The Top 45 Demand Generation Mentors To Learn From And Work For - 2025
Overview
The knowledge we need to excel at our jobs is often locked in the minds of peers. At Sharebird, our mission is to make this knowledge accessible to everyone. Imagine succeeding with top mentors by your side.
The Demand Generation Mentor List showcases the top 45 demand generation mentors to learn from and work for to develop your career. Every one of these practitioners has contributed content that Sharebird users trust and value for their professional development.
Methodology
Sharebird's algorithm ranks demand generation contributors based on how helpful our users perceive their content to be. We do not handpick people. To be considered for this list, mentors need to be current demand generation practitioners and in a leadership role. We look at the following factors with Sharebird content: views, saves, and followers. We then apply a proprietary algorithm to calculate content credibility and helpfulness. Views show us content relevancy, saves show us content quality, and followers show us content credibility.
Sharebird does not accept payment to be included on this list, which allows us to maintain objectivity and independence. We update this list every year. For any questions about this list, please contact support@sharebird.com.
About Sharebird
Sharebird is where the top demand generation leaders share their expertise. Discover actionable insights and advice to tackle your toughest work challenges and unlock your full career potential.
In Alphabetical Order by Company:
Career Path Tip: As you advance in demand generation or any role, consistently question how you can contribute value. Dismiss the notion of 'that's not my job', and instead, examine each aspect of marketing. Focus on how your and your team's efforts can be effectively expanded across all marketing touchpoints. Success isn't about isolated tactics; it's about developing engaging interactions with prospects that lead to tangible results. To achieve this, adopt a comprehensive, ambitious approach.
Career Path Tip: The best career advice I ever received was to embrace being uncomfortable and to never pass up an opportunity to learn a new skill. The best marketers are well-rounded and know that the better you understand the customer, the product, and the business, the better you will be at your craft.
Career Path Tip: A former manager once shared this with me: "Be willing to give up your legos" (a metaphor from Molly Graham), which always stuck with me. As you progress in your career you need to recognize when to give up control and create space for others to step in—your success is amplified by the success of those around you. Not only does this foster scalability, allowing for others to grow, but it paves the way for you to evolve, take on fresh challenges, and unlock new opportunities in your own career.
Career Path Tip: By focusing on KPIs that matter to leadership while using supporting metrics to refine your strategy, you’ll build a strong foundation for demand generation success—and create impressive results to showcase on your resume.
Career Path Tip: I highly encourage individuals growing within the demand generation world to become an expert in their organization's MarTech stack and operational processes. Mastering the understanding of operations like lead routing, lead scoring, lead statuses and how each platform works together, allows you to craft a GTM strategy much more efficiently, get to market much faster and display yourself as a true expert/partner to sales. Befriend Marketing Operations and be curious!
Career Path Tip: Focus on tangible business outcomes. Develop expertise in a particular area you can do your best work -- and then connect that back to the clear impact to revenue and company growth across both you and your team.
Career Path Tip: A thriving demand generation career is about delivering measurable impact for your company, inspiring and empowering your team, and growing together. Commit to ongoing learning, embrace emerging trends, and align efforts to drive meaningful results for the business and others.
Career Path Tip: The best demand generation professionals do these two things with excellence. 1. Build extensive and strong cross-functional relationships; we are seldomly successful without the ability to deeply influence a variety of cross-functional players both inside and out of marketing. 2. Operate from a place of curiosity. Be curious about trends, data, conversion rates, tactics, channels, audience engagement, technology, etc. The best practices you uncover when you're curious will take you far.
Career Path Tip: As you consider your career journey, the company, manager, and team should push you to grow and learn just as much as you fit the business's needs. Interviews, career paths, and mentorships are a two-way street you should know and advocate for your worth and value.
Career Path Tip: If at all possible, and to quote a line from a song called Buy Dirt "do what you love but call it work". Find something you're passionate about and do that for work - it will make your career all that more satisfying.
Career Path Tip: You cannot drive growth for what you don't fully understand. Take the time to truly learn your business' metrics, the whole business, and you will see opportunities to drive growth in just about every aspect of your company. Prioritize and execute on the biggest gaps and opportunities. Developing the ability to take action on data is one of the greatest things you can do for your career.
Career Path Tip: Embrace the chaos, master the pivot, and pack some snacks. It's going to be a long ride. Marketing is like dating: listen more than you talk, always follow up, and don’t be afraid to swipe left on bad ideas.
Career Path Tip: Overall, the process for figuring out which metrics to hold demand generation accountable for requires a deep understanding of your company's goals, target audience, and channels. The metrics that matter most and drive growth and success vary by industry, company/market maturity and so on, so always review your company's business model and be flexible to adapt and change.
Career Path Tip: When first starting out or when you have a lean team, I've found starting with an account-based customer marketing approach is the best way to drive meaningful impact and quick wins for your CSMs and on your company's bottom-line.
Career Path Tip: Demand generation is the ultimate growth playground—where creativity meets systems thinking to drive revenue. To stand out, become obsessed with mastering the entire funnel and using AI to run experiments and uncover new growth opportunities. The best demand gen pros think like strategists and execute like operators.
Career Path Tip: Here are three things that have worked for me.
1. Focus on Metrics that Matter: Track and optimize for metrics that align with business objectives, like pipe-to-spend efficiency and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). These key performance indicators directly reflect how your efforts impact revenue and growth. Always tie your data back to business results.
2. Experiment Relentlessly: Demand gen is a continuous learning process. Don’t just settle for good results—experiment with new tactics, ad creatives, landing pages, and audiences. Optimize your conversion rates consistently, and find ways to drive real business impact, not just vanity metrics.
3. Be Comfortable with the Uncomfortable: Change is constant in marketing. Whether it's leveraging AI, exploring new platforms, or testing cutting-edge strategies, don’t shy away from the unknown. When faced with something you’ve never done before, dive in and learn as you go. Innovation thrives in discomfort.
Career Path Tip: Don’t fall into the trap of thinking career growth is about moving up levels. As a hiring manager, I look for skills and attitude over titles. Get involved in cross-functional projects to broaden your knowledge and learn key skills like leading without authority and stakeholder management.
Career Path Tip: Stay in touch with former co-workers. Don't be afraid to meet with them regularly to compare notes and bounce ideas off each other. Remember your network is like a garden - you get out what you put in.
Career Path Tip: To succeed in Demand Generation, I recommend developing strong analytical skills, mastering data-driven marketing strategies, and being a collaborative partner to the teams you're working with. Proving impact is important so understanding how to measure what you do is a great place to start, and will be a forcing function to yourself to make sure where you're spending your time is impactful to your team and the business.
I think the way you work is just as important as the work product. Being accountable is hugely important, especially as our working environment has shifted to a more virtual world where asynchronous work is oftentimes preferred.
Career Path Tip: Here’s the truth: goals sound good, but they don’t do the heavy lifting—systems do. Every sprinter wants to win, but the one with the best system for training, mindset, and recovery has the edge. Same thing in your career. Want to grow? Don’t just set a goal—build a system that works for you. How you plan, how you problem solve, how you recharge—small, steady tweaks to your daily habits are what really drive progress. Resolutions fade. Strong systems win.
Career Path Tip: Be the linchpin (and read Seth Godin's book if you haven't). Find ways to be indispensable - be the person that always follows up, follows through, is easy to work with, is open minded but owns the outcome. Make it easy to understand what you are working on and how your boss or collaborators can help. Your functional "hard skills" will only get you so far in your career, and the rest of it is about how you work with your peers, stakeholders and how you manage up.
Career Path Tip: Map your work to measurable business outcomes as often as possible, and leverage that as a way to make sure your priorities are aligned with the priorities of the company. It's a helpful forcing function to make sure that your time is spent on what is going to drive impact, and a useful framework when deciding how to prioritize competing initiatives.
Career Path Tip: Doing your job well is table stakes. To be exceptional, build bridges by knowledge sharing. Tap into resources that help you be a better marketer and then thoughtfully share the wealth with your team members.
Career Path Tip: To succeed in demand generation, you need to have a deep understanding of your audience and make your campaigns feel as personal as possible while pushing the boundaries of your brand. The most impactful brand campaigns have a blend of empathy, experimentation, and strategic adaptability. The key is to balance knowing your audience with trying new things.
Career Path Tip: Being a well rounded demand generation marketer is more than just building a healthy mix of channel usage, but also being able to work cross-functionally. Running a standalone program is not enough, you need to work with your SDR team on follow-up, work with your sales team on why current opportunities will benefit, your customer success team on why customers will care. All the best demand gen marketers I know are the ones who are open to learning from their cross-functional colleagues and anyone in their network!
Career Path Tip: In any strategy, it's not just about how much you measure but also what you’re measure and why. It's about setting the barometer for what success looks like and how KPIs are monitored, discussed, and leveraged to drive improvements.
Career Path Tip: Find the biggest problem that exists and fix it. Or at least help fix it. No matter your title or tenure or budget, if you can identify a problem that no one else is touching, go at it! Act and do what it takes to find and implement a solution. And more often than not, your action will galvanize others until all of a sudden it's a bunch of you, all working together to fix this big, hairy problem.
Career Path Tip: Successful demand begins with truly knowing your customer. Everything else - messaging, content, channels - follows. Give yourself an edge by taking the time to build that strong foundation.
Career Path Tip: Marketing is all about staying up with your customer's and prospect's needs, oftentimes before they even realize it. With that, never be afraid to experiment and test new programs and tactics that set you and your business apart. In general, leadership will never fault you for trying new things, even if you fail, as long as you fail fast and leverage your learnings to inform future iterations of programs and campaigns. And while you should always take a customer centric approach, it's equally as important to understand that your sales partners are your most important internal customers. It's critical to be in lockstep with your sales stakeholders to ensure you're aligned on plans and executing campaigns/programs that help meet the business' goals.
Career Path Tip: Yes, you can be good at your job and hit all your customer acquisition and upsell goals but what will set you apart is your ability to understand the business, ask the tough questions, try new things and act as a trusted advisor to your sales/product counterparts. To lead a high performance team you have to be a servant leader - take care of your people first and the results will follow.
Career Path Tip: As a marketer, knowing your audience is critical. Internal stakeholders are no different. I view them as your internal audience. Generally, I will schedule an initial kick off call to learn their priorities, areas of concern/learnings if it is a run rate program, and their communication preferences. Getting specificity and clarity on the role they'd like to play the expectations they have on how they'll stay up to date on the project are critical to your and the project's success.
Career Path Tip: If you are the first demand generation hire at a company, chances are you are going to need to advocate for some immediate changes to your funnel. They probably hired a demand generator because something needs to be addressed. However, question everything and confirm what needs to be addressed yourself.
Career Path Tip: Demand generation is a balancing act. Success is all about finding the right balance: balancing strategy with execution, long-term goals with short-term wins, and inbound efforts with outbound initiatives—all while staying within budget.
The key is knowing when to prioritize one over the other and adjusting as needed to drive results.
Career Path Tip: Demand gen is a very fun and interesting path but don't forget that demand gen doesn't stop at simply generating demand with awareness campaigns. It's important to focus on capturing demand and aligning with your sales counterparts to ensure the demand you are capturing actually turns into opportunities and dollar signs for the business. Do not create a silo for yourself and your team where you simply pass over leads without creating a proper journey for your prospects from the first ad impression to their signature on the contract.
Career Path Tip: Ideate, Experiment and Run. Keep abreast of the latest tech developments and find tools that you can use to help you do your job better.
Career Path Tip: Find a mantra that will ground you and protect your self-confidence. For me, my mantra is: “this is how it goes”. It means in any situation, I’ve prepared as best I can, and I’m ready for anything. When I’m out of my comfort zone, or make a mistake, I tell myself: “this is how it goes” because I know inside of me, I have tools to address the problem. An actress at heart; demand gen excellence is like truly embodying a character. You know your numbers, you’ve gotten curious about “why”, you empathize with customer pain points, you breathe life into the unknown. So when the spotlight is on, or the script gets thrown out, you are ready to improvise, and any imperfections are simply part of the story.
Career Path Tip: In your career, remember that doing great work is important, but it may not always speak for itself. Actively seek opportunities to champion your work across various settings. While self-promotion may feel uncomfortable for some and come naturally to others, honing this skill is crucial. This is particularly pertinent in large organizations or remote settings where information can easily be overlooked or lost.
Career Path Tip: Learn to live beyond your job title and embrace unexpected roles and responsibilities when those doors open. If you see something broken, take the initiative to fix it and be the "chameleon" the organization needs. Always leaning in, with energy and excitement is the surest way to make connections and create new opportunities for yourself.
Career Path Tip: A good overall basic framework is the "T-shaped marketer" framework. (Google it!) It is a good starting point for understanding all of the disciplines of demand gen and understanding how deep and wide you want to go in your skillset.
Career Path Tip: The work landscape is evolving rapidly. I'm often asked, "what can I do to stand out with senior stakeholders?" My first suggestion is to cultivate a mindset of adaptability and a willingness to learn and adjust. You don't have to have all the answers, always. A lot of junior marketers don't speak up because they're afraid of not knowing the answer. Embrace the opportunity for growth. Speak up. If you get stuck, use it as an opportunity to proactively seek new knowledge and skills. You can always say "I don't know at this moment, but I will go find out." Stakeholders will appreciate your tenacity for learning and problem solving. Eventually you will build resilience and a bank of knowledge and position yourself as a long-term asset to the team or company.
Career Path Tip: Your manager wants to see you grow and thrive. Be open with them-- tell them how you're looking to grow and sign up for challenges that give you that opportunity. Growth is uncomfortable, but pays back dividends to your career forever. Making an impact is not only about working hard, it's about making a meaningful difference to your business. Measure everything you do, hold yourself accountable, and let your passion lead the way.
Career Path Tip: Don’t just step into the customer’s shoes—step into their entire journey. In B2B Demand Gen, understanding how organizations make investment decisions is key. There’s often a pain point driving the need for a solution, multiple stakeholders to convince, and ultimately, a decision-maker to win over. Ask yourself: If you needed this product, solution, and/or service, what steps would you take to get approval? How do your demand gen efforts support that journey? Reflect on how you’d personally respond to your own ads, content, and outreach. Would it stand out to you, educate you, build trust, or motivate you to fill out a form or take a call with sales? Buyers, buying groups, and decision-makers are all humans and consumers at heart- we all know this, but it's easy to lose sight of it in the day-to-day chaos. Use this lens to evaluate every campaign, program, and asset—authenticity and empathy always resonate.
Career Path Tip: Always be curious! Keep on top of the competitor landscape and metrics for your programs so you can understand what works and what doesn't. Always ask questions and challenge what you have done before. The best thing you can do is challenge what you have done before and look for new ways to optimize.
Career Path Tip: Don’t think about what your company or your boss can do for you. Think about what you can do for them. Managers reward employees who focus on what’s best for the company and are eager to take on more responsibility because it will help the company be more successful. Don’t wait to be told what to do-if you see a problem, offer to be the one to solve it, even if it’s not in your current scope.
Career Path Tip: Information is your gateway to success. Never stop questioning and wondering - why is the data this way? why is the company making this bet? who can influence this change? - and use your understanding to propose changes, speak intelligently, and drive impact.