I have a big vision, Sarah.
Uh, I'm excited spoiler alert.
Before it's all said and done,
I would love for my team to win an Oscar.
I want to bring these stories to life
in a way that no B2B tech marketer ever has done it before.
and welcome to Connections where we hear
from some of the most innovative leaders in marketing.
I'm here in Austin, Texas,
speaking with Carla Pineyro Sublett, the CMO of IBM.
How she got here might surprise you.
It included in her words, a midlife crisis
and dragging her family to the ends of the earth
in search of, you guessed it, connection.
It is gorgeous, I love it.
And I have a little something for you
for our first 3D meeting.
Oh my God, got to get ready.
Welcome to Austin right here.
You're looking good.
Do I look good?
Lets start at the beginning, where did you grow up?
I have to admit I have a little bit of an identity crisis.
So I was born in Montreal to Uruguayan parents,
raised in Dallas, and Austin is the place
So I'm a little bit French Canadian
a little bit South American, a lot Texan.
(Carla and Sarah chuckle)
Where does you entrepreneurial spirit come from?
I was born from a family of entrepreneurs.
My parents moved to the States to start a clothing line
and I was always surrounded by entrepreneurs.
And when I was 14, 15 years old
my parents lost my college fund in the stock market crash.
And it became very apparent to me
that I needed to help out.
And I was lifeguarding at the time
and the pool where I was lifeguarding
didn't have swim lessons.
So, I finally decided to start a swim lesson business
and it exploded and I called it Super Fish and-
And that actually paid for the first year of my college.
Like what have you not done?
I have to tell you, I love your website.
It's so inspiring.
Oh, gosh.
Yeah, that's my midlife crisis.
And I actually did not anticipate-
You're 20 there's no time for midlife-
When I left my prior job, I was feeling very disconnected
from my kids and my husband and the people that I loved.
And I had just been at a global seminar
with the Aspen Institute.
And we had been learning about Nelson Mandela
and Desmond Tutu's philosophy around Ubuntu.
you are me, I am you, we are connected humanity.
And it was all about connection.
And I was starved for connection.
And I came home from that seminar with world leaders
and said to my kids and my husband,
we've got to do something differently.
See, you are safety inspector in the park too.
(Sarah and Carla chuckle)
We've got to do something differently.
And I said, I want to un-enroll the kids from school
and reconnect to you, my husband, and the kids
And to my husband's credit, he did it.
And we traveled the world.
And the way we let people know that we were alive and okay
was uploading to this blog once a week.
And so, that's Finding Ubuntu.
I saw massive personality changes in all of us.
The other big takeaway was
just being able to see my kids and my husband
connect with people from completely different backgrounds.
It was just really special to see that,
it completely changed my values.
I think the other thing I realized, Sarah,
is you don't have to make a big bold move
and un-enroll your kids and travel all over the world
You can throw your phone in a drawer for an afternoon
and camp in the backyard.
Whenever we're feeling disconnected
that's kind of my first move.
I love that, just like, okay, phones, iPads.
I do it with my team too.
So when I noticed that the eyes are starting to glaze over
and folks are starting to get burned out,
we've moved to meeting-free Wednesdays.
And I've strongly encouraged them to dump devices
so that they have time to think and do work
And I've been guilty of it too.
I text you instead of actually picking up the phone
and calling you and hearing your voice, Sarah.
This is the first time we're meeting in person
which is really special to me.
It requires being intentional.
I think it also requires some vulnerability.
Do you think you need to be vulnerable
when you're exploring connection?
Actually, that's such a good question
because that's actually the biggest key
to establishing connection, is vulnerability.
It's actually a lot more fun
to move through the world that way and have no pretense.
So, it's been an adventure.
I also was doing soul searching about my values
and what was important to me.
And part of how I figured that out
is I went on 100 professional dates.
I called it forking, I fake worked.
And I basically would take every call,
go on every meeting, every interview.
And it was through that process
that I actually met our Arvind, CEO.
And he actually offered for me to come to IBM that year.
But for whatever reason, I took another job.
But it always kind of sat in the back of my mind,
like, did I make a mistake?
And I loved the other job.
And I feel like I did exactly
what I was intended to do there.
And when that work was done, miraculously my phone rang
and it was Arvind, and my predecessor, Michelle.
asking me if I come as the CMO.
And so, here I am, getting to shepherd
one of the most iconic brands in the world back to growth.
What's your vision for this iconic brand, IBM?
What we've done over the last 110 years is remarkable.
Our research team has won five Nobel prizes.
We've invented everything from the first personal computer
to now we have an actual quantum computer.
But I feel like the world doesn't quite get it.
And I was talking to a friend of mine and she said,
I mistakenly referred to us as a tech company,
and she said, "Oh, Carla, you don't work for a tech company.
You work for the founder of the industry."
And that just gave me chills all over my body.
And so for me, my vision is to really bring that to life
I have a big vision, Sarah.
Uh, I'm excited spoiler alert.
Before it's all said and done,
I would love for my team to win an Oscar.
I want to bring these stories to life
in a way that no B2B tech marketer ever has done it before.
And I want to inspire the next generation
of really creative innovators
and engineers and developers around the globe.
I just got chills when you said that.
That's such beginner's mind
and such like innovative thinking.
Like we're going to win an Oscar.
But that's what you do as a visionary CMO.
And you have a history at IBM of doing incredible branding.
And what's your thoughts on reinventing the brand?
One of the things that I did not fully appreciate
until I got to the company,
was the luminaries and design that we've worked with.
And then our architecture; Eams, Mies van der Rohe,
The company's heritage and design is really spectacular.
So this isn't a rip and replace.
There's a lot of goodness here to mine.
But for me, it's about really modernizing this company
and distilling down for the world
what it is that we do, who we are, what we do it for
and bringing that to life in a way that's so compelling
that people want to binge watch it.
How are you going to do that?
Are you going to like get movie crews?
Like what are you going to do?
I mean, that's what I'm contemplating.
But also in a way that has technical substance.
So I envision that if somebody wants
to learn about artificial intelligence,
they could watch a whole series about it with episodes
and go deep in the technology and really learn it.
Our kids are showing us that people learn differently too.
I'm sure you've seen this,
but my kids watch YouTube to figure out how to do something.
So what if we just employed those same channels
to actually teach people about technology.
At Salesforce, we pride ourselves
in having a single source of truth.
How do you connect with different departments within IBM,
like deal with different silos of data?
I was part of the team at Dell
that helped roll out Salesforce to our sales organization.
And now, we are at IBM doing the same exact thing.
And so, that's one way that we can get
one source of the truth and all get on the same page
in terms of the tools that we're using.
But the other thing that I observed when I came to IBM,
and it's so common in big B2B tech organizations,
is we have silos by line of business.
And we basically have 40 marketing organizations at IBM
which I actually want to build
into one marketing organization
that works together to move the market.
That's a big change that we're thinking about doing
and your tools actually underpin a big part of that.
I also know that you're an advocate
for women and leadership.
you've been a big part of the conference here.
Share that with us, please.
I've been Chair of the board for the last several years.
A lot people elevated me along the way,
and I love elevating others.
And the conference is just a really remarkable way
And when was the first time that you saw leaders
My mom was a working mom, Latina.
She was a manager of a furniture showroom
surrounded by men, and five feet tall,
So I think that's the very first time.
I feel very strong responsibility to pay that forward.
As an immigrant, I feel like I won
a lottery ticket being here.
