Simply Speaking: Why CMOs must be in the vanguard of the next era’s CEO army
For decades, leadership pipelines favoured finance, operations and engineering, while marketing remained peripheral to enterprise power. That equation is changing.
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For much of corporate history, the path to the corner office has been predictable. Outside of FMCG and luxury, CEOs typically emerged from finance, operations, or engineering functions associated with control, scale, and efficiency.
Marketing, by contrast, was often treated as an adjunct discipline deemed important, but not foundational to enterprise leadership.
That hierarchy is now breaking down. The next era of CEOs will not merely manage organisations but they will interpret culture, steer narrative, and lead in conditions of permanent disruption.
In this context, Chief Marketing Officers are increasingly well positioned to be at the vanguard of the next CEO cohort.
The reason is structural more than sentimental. Today’s CMOs sit at the intersection of growth, technology, data, brand, customer experience, and increasingly, trust. They are required to translate abstract strategy into lived reality across products, platforms, people, and partners.
In a world where value creation is as much perceptual as it is operational, this ability to align intent with experience is a critical and central leadership capability.
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Modern CEOs are operating in an environment defined by fragmented attention, accelerating technology cycles, geopolitical uncertainty and sceptical stakeholders.
Growth is harder to generate, customer loyalty harder to sustain, and legitimacy harder to earn.
CMOs, by virtue of their role, are trained to navigate these tensions. They understand how narratives move markets, how culture shapes consumption, and how trust is built or eroded over time. Increasingly, they also carry responsibility for revenue outcomes, digital transformation and enterprise wide customer strategy , once the preserve of other functions.
This is why The Marketing Academy’s decision to evolve its Fellowship from regional cohorts into a truly Global Program is so timely and so noteworthy.
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By creating a board level fellowship exclusively for CMOs, designed to prepare them for CEO and broader C-suite roles, the Academy is actively shaping the leadership pipeline for the next decade and beyond.
The first 2026 Global Fellowship cohort brings together CMOs and growth leaders from across continents, industries, and cultural contexts.
Leadership today cannot be parochial. CEOs must operate across borders, regulatory regimes, and cultural frames simultaneously. A fellowship that enables leaders to learn together across industries, borders, and lived realities, mirrors the world they are being prepared to lead.
Equally significant is the ecosystem supporting the programme. With the storied McKinsey & Company as the knowledge partner and Salesforce, The Brandtech Group, TikTok, and Omnicom on board, the Fellowship situates marketing leadership at the heart of technology, data, and enterprise transformation.
The emphasis, as articulated by McKinsey, on technology’s impact and the leadership mindset required to navigate it, reflects a clear understanding namely that future CEOs must be fluent not only in systems and numbers, but in change itself.
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The emergence of CMOs as credible CEO candidates is not about priority for one function over others. It is about recognising that leadership today is about sense making beyond execution. By formalising, globalising, and professionalising the pathway from CMO to CEO, The Marketing Academy is acknowledging a fundamental shift in what leadership now demands.
The first Global Fellowship cohort is therefore more than a milestone for marketing. It is a signal of where the next generation of CEOs is likely to come from and what capabilities the future of leadership will require.
I am eagerly looking forward to the year of learning.
Shubhranshu Singh, experienced CMO across verticals, thought leader and strategist has been chosen as one of two Marketers from India for the first ever global cohort of The Marketing Academy, London. He writes about the vision behind it all.
