How I got here: Meagen Eisenberg of Lacework on how marketers thrive at every level

Meagen Eisenberg is Lacework‘s chief marketing officer, overseeing marketing and growth initiatives. The marketing leader also holds board positions at G2 and WorkStep, and guides companies such as Loom, Styra, productboard, Gretel.ai, Klue, Demostack, and Redpanda Data. Additionally, she is a limited partner at Operator Collective, an investment firm focused on diversity and strategic investments. 

One thing that worries me about the future of my profession is:

 I don’t worry about the future of marketing, but I do invest a lot in staying ahead of the curve of technology advancements as they evolve how marketers work. I always encourage the tech enthusiasts on my teams to explore ways we might be more efficient, and more creative and ultimately drive more value for the business.

One recent example is the Lacework marketing team took a day to run a GenAI hackathon–all in a private environment, of course, so our data stays inside Lacework just like the Lacework platform always keeps its customers’ data inside their environment–to identify ways we could automate tasks or creative new internal campaigns we could launch to enable sellers–any idea that could leverage the tech to make us better. Our CEO, Jay Parikh, joined us to help judge and we’ve already started rolling out the winning project.

A tool or a piece of software I cannot live without is: 

Navan – travel and expense software. Not having to deal with receipts for expense management is a huge time saver, and in my job I need to travel a lot to visit with customers, prospects, partners, and employees. 

The most underrated skill in my profession is:  

Writing.

One way I stay creative and motivated is:

Travel – I feel so energized and inspired when I travel. It helps me think differently and generates new ways of looking at work and how to interact and communicate to capture attention. 

Someone who has helped me be successful in my career is:

Indra Nooyi – former CEO of PepsiCo. She was a Yale SOM graduate and an amazing role model for working mothers. I learned a lot from her on how she had a career and was a mother to two amazing daughters.

One piece of advice I would give other people in my profession is:

Learn how to get comfortable with well-intentioned conflict and how to give and receive feedback. A lot of marketers, both junior and up to CMOs, want to say “yes” to every ask to avoid conflict. Marketers are do-ers and inherently want to support sales, leadership, engineering, and all the other functions. But pushing back and giving feedback that drives a better result is your job also. I learned working closely with the CRO during my first CMO gig that the push-and-pull that comes from those critical conversations forges a stronger relationship, as well as a better business output. The sooner you can get comfortable with the kind of conflict that is much more natural and accepted in a sales org, the more value and direction you can give the business as a marketing leader. 

Isis Simpson-Mersha is a conference producer/ reporter for Ragan. Follow her on LinkedIn.