From the Boardroom to the Classroom: What the Emerging Chief Marketing Officer Agenda Reveals About Future Marketer Readiness

Marketing education has long emphasized work and career readiness, but the meaning of readiness is changing as marketing work is reshaped by artificial intelligence, accountability pressures, shifting role boundaries, and machine-mediated branding and discovery. Although prior research has advanced conversations about employability, career readiness, experiential learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) integration, less attention has been given to how senior marketing leaders’ perceptions of these changes should inform readiness in marketing education. Addressing this gap, this article draws on 15 qualitative interviews with chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketing leaders, reinterpreting a broader thematic analysis through an education-facing lens. The study identifies four broad domains of future marketer readiness: AI-enabled marketing work readiness, strategic judgment and evidence-based decision readiness, marketing accountability readiness, and organizational and role navigation readiness. Two emerging issues are treated as forward-looking manifestations within these domains: hybrid human-AI team management, and AI-mediated discovery, encompassing generative engine optimization (GEO) and brand power in AI-mediated environments. This article’s contribution is translational rather than prescriptive: it treats executive insights as a profession-level signal for understanding marketing work today and how it may evolve, extending the workplace- and career-readiness literature and offering a conceptual framework to guide future research and curriculum reflection.