For years, B2B marketing has carried a reputation for being sales-led, structurally conservative and often male-dominated.

Indeed, Forrester’s 2025 B2B marketing survey found the vast majority (71%) of global B2B marketing decision-makers are men, with just 29% female. There are also far more male B2B marketing leaders in C-level positions globally than women (31% versus 21%).

But the issue is clearly not a lack of talent among female marketing leaders, and this is not reflective of the wider industry where the gender split is much more even. Exactly half of CMOs working at S&P 500 companies are women, for example, according to analysis published last week by advisory firm Spencer Stuart.

And our own State of B2B Marketing research finds the split between women and men at CMO and director level to be more evenly split too, although it’s worth noting our sample skews female.

While the experiences of female marketers in B2B will be many and varied, depending on sector, culture and brand, there are familiar challenges many have had to negotiate.

We have spoken to three female B2B CMOs about their rise to the top and the lessons they have learnt along the way in terms of communication, managing difficult situations and their approaches to leadership.

Intentional about communication

For Justine Frostad, CMO at advertising services firm Cognitiv, the need to articulate the benefits of marketing remains one of the defining challenges of B2B leadership, particularly for women.

“[Marketing’s] impact does not speak for itself unless you give it language,” she says. “That’s true in many fields, but in B2B marketing, it’s critical.”

She says it’s incumbent on all marketers – but especially women working in businesses where the value of marketing isn’t fully appreciated – to speak up and share success in a way the rest of the C-suite will understand.

“Visibility isn’t ego,” she adds. “It’s clarity. Clarity of what you bring to the table, clarity of what you’re driving for the business, and why it matters.”

Prachi Gore, CMO at work management platform Asana, describes learning the value of communication the hard way.

“I always believed the work would speak for itself,” she says. “And it does — to a point. But leadership is so much more than that. Especially as you get into senior roles. The work being there is not sufficient. You have to be intentional about communication, about bringing people along on the journey.”

Early in my career, I was told you have to be tough to be respected.

Justine Frostad, Cognitiv

For Erin Stuckert, chief marketing and strategy officer and North America at Oppizi, a martech firm specialising in offline marketing, visibility carried additional weight early in her career. At 27, she found herself the only woman at the executive table of a global B2B manufacturing company.

“I was young, I was a woman, and I looked about 23,” she recalls. “Marketing wasn’t respected. It was all about manufacturing efficiency and product. Marketing was just there to drive some leads.”

Rather than this diminishing her ambition, it sharpened it. “I appreciate that experience so much now,” she says. “It forced me to make my voice heard. I didn’t apologise for it.

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Frostad reflects on similar pressures to conform to a narrow model of authority. “Early in my career, I was told you have to be tough to be respected,” she says. “What I realised over time is that trying to be anything other than who you are makes you less effective, not more.”

That reframing became possible, she notes, because of culture. “Being in an environment that values individuality was game-changing. Individuality drives the best product building, but it also drives the best culture.”

Alignment and education

All three CMOs agree there is pressure to educate the rest of the business on the role of marketing and its impact. As a result this can make relationships with other areas of the business challenging.

Gore describes watching B2B marketing evolve from a sales-adjacent service into something far closer to consumer marketing in its influence over the buyer journey.

“When I first started in B2B marketing, it was events, printouts, sales material,” she says. “Over time, the buyer journey evolved so much that marketing now plays a role in education across the entire funnel. People research online, through content, through PR, now even through AI solutions. By the time they speak to sales, a lot has already happened.”

Yet that evolution, she notes, did not remove the need to constantly explain marketing’s value internally. “In the early days, there was a lot of education. Constantly providing context: why we’re doing this, what impact we expect, what the progress looks like. It was much more frequent communication than I’d ever done in consumer.”

It forced me to make my voice heard. I didn’t apologise for it.

Erin Stuckert, Opizzi

For Stuckert, the distinction between marketing leadership and business leadership is largely artificial.

Her role spans P&L oversight, regional growth and global marketing strategy, a dual remit that reflects where she believes the function must sit to have real influence.

“I hold a dual role right now,” she explains. “From a general manager perspective, I’m responsible for growing North America and selling to other businesses but also marketing strategy for our clients.”

Her path into that role was not about accumulation of marketing responsibility, but about proximity to growth decisions. “Marketing and sales working together fuels business growth and efficiency in such an important way,” she says. “That alignment is not theoretical. It’s operational.”

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Caregiving and the C-suite

Gore identifies caregiving as one of the biggest structural barriers to women’s progression. “Women often feel more ownership for childcare or ageing parents,” she says. “If I could snap my fingers and change one thing, it would be that dynamic.”

Stuckert speaks candidly about navigating senior leadership while parenting a child with complex medical needs.

“There were times I was sending client emails from hospital rooms,” she says. “There were times we were rushing to emergency surgery. And I had to ask myself, is this worth it? And the answer was yes, because I love what I do.”

You have to be intentional about communication, about bringing people along on the journey.

Prachi Gore, Asana

That was only possible, she says, because of leadership support. “I could say, ‘I’m in the hospital, I can’t join’, and there were no questions asked. Complete support,” she says, underlining the importance of culture.

That openness had ripple effects. “It made other people more comfortable talking about their own lives,” she says. “People realised we all have things.”

Frostad frames flexibility in explicitly commercial terms. “Flexibility isn’t just a perk,” she says. “It’s a performance strategy. Exceptional teams aren’t built on timesheets. They’re built on trust.”

Mentorship and sponsorship

Mentors and sponsors have been critical to the progression of these three CMOs, but they distinguish clearly between the two. Gore describes mentorship as helping her think long term, while sponsorship was beneficial in creating opportunities she could not have accessed alone.

“I had a general manager who pushed me into executive meetings,” she says. “He gave me a stage. That changed everything. I realised I had a champion who was rooting for me, who’s not my direct boss, but he’s in a room full of very influential people rooting for me.”

For Gore, this helped to build a positive perception of her outside her immediate team and across the wider organisation.

She adds: “He helped me to understand how to think about career journeys, how to think about the next thing, how to build my expertise. Earlier in my management career, the feedback was always to push further outside of my comfort zone and he helped me do that.”

Frostad is less interested in traditional mentorship models as she believes they can only take you so far. “Advice alone doesn’t move your career forward,” she says. “I’m more committed to apprenticeship, learning by proximity, by doing, by building alongside people who challenge you.”

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Stuckert echoes this emphasis on teams. “Building high-performing teams is the biggest thing I can do,” she says. “When you give people ownership, you create space to lead at a higher level.”

Gore frames ambition as problem-solving rather than title-chasing. “Focus on the problems that matter,” she advises. “Stretch into the bigger business challenges. Growth will follow.”

This is all the more important if marketers are keen to move into general management.

“The path from CMO to CEO is more available than it used to be. It’s no longer a jump reserved for just the CFO or COO,” she says. “My ambition is president, CEO. Marketing and sales alignment is business leadership.”

Frostad sees ambition in responsibility. She believes more junior marketers can learn from the experiences of senior leaders.

“You can look to people who really inspired you and who you wanted to emulate. You can also take the experiences that were less savoury and look at those as things to avoid,” she says.

Participating in organisations within the industry, like She Runs It or Our Third Place, which celebrate women’s leadership across a variety of firms and sectors, has also given her the opportunity to pass those lessons on.

“I feel a responsibility to pay it forward,” she says. “That excites me.”