There was no formal process connecting marketing to the company's three-year strategy and annual planning cycle.
I partnered with Executive Ops to build one — mapping exactly where marketing needed to show up across the year, so the team could prepare in advance instead of getting pulled in at the last minute.
The Problem
The Challenge
The three-year strategy (3YS) and three-year plan (3YP) are ultimately approved by the C-suite and presented to the board — high stakes, with a long list of cross-functional inputs feeding into a handful of executive milestones. But marketing had no visibility into that calendar.
We'd get a request for input with little warning, no sense of how it fit into the bigger picture, and no consistent way to know what "done" looked like for that ask.
What Changed
The Result
Executive Ops owned the overall process, but I brought Venmo's specific point of view into how it got built — and that mattered, since Venmo runs smaller, US-only, and leaner than the broader org. I helped shape the cadence so marketing had a clear map of the year: when strategic input was needed, when execution plans needed marketing's calendar and campaign moments folded in, and when final commitments had to be locked.
It killed the last-minute scrambles. Marketing got brought in earlier and started showing up as a strategic partner in the planning conversation — instead of an afterthought, or a line item to justify.
5
Annual Planning
Milestones Mapped
6
Cross-Functional
Partners Aligned
