Operational Expertise Transforming Marketing Leadership

Discussion with Kerri M. Roberts

With over 20 years of experience in HR and operations, Kerri Roberts has led teams across healthcare, education, finance, insurance, and M&A before founding Salt & Light Advisors. Today, she helps small and mid-sized businesses strengthen people operations through fractional COO and CHRO services, reducing turnover and building high-performing teams. Recognized nationally as an Elite Woman and Hot 100 leader, and locally as a Top 20 Under 40 honoree. In this article, she shares how her operational foundation is reshaping the way she builds culture, communicates brand identity, and drives marketing strategy with measurable impact.

Operational Insight Driving Effective Marketing Leadership

Most CMO's rise through creative or brand pathways. Roberts took a different route, one that began in operations, where she oversaw sales, HR, finance, marketing, and support. That background gave her a clear understanding of how revenue is generated and how different functions connect, a perspective that reshaped her approach to marketing.

She explains that many marketing leaders lack a deep grasp of financial realities: “Most of them don't necessarily have a really good understanding of the P&L and operating expenses”. Having managed P&L as COO, Roberts carried into her CMO role an expectation of measurable ROI on every marketing initiative. This meant treating marketing not as a standalone function, but as a complementary force designed to accelerate sales and strengthen service.

This operational grounding also allowed Roberts to see marketing through a lens of accountability. By aligning campaigns with actual sales cycles and service realities, she positioned marketing spend not as a cost center but as a direct contributor to revenue generation. “Marketing truly was supplemental to bring people in the door”, she reflects, underscoring the value of connecting creative campaigns to core business functions. The lesson is clear: marketing divorced from operational insight risks being ineffective. Leaders who understand the mechanics of sales and service can build marketing strategies that resonate with customers while reinforcing the company’s financial health.

Building Brand Identity Through Culture and Engagement

For Roberts, brand identity is inseparable from employee experience. Too often, she argues, companies mistake perks or surface-level initiatives for culture, failing to connect with the realities of employee life. “If you're just having parties or giving away free shirts, but the employees are extremely stressed, then they're not going to feel valued or known or understood”.

Her HR and operations background gave her visibility into the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to letting go. That vantage point helped her recognize that authentic culture is not built on slogans but on structural practices that reduce stress and enable employees to thrive. Leaders who overlook this risk coming across as tone-deaf, undermining both employee engagement and external brand promises.

Roberts highlights the importance of ensuring that leaders embody stated values: “If you've got a leadership team that feels kind of above the law or that those things don't apply to them, employees are going to absolutely watch that example”. Integrating values into hiring, onboarding, performance management, and even recognition or discipline ensures that culture is not just aspirational but operationalized.

This alignment is not just an HR issue, it is a brand issue. Customers increasingly expect companies to walk the talk. When employees see cultural disconnects, disengagement follows, and customers eventually notice. Bridging that gap requires leaders to translate values into daily practice, turning brand identity into something employees live, not just something customers see.

Detecting and Fixing Workplace Cultural Misalignment

Roberts has observed that discontent, low engagement, or declining satisfaction are leading indicators of cultural misalignment. Left unaddressed, they erode trust internally and credibility externally. Marketing, she argues, has a role in solving this, not by spinning narratives but by creating transparent communication channels.

She points to practices like town halls and engagement surveys, but stresses that follow-through is critical: “So many times organizations will run those surveys and then do nothing with the data. And so that further breaches the trust with the employee population”. Leaders who collect feedback without acting on it deepen cynicism, creating what she calls a “cavern in between leadership and the employees”.

Her consulting work illustrates the payoff of listening. By conducting HR audits, implementing surveys, and then translating insights into action plans, Roberts has seen organizations achieve measurable gains: “I've seen organizations have an uptick of up to 16% in certain areas in one year just by following that process”.

This reinforces a key principle: culture must be managed with the same rigor as finances. Gathering and acting on employee input creates trust, which in turn strengthens the brand promise. Without this alignment, external messaging risks collapsing under the weight of internal reality.

Eliminating Friction Between Marketing and Operations

One of the most overlooked challenges in fast-growing companies is the friction that arises when marketing initiatives are disconnected from sales and service teams. Roberts has seen this firsthand: “Marketing runs a campaign and then the salesperson gets a call and says, ‘Hey, I got this email. Tell me more.’ But if that person wasn’t educated on that, then sales and service are going to have frustration”.

The solution, she argues, is proactive alignment. In her leadership roles, an internal rollout preceded every marketing launch . Service and support teams received the first communication, complete with background articles and time to prepare before the public launch. This ensured they felt equipped to respond, reducing conflict and building internal trust.

She emphasizes the need for structured forums, such as quarterly alignment meetings, where marketing can listen to the frontline. “From a service perspective, what are the areas that are causing friction? And so then we can tailor our language around that”, Roberts reflects. This not only prevents misalignment , but transforms marketing into a partner that amplifies operational insights.

The takeaway is that marketing cannot succeed in isolation. Integrating feedback loops between marketing and frontline operations reduces friction, improves customer experience, and reinforces the organization’s credibility.

Behavioral Tools for Team Alignment

Roberts has also leveraged behavioral frameworks like DISC, Enneagram, and StrengthsFinder to build bridges between teams. While she doesn’t endorse one tool over another, she stresses their value for fostering mutual understanding. “A lot of times it's not personal, it's personality or behavior”.

She notes that when teams take the time to explore these frameworks together, they discover the reasons behind different working styles. This recognition shifts perceptions, reducing conflict and building trust. Employees who feel understood become more open and collaborative.

The impact extends beyond the individual to the organization as a whole. Roberts describes it as a ripple effect: “Trust starts at the self level first. And so, when we can go through those behavioral assessments, understand ourselves better, then it ripples all the way out to society in general for us to be able to respect one another for our differences”.

Tools that build self-awareness and empathy are not ‘soft’, they are foundational for operational efficiency and cultural resilience. Investing in them helps create high-performing teams that can bridge divides between departments like operations and marketing.

Employee Motivation in the Modern Workforce

Another myth Roberts challenges is the perception that younger employees lack work ethic. She observes: “Right now specifically I'm seeing the more seasoned generations looking at younger generations and thinking they don't want to work and that is not true”. Instead, she sees younger generations as purpose-driven. “I see younger generations really being purpose driven, needing to be attached to the why, making sure that they are making an impact in this world and inside of an organization”. They want to understand why their work matters, how it connects to the organization’s goals, and what impact it has beyond the day-to-day. 

Without that clarity, their energy can appear muted, but Roberts insists this is not a lack of discipline. It is a demand for alignment between values and work. Executives who dismiss this risk missing out on the enthusiasm and innovation that younger employees bring when they are truly connected to the mission.

She also stresses that leaders must adapt their management style to these expectations. “If that's missing, then yes, they're not going to have passion in their work, but it's not because they're lazy and it's not because they don't want to work”. Rather than assuming traditional rewards are enough, executives should focus on creating meaning through transparent communication and visible impact. Aligning roles with broader organizational purpose not only increases engagement but also builds resilience. By intentionally articulating the ‘why,’ leaders unlock deeper motivation, transforming generational differences into a competitive advantage.

Customer Engagement Beyond Product Push

Roberts also highlights how many companies mismanage customer relationships by focusing too much on pushing their products instead of solving client problems. She notes: “So often we are trying to sell something instead of understanding what a client is needing. So we are explaining what our product can do or what our service can do instead of thinking about what the customer or the client needs”.

She reframes this through a storytelling lens where the customer is the hero. “The client or the customer is the hero. They are the main characters. We're helping them by providing our product or our service”. Rather than spotlighting the company, effective marketing demonstrates how products or services enable customers to achieve their goals. This shift from self-promotion to genuine problem-solving creates authenticity and trust. For executives, the insight is clear: sustainable growth requires treating customers as partners rather than targets.

Key Takeaways for Executive Leaders

Roberts concludes with three key takeaways for executive leaders navigating across functions:

• Strategy and data transcend roles: At the executive level, whether in operations or marketing, leaders must prioritize strategy, global impact, and data-driven decision-making. Passion alone is not enough.
• Elevate people as a strategic function: HR and people operations must be part of the executive agenda, not buried in middle management. Leaders who undervalue this risk undermining their entire strategy.
• Finance is non-negotiable: Every executive must understand P&L and OPEX. Roberts emphasizes the importance of taking time to learn these fundamentals through classes, mentors, or colleagues, as doing so builds confidence and earns respect across the leadership team.

For Roberts, the shift from COO to CMO was not about abandoning operations, but about carrying its discipline into marketing. Her journey underscores a truth that applies to all executives: credibility rests on the ability to bridge culture, strategy, and brand, while never losing sight of the numbers.

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