Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone is a Vice President, Advisory for Gartner for Marketing Leaders, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She acts as Gartner's marketing headlining speaker.
Kristina helps CMOs with developing marketing strategy, communicating strategy to the rest of the C-suite, and helping translate strategic objectives to operational plans and goals. She also supports CMOs in leadership: change management and team culture, driving employee behavior change, improving cross-functional collaboration, upskilling marketing's strategic thinking, and in org design and operations: understanding org trends and structural tradeoffs or pros and cons, evaluating potential operating models, conducting org restructures and communicating about structural changes. And, she has a deep background in buyer and customer research, focused on understanding how people (B2B buyers and customers) buy and make decisions, especially in digitized environments. This includes topics like how buying groups conduct research, how online and offline experiences drive commercial outcomes, and how marketers can impact customer behavior. Kristina has helped to develop Gartner's research on Collaboration Drag, Catalytic Marketing, and Market Shaper CMOs.
Kristina has over a decade of experience in public speaking from webinars, conference presentation, workshop facilitation and designing and leading focus groups, to delivering conference keynotes to audiences of 2000+
Prior to joining Gartner, Ms. LaRocca-Cerrone was a marketing instructor in the private college sector. Her primary research experience includes focus group, IDI, and survey design targeted at understanding small-to-midsized businesses.
CEB, Executive Advisor, 5 years
PTC College, Curriculum Development Lead, 4 years
PTC College, Instructor - Business Administration, Marketing, Office Administration, 4 years
Marketing Organization and Talent
Customer Acquisition and Growth
Marketing Leadership and Management
Marketing Operations
Marketing Leadership and Strategy
B.A., Philosophy, University of Toronto
B.A., English, University of Toronto
Marketing Strategy: the process for developing a strategic plan, communicating strategic plans, aligning marketing budgets to strategy
Marketing Leadership: Change management, cross-functional and intra-marketing collaboration, upskilling marketers' strategic thinking; influencing marketing team culture; market shaper CMO
Demand Generation and Customer Acquisition: Approaches to customer journey mapping, demand generation best practices, collaboration between marketing and sales, lead management & personas
Catalytic Marketing: understanding the quality/ type of experience or hallmarks of experiences that drive stronger commercial outcomes across digital channels
Marketing Org and Operations: How marketing org structures drive efficiency and effectiveness, trends in org structure and operations