Resume — Karin Tanaka

Translating Marketing Strategy into Market Share

Representative accomplishments:

Early adopter of AI for marketing. Drove responsible use in a previous executive role; developed AI fluency in professional workflows; currently partnering with clients to establish human-AI strategies that reshape marketing practices and operations for creativity, productivity, and ROI at scale.
Have served as a thought partner to and operational leader for industry leaders and executive teams in enterprise, commercial, and startup companies for more than 25 years.
Launched technology marketing group in 2024, winning a roster of blue-chip technology clients and agencies, and doubling growth quarterly using a flexible direct sales and partner model.
Build high-performing teams, whether in-house or through partnerships, to deliver the outcomes stakeholders seek.
Deep expertise in technology marketing, including research, analysis, program development, and execution.
Clients and past employers include Adobe, Apple, Big Sky Communications, Cisco, C&Z Marketing, DoorDash, Google Cloud, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Quietly, and VMware.

RADIAL TECHNOLOGY MARKETING, 2024 — Present

Founder, Chief, 2024 — Present

My team and I serve as thought partners to marketing leaders and their teams, helping them develop and implement programs and projects that build product categories, grow brand and portfolio awareness, and translate marketing strategy into market share. Since 2024, most of our work has focused on marketing AI-ready infrastructure and AI technologies and solutions to enterprise customers. At the same time, we’re helping teams we work with explore ways to better integrate AI to transform strategic planning, content development, search, and more.

Our partial client and partners list includes 1Password, Adobe, Airtable, Big Sky Communications, Calendly, CentrePal, Cisco, C&Z Marketing, DoorDash, FranklinCovey, Google Cloud, JP Morgan, May Mobility, Neo4j, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Quietly, and VMware, among others.

Please see a partial projects list on the Recent Work page.

VMWARE, INC., 2015—2024

Senior Director, Brand Go to Market, 2017—2024

Delivered demand-generating, perception-shifting global, full-funnel, integrated campaigns.

Contributed to $1.26Bn in revenue in 2023, representing 30-40% of VMware’s direct sales revenue, by using brand advertising and content marketing to increase the number of high-value customer touchpoints in buyers’ digital journeys globally. Drove average 49-percent conversion rate, Y/Y, for DG with brand campaign touches vs. 35% for DG without. Drove conversion lift on LinkedIn by 138 percent among audiences first exposed to brand campaign vs. those not.
Drove average 16.8 percentage point (pp) lift in brand perception among campaign-aware senior IT buyers and 12pp lift in solutions perception across six markets (US, UK, IN, ANZ, JP, SG) in 2023 through paid media, omnichannel, and ABM brand campaigns.
Led an extended team of 45 to drive multi-cloud category creation with a $25M annual budget (67% of total marketing campaigns paid media budget) through global brand campaigns and content marketing. Successfully lifted VMware into its tier-one competitive set, which included MSFT, AWS, IBM, and Oracle, whose advertising budgets were $904M, $44.4B, $331M, and $331M, respectively.
Launched organic VMware LinkedIn newsletter, gaining 500,000 followers in the first month.

Director, Global & Field Marketing—Content, Channels & Campaigns Strategy, Executive Audiences, 2015—2017

Developed and implemented program that upleveled and positively impacted VMware’s customer and market conversations—and bottom line.

Architected and executed groundbreaking Senior ITDM audience messaging, content, channels, and campaigns strategy. Translated messaging into foundational content for global marketing, demand generation, communications, and sales enablement programs. Drove highest-ever executive satisfaction scores for annual CIO Forum event in 2015, with customer feedback specifically noting appreciation for the shift from product to business-outcomes discussions.
Developed VMware’s strategic corporate narrative (2015-2019), providing foundational content annually to Global Marketing, Communications, and Sales organizations (5000+ employees) for use in customer presentations and other sales enablement; analyst relations; demand-generation campaigns; executive thought leadership platforms; and more.
Developed VMware’s go-to-market positioning and messaging for its IoT portfolio (2015-2016), stoking partner and customer interest in and for initial product offerings.
Collaborated with senior executives in 2016 to develop VMware’s initial “cross-cloud” messaging, which served as basis for VMware’s cloud and multi-cloud services positioning and messaging in all marketing from 2017 through 2023.
With a hybrid in-house/external agencies team of 10, built out multiple organic social channels and the VMware-owned CIO Vantage channel (since evolved by others) to reach target CIO audience. Won 2015 FOLIO: Eddie Award for Best Online Digital Magazine.

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC., 2008—2014

Senior Manager, Executive Communications & Integrated Marketing, 2008—2014

Developed thought leadership platforms and internal communications programs for multiple SVPs and VPs within Cisco’s supply chain, services, and marketing organizations. Later, took leadership role in designing and building the Cisco Communications Resource Center, which provided communications consulting services, training, and resources to the global workforce of 67,000 while cutting $20M annually in costs.

Senior Manager, Program Communications, 2002—2005

Developed and delivered enterprise-wide program communications and change management support for 3 key Cisco IT initiatives, including the global rollout of IP telephony to 34,000 Cisco employees.

SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC., 2005—2008

Senior Analyst Relations Manager

Built successful relationships with key analyst-influencers at top-tier firms globally to better position Sun Microsystems x86 products in market, improving key Gartner analysts’ willingness to recommend Sun.

TDA GROUP, 2005

Senior Managing Writer

Managed customer reference programs for all IBM server and storage marketing teams, developing success stories about IBM’s Fortune 500 customers. Built and managed a freelance writing team to content requirements, budget, and deadlines. Drove an additional $500,000 in revenue in 9 months.

PROSEWORKS, 1996—2002

Founder, Strategist and Writer

Developed B2B and B2C brand and product positioning and messaging and providing brand and demand-generation campaign copywriting services. Wrote a wide range of marketing and corporate communications, including internal, executive presentations, direct mail, advertising, customer success stories, and web/digital marketing.

EXPERTISE

Karin.Tanaka@radial-360.com