Pepper

The CMO job description just changed. Most boards don't know it yet. Most CMOs do. AI search has added a surface area to the CMO's role that nobody planned for - one that touches brand authority, buyer discovery, and business outcomes in ways that existing teams, tools, and metrics weren't built to handle. At INDEX'26 New York, we're having the conversation most marketing leaders are having privately - on stage. Topic: What the CMO Actually Owns Now: How AI Rewrote the Role | Fireside Chat Lauren Wagner Boyman is CMO of KPMG US. Her brand is built on decades of earned trust and expertise. That trust now needs to be machine-readable - and the CMO is the one who has to make it so. She'll share what that transformation looks like from the inside of one of the world's most recognised professional services firms. Drew Neisser brings the view from 600+ CMO conversations and 700+ senior marketing leaders inside CMO Huddles. He knows who's moving on this shift, who's stuck, and what separates the two. He'll bring that aggregate view into the room. This isn't a session about tactics. It's about the job itself - what landed on the CMO's desk because of AI, what it displaced, and how to make the case for it to a board that's still asking for ROI on something that didn't exist 18 months ago. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

Most brands are running GEO experiments. Kenny Chung is running them for a brand with millions of daily searches across 70+ countries. We're excited to welcome Kenny Chung, Global Head of SEO/AI & Web Strategy Lead at Uber, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Kenny leads SEO and GEO web strategy for Uber's consumer rides business - one of the most complex consumer search challenges in the world. Before Uber, he directed SEO, GTM, and Content Strategy at Verizon, and spent years leading SEO and paid strategies for Fortune 100 clients across some of the largest ad agencies in the industry. 15+ years building search strategy at the scale most practitioners never get close to. At INDEX, he'll bring the practitioner's perspective on what GEO actually looks like when you're operating at Uber's scale - what's working, what isn't, and what every search and marketing team should be paying attention to right now. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

If your brand is complex, you can't afford to get AI search wrong.   That's the challenge Michael Eisenreich thinks about every day as Managing Director & Global Head of Marketing at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the company that clears and settles trillions in securities transactions daily. He comes to it with 15+ years prior at Bloomberg leading brand, creative, and digital marketing.   DTCC is one of the most systemically important institutions in global finance. When someone asks a LLM what DTCC does, or why it matters, what comes back has to be accurate, simple, and clear. That's why DTCC is embarking on an AI optimization build today and embedding it directly into its 2026 digital strategy.   At INDEX'26, Michael will share what the beginning of that journey looks like in practice and how DTCC is building a digital, brand, and content approach for a world where LLMs will tell your story for you. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

Bombora built a business on reading buyer intent signals. The problem: AI is now doing the research for buyers before those signals exist. As a CMO, Putney Cloos is the one figuring out what intent data looks like in a world where the buyer never shows up. We're excited to welcome Putney Cloos , CMO of Bombora, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Putney has spent her career at the intersection of data and revenue - as a CMO at Cision , VP of Commercial Demand Generation at American Express ,and Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company. She joined Bombora to lead marketing for the platform that pioneered intent-based B2B discovery. At INDEX, she'll share what happens to intent data when AI becomes the buyer's first stop and why the signal that powered a decade of B2B GTM is being fundamentally rethought. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

Four CMO roles. One consistent thesis: campaigns create spikes, systems create growth. Jonathan Metrick has spent his career proving the difference. We're excited to welcome Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer at Sagard, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Jonathan has been a 4x CMO across fintech, insurance, and consumer - most notably at Policygenius, where he built a growth marketing division of 45+ and 10x'd revenue to positive LTV in 3 years. Before that, marketing leadership at Live Nation, Tiffany & Co., and Procter & Gamble. Now at Sagard, he brings that operator experience to bear across an entire portfolio of financial services companies. At INDEX, he'll bring the rare perspective of someone who's built growth engines as an operator and now evaluates them as an investor - and what both roles are telling him about what sustainable growth looks like when AI rewrites the discovery layer. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

Shafqat Islam built a content marketing company so good that Optimizely bought it. Then they made him CMO. Then President. Now he's rebuilding what a marketing team looks like when AI does half the work. We're excited to welcome Shafqat Islam, President of Optimizely, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Shafqat co-founded Welcome - a Gartner Leader for 7 consecutive years - and sold it to Optimizely in 2021. Since then he's taken the company past $400M ARR and launched Optimizely One, the industry's first AI-powered operating system for marketers. Customers include Salesforce, Zoom, Toyota Motor Corporation, and H&M. At INDEX, he'll share what it actually looks like to rebuild a marketing function around AI - and why most teams are optimizing the wrong things. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

One in three B2B software buyers in 2026 purchased from a vendor they'd never heard of before. Because AI told them to. That's not a trend. That's a structural shift in how buying decisions get made. And nobody has a closer view of it than Bijou B. We're excited to welcome Bijou B., AI Principal Analyst at G2, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Bijou focuses on AI search, artificial intelligence, and the evolving buyer journey at G2 - the platform that 100 million software buyers trust and that AI search cites more than any other source for software recommendations. Before G2, she worked in AI strategy and market intelligence supporting federal technology initiatives across complex vendor ecosystems. She's spent her career building the frameworks that define how AI reshapes discovery, trust, and decision-making. At INDEX, she'll bring the analyst's perspective on what G2's buyer data actually shows - how the research process has moved from reference to inference, what that means for the brands that get shortlisted, and why the buying decision is increasingly being made before your team ever enters the room. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

The operators you learn the most from aren't the ones with the loudest opinions. They're the ones who've sat inside the hardest GTM problems and come out with something real. Anjai "AJ" Gandhi Gandhi is one of them. 30+ years. 100+ companies. Salesforce. RingCentral. Marlin Equity Partners. He's the person operators call when growth stalls and the playbook stops working. After a great session at INDEX'26 San Francisco, we're excited to welcome AJ back to the New York stage on May 27. The question he's asking - what happens to pipeline, positioning, and revenue when AI rewrites how buyers discover - is the most important GTM question of this moment. Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

Drew Neisser has interviewed more than 600 CMOs. He's heard every version of the B2B marketing playbook. And he'll tell you - most of what worked before AI search doesn't anymore. After a successful Panel discussion at Index’26 San Francisco, we're excited to welcome back Drew Neisser, Founder & CEO of CMO Huddles, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Drew ran Renegade, a top creative agency, for 30 years. Then founded CMO Huddles - now a community of 700+ B2B marketing leaders who come together to figure out what's actually working. Two books. 450+ podcast episodes. AdAge CMO columnist. LinkedIn's Top 15 Voices in Marketing. Nobody has a closer ear to what B2B CMOs are thinking right now. At INDEX, he'll bring the unfiltered, aggregated view from inside the rooms where senior marketers are having the most honest conversations about AI search and what the smartest ones are doing differently. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u

Guy Yalif started his career coding AI for airplane design at Princeton University. He ended up as a marketing leader at Twitter and Yahoo. Then built and sold an AI personalization company to Webflow. The through line? He's always been earlier than everyone else. We're excited to welcome Guy Yalif, Chief Evangelist at Webflow, to the INDEX'26 New York stage. Guy co-founded Intellimize - a two-time Inc. 500 company - and sold it to Webflow in 2024. Before that, he held senior marketing roles at Twitter, BrightRoll, Yahoo, and Microsoft. He's been part of four exits and has been putting AI in the hands of marketers since before GenAI was a category. At INDEX, he'll introduce the AEO Maturity Model - a framework for CMOs ready to move from optimizing for Google to positioning their brand for AI-powered discovery. INDEX'26 New York: The GEO Growth Summit | May 27 Request your invite: https://lu.ma/796khq4u