Shoe Brands Are Leading the Charge in Hiring Female Chief Marketing Officers

As female representation in the footwear C-suite stagnates, women are making strides in at least one key role: chief marketing officer.

Since June, several shoe brands and retailers — including Kizik, Journeys, Saucony and DSW — have named women to the role of CMO. This new class of executives has joined a growing list of other top female marketers in the shoe industry, including Allbirds’ Kelly Olmstead, Schuh’s Stephanie Legg, Nike’s Nicole Graham, Manolo Blahnik’s Jodie Blake, Timberland’s Maisie Willoughby and more.

According to data from executive search firm Kirk Palmer Associates, 55 percent of CMO appointments in the footwear industry this year so far have been women, which represents a lift from the prior year when 47 percent of shoe CMOs hired were women. At the time, that total trailed behind the 50 percent average of female CMOs hired to Fortune 500 companies in 2023.

“I’m surprised it took this long,” said Kelly Olmstead, who has served as Allbirds’ CMO since December. “Women have amazing commercial impact. I think having diversity of leadership matters in making good business decisions.”

When it comes to CMO appointments, the candidate pool in the retail and consumer sectors is predominantly female, explained Dana Levine, a partner at executive search firm Kirk Palmer Associates who specializes in fashion, retail and consumer experience brands. But in footwear specifically, the CMO role was historically held by men — until recently.

“There have also been a few case study examples of women reinventing the footwear category in recent years,” Levine said. “Female marketing leaders were at the helm during Hoka’s key period of growth, Ugg’s recent brand transformation — and during the current era at Timberland. Footwear companies are taking note.”

Hiring from outside the industry

The surge in female CMOs in the shoe industry may also be a result of brands looking outside their own industry when it comes to selecting their new top marketers.

For example, Saucony’s new CMO Joy Allen-Altimare joined the running brand in June with nearly 25 years of marketing leadership experience, most recently serving as the chief revenue officer of North America for Havas Media Network.

Though new to the footwear industry in a professional sense (she used to be an endurance runner), the executive said she sees her non-footwear-specific background as a strength instead of a weakness.

“I’m new to this category, so I have fresh eyes,” Allen-Altimare told FN in a recent interview. “When we think about what’s happening in the category right now, so many people are being introduced to running, so I can understand where they’re coming from, understanding what they need to hear, both from a functional perspective and from an emotional perspective that I think will really help Saucony tell better stories, greater stories.”

Kirk Palmer Associates found that of the 13 female footwear CMOs appointed from 2023 to 2024, close to 70 percent were externally hired from other industries. Twenty three percent were internal promotions and just one person in the group was hired from another shoe company.

“The footwear industry has historically been a swirl of familiar faces, and now we are seeing footwear companies seek outside executives from neighboring industries with new perspectives, proven growth experience, and track records of leading brand transformations and strategic growth,” Levine said. “Many of those leaders happen to be female.”

When Ariat CMO Liz Bradley joined the Western brand close to 15 years ago to head up marketing, she was also new to working within the footwear industry. However, she told FN she still felt fully equipped to understand and speak to the brand’s consumers.

“I never felt like I lacked the experience to do my job,” said Bradley, whose title changed to CMO in December when Ariat officially adopted C-suite titles across the board. “And I would imagine other CMOs feel the same way coming in, because it’s really about your trade and less about the specific product.”

Elizabeth Drori, who served as Sperry’s CMO until she joined Kizik in the same role in July, also underwent a slight reset when she left the heritage brand for the burgeoning hands-free footwear brand.

“The challenge at Sperry was how do you revive a legacy or heritage brand? [Kizik] is about opening people’s minds to new possibilities and a different and new category in footwear,” Drori said. “So it was a exciting and interesting opportunity for me.”

Having now been a CMO of two major shoe companies, Drori also recognizes the importance of having women in leadership oles across the industry.

“With more women in the C-Suite becoming normalized for younger generations, it creates a flywheel that tracks and grows leaders across genders,” Drori said. “The more representation, the more we’re setting up future generations for leadership and for success.”