The decisions you make are a combination of your circumstances and the options available to you. I think luck and timing is always an overlooked factor. I recently read Einstein's biography, and it struck me how fortutious it was that he failed to get a job as an academic after graduating from college and had to settle for a patent clerk job at the Swiss patent office. If it weren't for this turn of events, he might not ever have come up with the theory of general relativity, because the key insight in that theory is that time itself is relative, and this insight was no doubt derived from his time working for days, months and years on patent applications dealing with clocks and watches.
So my advice to anyone aspiring to a leadership position in product marketing (or any field for that matter), is to first know what you want, then put the time and effort to learn the skills, gain the experience and build the relationships that will get you one step closer to achieving your goal. You will face obstacles and failures and rejections, at times you will feel like giving up, but if it's something you really want, you have to stick with it, because nothing in life worth having is easy.