor, and bestselling author who spends his time helping leaders rethink how organizations actually work in a world that seems to reinvent itself every five minutes. He's the co-founder of Nobody Studios, a global top 10 AI venture studio with a pretty ambitious goal of building 100 companies in five years. He's also the author of Le...
CMOs Should Think Bigger - Bruce Hershey 30.06.2026 27:44
My guest today is Bruce Hershey, co-founder and partner of the CMO Whisperer Advisory and someone I've known for at least 15 years. He's a brother. He's a mentor. He's a friend. He's a confidant. He's everything. He's also one of those rare leaders who has sat in just about every seat that matters. He's a former global CMO of the Year, a senior executive, operator, entrepreneur, and business build...
The Future Of Advertising - Dr. Mark Grether 19.06.2026 23:00
My guest today is Mark Grether, SVP and General Manager of PayPal Ads. Mark has helped shape some of the biggest shifts in modern advertising, from co-founding Xaxis at WPP to leading Sizmek, through its acquisition by Amazon, to helping grow Uber advertising into a billion-dollar global business with more than half a million advertisers. Today at PayPal, he's focused on building an advertising bu...
Why People Really Quit - Bonnie Low-Kramen 16.06.2026 33:18
My guest today is Bonnie Low-Kramen. Bonnie is one of the most respected voices in the field of executive and personal assistant training, having taught in 14 countries and worked with organizations, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, the Wharton School, and even the British Parliament. But what makes Bonnie's perspective so fascinating is where it all began. For 25 years, she served as the pers...
AI Won't Save Marketing - Marco Matos 12.06.2026 34:03
My guest today is Marco Matos, co-founder and CEO of Adora, where he leads the company's strategy and product vision for its AI-driven performance marketing platform. Marco works with enterprise brands to rethink how marketing organizations launch and optimize campaigns using AI, helping teams move faster and make smarter, more adaptive decisions. Over his 18-year career, Marco has led product de...
Attention Drives Modern Growth - Ryan Harwood 09.06.2026 22:26
Today's episode comes to you live from Possible, but not just any Possible location. We are at the VaynerX Yacht. Possible, where every hallway has a pitch and every table has a meeting. Today I'm joined by Ryan Harwood, CEO of Gallery Media Group and Tamara Group, two businesses sitting right at the center of where modern brands are trying to go next: Attention, relevance, culture and growth. Ry...
AI Changed Marketing Forever - Ryan Nelsen 05.06.2026 28:13
My guest today is Ryan Nelsen, Chief Marketing Officer at StackAdapt. If you're not familiar with StackAdapt, think of it as the engine behind a lot of the digital advertising you actually notice. Not the spray-and-pray banner ads that follow you around like a bad decision, but the smarter, more intentional kind. The kind that uses data, AI, and programmatic technology to put the right message in...
Marketing Must Drive Revenue - Paul Rossetti 02.06.2026 19:11
Welcome to another episode live from Possible, where the networking is nonstop, and everyone claims they have a future in marketing. Today I'm joined by Paul Rossetti, Chief Revenue Officer at Claritas, a company helping brands connect audience intelligence, engagement, measurement, and growth in a much smarter way. Paul operates where marketing ambition meets commercial reality. His focus is help...
Connection Creates Real Impact - Stacy Huston 29.05.2026 27:24
My guest today is Stacy Huston, CEO of sixdegrees.org, the social impact organization founded by Kevin Bacon, and a leader who has built her career around turning purpose into action. She also serves as executive producer of their top-ranked podcast, using storytelling as a catalyst to drive real-world impact. Beyond that, she leads Enterting Change, a social impact agency that brings together ent...
Optimize Humanity, Not Productivity - Anda Gansca 26.05.2026 28:18
My guest today is Anda Gansca, co-founder and CEO of Knotch. A Romanian-born entrepreneur who's built a fast-growing, profitable business, helping Fortune 1000 companies understand and improve the performance of their digital investments. She was raised in Transylvania, came out of a math and computer science background, then headed to Stanford, where she graduated in the top 1 % of her class with...
Know More About Customers - Ron Cohen 22.05.2026 15:53
Today I'm joined by Ron Cohen, SVP of Practice Leadership at Claritas, a company operating at the intersection of data, identity and AI, helping brands understand who their customers really are and how to reach them with more precision, relevance, and results. Ron spends his time focused on one of the biggest challenges in modern marketing, turning scattered signals into smart action. In a world f...
Relationships Still Drive Business - Heather McLeod 19.05.2026 30:50
My guest today is Heather McLeod, Chief Marketing Officer at BNI, someone who turns big global strategy into marketing that actually works. She's built her reputation on cutting through noise and focusing on what actually drives growth, scaling a community of more than 345,000 members across 70+ countries without losing what makes it human. At a time when everything is digital, automated, and AI-d...
What Brands Still Don’t Understand About Attention - Jimmy, Sequel, Jarrel Smith & Patrick Johnson Jr 15.05.2026 35:45
On today's episode, I welcome not one, not two, not even three, but four guests and not just any four. Four builders, four creators, four operators who are shaping culture, storytelling and business in very real ways. Jimmy Smith is the founder of Mind Matters and Amusement Park Entertainment, and one of those rare creatives who has operated at the intersection of culture, technology, and storytel...
Helping Entrepreneurs Start Confidently - Sameer Gulati 11.05.2026 29:59
My guest today is Sameer Gulati, Chief Product Officer and President of Zen Business and someone who spent more than two decades at the intersection of technology, financial services and real-world business building. Sameer isn't just thinking about products. He's thinking about outcomes. At Zen Business, he's helping re-imagine what it actually means to start and run a business today by bringing...
Attribution Beyond Vanity Metrics - Heather Roestamadji 08.05.2026 18:43
Today's episode comes live to you from POSSIBLE, where the ideas move fast, the conversations matter, and the coffee has no chance of surviving. I'm joined by Heather Roestamadji - Director of Growth Strategy at Claritas. Heather sits at the intersection of audience intelligence, AI-driven optimization, and multi-channel measurement, helping brands turn complexity into clarity and data into real b...
The Secret to Brand Loyalty - Warren Kornblum 05.05.2026 30:59
My guest today is Warren Kornblum. Warren works with brands that want more than attention. They want to matter. From founding one of Canada's fastest-growing agencies to serving as global CMO of Toys R Us, he's been in the rooms where growth, reinvention, and tough decisions actually happen. And what he's seen is simple. Brains don't fall apart because of strategy. They fall apart when they stop m...
How Relationships Change Everything - Nataly Kelly 01.05.2026 34:52
My guest today is Nataly Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at Zappi, where she's helping some of the world's biggest brands rethink how they understand consumers and make faster, smarter, data-driven decisions. Nataly is one of those rare marketing leaders who blends operator muscle with true global perspective. Before Zappi, she spent nearly a decade at HubSpot, where she played a key role in the co...
From Ring to Boardroom Pressure - Jonathan Hamm 24.04.2026 32:12
My guest today is Jonathan Hamm, a former number one-ranked amateur boxer in the United States and 2011 US national champion. Jonathan was one of the top super heavyweight fighters of his era and an Olympic team alternate heading into the 2012 London games. Before that, he was a standout college football player who earned a shot with the New Orleans Saints and later transitioned into mixed martial...
AI Won’t Replace Marketers - Kris Lande 17.04.2026 30:51
My guest today is Kris Lande. Kris is the Chief Marketing Officer at OutSystems, an AI-powered development platform where she leads global marketing, brand and growth. She's built her career at the intersection of product, marketing and community with the rare ability to take complex, highly technical ideas and turn them into stories that actually resonate not just with developers, but with busine...
Scaling Brands Across Cultures - Katherine Melchior Ray 10.04.2026 33:50
My guest today is Katherine Melchior Ray, one of the world's leading voices in global marketing. Her career includes senior leadership roles at some of the most iconic brands in the world, including Nike, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Hyatt. Today, Katherine is the president of Globe Ally Consulting and also teaches global marketing at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Fluent in French and Japanes...
Where Strategy Meets Reality - Christopher Wallace 03.04.2026 29:09
My guest today is Christopher Wallace. Christopher spends his days helping companies close one of the biggest gaps in business, the space between what gets set in the boardroom and what actually happens in front of the customer. He's the president of InnerView, where he works closely with sales organizations to make sure their go-to-market strategies don't just live in slide decks, but actually sh...
Why Brands Win or Lose - Scott Davis 27.03.2026 31:42
My guest today is Scott Davis, Chief Growth Officer at Prophet. Scott is one of the architects behind Prophet's evolution from a 35-person brand shop into a global growth consultancy with 500+ people across 16 offices, partnering with CEOs and CMOs who are serious about turning brands into a real growth engine. He leads Prophet's global go-to market, the CMO practice, and corporate marketing, sitt...
Where Brand Meets Revenue - Maxime Guirauton 20.03.2026 27:09
My guest today is Maxime Guirauton, Vice President and Global Head of Marketing and Sales Development at Visa, where he's helping power the engine behind Visa Direct and driving demand across markets, regions and time zones. Before Visa, Maxime was the CMO at Currencycloud, the cross-border payments platform that Visa acquired. And earlier in his career, he led major brand and growth work at Samsu...
Similar podcasts
Replaio is not a podcast publisher; show names, artwork and audio belong to their authors and are distributed through public RSS feeds.