In mid-2021 Jean English was appointed Chief Marketing Officer at Armis – as she put it, “the hottest cybersecurity startup in the world.”
Jean became head of global marketing – including strategy, product, field, demand generation, and corporate communications. She needed to get started building an A-list marketing team right away.
Jean’s mission in her new position at Armis was to build the scale to IPO, and for Marketing to be the engine of growth. In order to do that, she partnered with Dinna to put together a world-class marketing team.
As Jean explained, when coming in anywhere as a new CMO, it’s essential to ramp quickly, to find and be able to identify the very best A-team candidates. But without months and years to build, Time-to-value becomes a critical factor.
Jean and Dinna worked closely together over the second half of 2021 to build the team, eventually doubling Armis’ global marketing team. As Jean explains:
“Dinna was so great, she’s been one of my favorite people to work with. With Dinna, the Time-to-value was so amazing, and the quality of candidates that came in were so high.
That meant my ability to say: ‘I need X expertise with Y background and Z personality & cultural fit, and all those dimensions’ – along with the ‘what they know’ and ‘how they do it’ – was all perfectly in line with the requirements I had.
Being able to build a marketing team so quickly really was based on the quality of candidates presented. Some candidates I knew and had relationships with, and some I’d never met – but within minutes I was able to say “this is the right caliber of talent that needs to be at our table.”
In just 8 weeks we were able to fill more than 10 positions, including critical roles such as VP Strategic Marketing, SVP Demand Generation, Senior Director/Head of PR & Media Relations, Director of Brand Creative, and Senior Global Campaigns Manage – building an exceptional marketing team.
The company’s valuation has since increased by $1 billion in just 8 months, and Armis is anticipating an IPO in the next few years.
Jean concludes:
“Dinna plays a major role in bringing candidates along in the process. She builds and establishes great relationships early with candidates, which gives them the confidence, comfort and ease to feel great about the growth & trajectory of a company.
It also allows them to get to know the environment at that company, to quickly understand what the company’s mission is and where they can add value.
Her follow-up is amazing too: all the logistics of staying in touch, keeping things on track, keeping both candidates and company informed.
Dinna also has a very strong approach to having tough conversations. When she needs to have a direct conversation she has a fine, balanced combination of velvet glove and frankness.
It’s innate and hard to learn, but Dinna has it – it’s a unique quality she brings to the role with such professionalism.”