Multi-geography CMO — Professional Services · anchored Middle East

Position overview

Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Professional Services on a senior CMO leadership mandate anchored in Middle East. The remit explicitly spans Australia, USA, India.

This is a multi-geography leadership role requiring orchestration across time zones, matrix stakeholders, and often dual-reporting into global and regional lines.

The mandate fits a leader comfortable owning the narrative externally while upgrading how decisions are made internally.

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Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: Practice building leadership — finding partners who can build new service lines or geographic practices from scratch, requiring entrepreneurial instinct within a structured partnership environment
• Geographic spine: Primary hub Middle East with explicit corridor responsibility across Australia, USA, India.
• Organisation stage: ESG and conduct expectations from owners and regulators are now hard constraints on how growth is pursued.
• Stakeholders: Owners may include PE operating partners, a promoter family office, or public-market investors — each with different tempo and KPIs.
• Secondary lens: Retention of high performers — professional services firms face constant attrition of their best people to corporate roles; building compelling career propositions is a leadership challenge

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The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Growth playbook: Define repeatable plays for new logo acquisition, cross-sell, and retention in priority verticals.
2. Content & thought leadership: Elevate executive visibility in forums that matter to buyers and regulators (where relevant).
3. Pricing & packaging: Partner with sales and product on packaging that reflects value, not internal cost structures.
4. Marketing organisation: Structure team around journeys and segments — reduce silos between brand, demand, and comms.
5. Crisis & reputation: Build protocols and narratives for high-stakes communications scenarios.
6. Measurement: Tie marketing KPIs to revenue proxies the CFO and CEO will accept.

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Responsibilities (representative)

• Build product marketing capability tied to roadmap and revenue plays.
• Improve marketing ROI measurement — acceptable proxies where full attribution is impossible.
• Develop partner and channel marketing where indirect routes dominate.
• Instil crisis communications readiness with legal and corporate affairs.
• Coach the organisation on narrative discipline — one story, many channels.

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Leadership profile

• Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
• Modern marketing: Fluency with data, segmentation, and accountable spend — not only creative excellence.
• Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Middle East with regular engagement across Australia, USA.

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Team & culture

Expect some fatigue from prior change programmes. Your success depends on simpler priorities, fewer initiatives, and leaders who model accountability. Culture is how decisions get made when spreadsheets disagree — you set that tone.

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Success measures (examples)

• Growth quality: Mix of recurring revenue, new logos, and cross-sell — not volume for its own sake.
• Productivity: Unit cost, automation savings, or throughput improvements with audited baselines.
• Customer: NPS / CSAT where tracked; contract renewals; reference-ability in strategic accounts.
• Franchise: Clean compliance record; reputation stability in industry and government forums.

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First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Listening tour — customers, regulators (as appropriate), top team 1:1s, and unfiltered view of numbers; pause major reorganisation.
• Days 30–60: Publish a short memo on priorities, non-goals, and decision rights; align executive committee on three enterprise bets.
• Days 60–90: Lock operating cadence; fill or upgrade one to two critical seats; deliver one visible win (customer, cost, or culture).
• Commission a pragmatic view of data, cyber, and automation posture; sponsor one bounded pilot with ROI hypothesis.
• Establish escalation discipline with matrix partners — fewer meetings, clearer decision logs.
• Clarify RACI for cross-border deals, staffing, and pricing exceptions.

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Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: CEO or regional president, CFO, risk / legal, CHRO, CIO or CDO, business GMs, internal audit.
• External: Strategic accounts, channel partners, industry associations, regulators (where material).
• Owners: PE operating partners, promoter office, or public investors — pace and clarity matter as much as vision.

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Travel & mobility

Travel weighted to priority markets and quarterly global or regional forums; flexibility for crisis windows.

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Compensation

Market-aligned CMO remuneration in Professional Services with performance linkage; sign-on and relocation considered for exceptional fits.

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Application process

Gladwin International is managing this search confidentially. Shortlisted candidates will engage in structured conversations with the firm’s partners before client introduction. Please apply through the careers portal with a concise note on why this geography, sector, and remit fit your trajectory.

We review every submission personally; unsolicited outreach to the end client is discouraged and may disqualify candidacy.

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Reference: professional-services · CMO · Middle East · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors