Last week, I was in Austin for South by Southwest. Between client meetings and reconnecting with peers, I had the chance to do something I find increasingly valuable, which is to step into conversations about talent and the future of work that are happening well outside my usual lane of talent and HR.
I’ve talked before about what it means to operate at the edge of work, and part of that is about direction. Most of us are conditioned to look north and south: up toward leadership, down toward our teams, along the vertical axis of our own function and career path. And that still matters.
But being at the edge means also looking east and west, aka across disciplines, industries, and professions that are grappling with the same forces we are, just from a different angle. Some of the most important signals about where work is heading don’t come from inside your own lane.
They come from watching how other adjacent teams/functions/professions are adapting, what they’re figuring out, and what you can bring back. This exploring is how you stay sharp, see around corners, and bring something genuinely useful back to the people you serve.
For me, this meant moderating a panel on The Future of Marketing Careers, featuring Debbie Woloshin (CMO, Stitch Fix), Kimberly Storin (CMO, Zoom), and Rohan Gupta (Partner, Deloitte Consulting)
I am finding more and more conversations about talent and skills outside of my domain of HR and Talent. I think it’s important to show up in those rooms. Hearing how people outside of HR think about these challenges keeps me at the edge, forces me to see things differently, and hopefully brings a perspective that’s useful to them too.
How marketing itself is changing: Kim shared a fascinating data point: 30% (up to 50% now) of Zoom’s searches are now starting in large language models (Ex: Chat GPT) rather than Google. That shift has given rise to a whole new discipline, answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) and what LLMs cite isn’t brand content or product pages. It’s press releases, LinkedIn posts, Reddit threads, and individual thought leadership. LinkedIn, Kim noted, is currently the number one cited source for large models. As a result of this, Kim put together a cross-functional team, PR, content, SEO, web, etc, all focused together on managing visibility in language models. What used to be one team’s job became everyone’s job.
How the marketing function is changing: Debbie echoed this at Stitch Fix, whose marketing team has over 40+ use cases for how they use AI, including specific steps for what is automated, what is human and what requires both. As AI took on more of the execution work, her team found themselves moving outward into the organization, collaborating with more stakeholders to tackle different or new bodies of work, and thinking from the perspective of the whole business rather than just their slice of it. Kim framed the emerging role as “marketers are becoming orchestrators,” aka people who know how to direct, coordinate, and make judgment calls across a much more complex and interconnected set of tools, teams, and channels.
How marketing careers are changing: Which brings it back to the individual. Kim offered a lens I found genuinely useful: at some point in your career, you need to decide whether you want to go deep as a specialist (I-shaped), broad with a core specialty (T-shaped), or build expertise across multiple areas (M-shaped). AI doesn’t change which path is right for you, but it dramatically expands what you can execute from any of them.
Navigating Your Career in a Changing World of Work
I have my own thoughts and ideas about how to navigate a career in these times, but I wanted to get those of my panelists. One of my favorite moments came when I asked each panelist to go back. If you were 22 today, stepping into a marketing career in this environment, one where the old models for building a career are losing their relevance faster than new ones are taking shape, and what would you actually do? What would you tell the version of yourself that hadn’t figured it out yet?
Debbie offered three filters worth returning to throughout your career:
- get clear on what genuinely sparks your intellectual curiosity,
- be honest about where you’re strong and where you still need to grow,
- know the kind of impact you want to have.
She also made the case for mental agility and humility, and to note fear being wrong, as the most important traits anyone can cultivate right now In a world changing this fast, the ability to adapt matters more than always having the right answer.
Kim was more direct. When everyone has access to the same AI tools and millions of optimized resumes are flooding every job opening, what differentiates you is no longer the document it’s your social capital. The relationships, trust, and reputation you’ve built over time are the things that can’t be automated or replicated. Your tech stack can be copied. Who speaks up for you when you’re not in the room cannot. And she was specific about the kind of relationships that matter most: not just mentors, but sponsors. Mentors give you guidance. Sponsors give you access. While Kim still believes in the value of mentors, if you’re trying to optimize for opportunities and resources, you are going to need people in positions of power and influence to open those doors
Finally, Rohan closed with the relevant and enduring idea the traits that make someone extraordinary as a marketing (and I would argue, most functions) haven’t changed much in twenty years: high emotional intelligence, sound judgment, technical fluency, experience. What’s changed is how they show up. Technical fluency now includes AI. Judgment now includes knowing when not to use it.
The throughline in their comments (as well as my own personal experience) comes back to curiosity and discernment. Whether you’re trying to be a great marketer today or figure out how to navigate your career, those two qualities kept showing up as ones you want to lean into as a human.