Dara oversees the company’s worldwide marketing, brand and creative, digital ecommerce, communications, global demand generation, and education business teams. She has deep expertise in category creation and experience leading high-performing global marketing organizations and is working to advance Autodesk’s mission to empower innovators to achieve the new possible. Prior to joining Autodesk, Dara was senior vice president and global head of marketing, communications, and membership for Peloton Interactive, where she grew global membership from 2.6 million to almost 7 million and built an iconic, culturally relevant brand. Previously, she was chief marketing officer at Carbon, a leading 3D printing technology company, and served as chief marketing officer of GE Business Innovations and GE Ventures. Additionally, Dara has held marketing leadership roles at Apple and Goldman Sachs.
Autodesk is behind all things: our technology enables people to design and make anything (think planes, trains, phones, movies, games, and more!) -- our customers are literally building the world around us, and they’re doing it using Autodesk AI. Because of this, we have deep insight into how AI is being used across a lot of diverse industries, and thanks to Autodesk’s State of Design and Make Report we know that nearly half of employers say the top skill they’re hiring for over the next three years is the ability to work with AI. This data makes one thing very clear: AI is already here, and it’s going to completely revolutionize how we design and make the future.
AI is impacting Autodesk’s customers work in three critical ways: it will help to automate repetitive processes, augment creative thinking, and analyze data – enabling people to focus on the most creative and stimulating parts of their work as they design the world we live in. And this isn’t new – this is something we’ve been focused on for nearly a decade. This year, we even released a new generative AI model – Project Bernini – that can quickly generate 3D shapes from all sorts of inputs, one of many examples of how our teams are experimenting with AI to help our customers move fast with greater purpose.
And we aren’t just using AI in our products – we're also leveraging it to make our marketing more impactful and efficient – allowing our team to lean into the creative parts of their jobs. For example, we’ve built an AI tool to localize our video content into different languages – turning a weeks-long and tens-of-thousands-of-dollars processes into a nearly free, minutes-long endeavor. Implementing changes like this has a domino effect on how our teams operate day-to-day. We even adopted Autodesk GPT across the company to encourage people to use the tool safely.
With experience at both B2C and B2B companies, I have found – and continue to remind myself – that marketers are always in the business of marketing to humans. At Autodesk, I would argue that our stories need to draw an even stronger emotional connection for our audiences than some B2C brands. The customers that use our software are filled with people whose choice of software can have a direct impact on their jobs and their own career growth. In fact, many customers have told me that they can’t tell the story of their career without telling the story of Autodesk.
As a B2B brand, we have to work harder than a B2C brand to connect the dots and show people how Autodesk impacts their lives. The curiosity required to understand our customers and the ability to bridge creative storytelling with driving business results is the ultimate job of all marketing leaders – B2B or B2C, startup, or Fortune 500. It’s this clear definition of my role as CMO that I’ve learned and shaped over the course of my career.
Since I joined Autodesk more than two years ago, my team and I have looked for creative ways to place Autodesk where our software is already working behind the scenes to design and make the world around us. Once people understand that Autodesk software helps make the things that bring them value in their life, an ‘a aha’ moment happens. That’s what our brand marketing is doing: it’s giving people the ‘a ha’ moment they wouldn’t have on their own.
I believe it’s critical for a CMO to be a businessperson first – a marketer second. Being a CMO requires you to speak the language of your CFO, your CEO – the list goes on. Speaking the language of marketing is great, but translating your team’s impact out to the rest of the company and its stakeholders is one of the most important parts of the job of the CMO. Just like marketing requires us to speak the language that will resonate with our target audience, we must also think this way when communicating across our organization.
I think it’s also essential for CMOs to give their teams a single goal or vision to rally around. If we can bridge the gap between our creative and growth teams, we ensure that the creative is in service of growth, and vice versa. This is where the marketing magic happens, and this is how the business results are born.
I’ve always believed that insatiable curiosity is what keeps me sharp, adaptable, and ahead of the curve. Curiosity can serve as my guide through uncertain times and as a driving force behind big breakthroughs. It pushes me to ask deeper questions, challenge the status quo, and think beyond the immediate horizon. This mindset has allowed me to embrace new opportunities and find innovative paths forward, whether it’s leveraging AI in creative ways or rethinking how we connect with audiences globally.
I am constantly pushing myself to seek to understand, not to seek to respond. As leaders, curiosity helps deepen our understanding of the people we work with and the people that we sell our product or services to—giving us a glimpse into their stories, their passions, their motivations. It’s this curiosity about others that has helped me build teams where diversity of thought thrives, and where we can be strategic about how marketing can fuel growth.
I deeply admire the resilience and power of Madam C.J. Walker who lived during a time when opportunities for Black women were greatly limited. She built a beauty and haircare empire that addressed the specific needs of Black women, a market that was completely underserved at the time.
Walker built a community for women to work and gain financial independence during a time when these liberties were few and far between. Becoming the first self-made female millionaire in the U.S., she used her wealth to support education, civil rights, and economic empowerment for the Black community. Her legacy continues to inspire women like me today.
The one thing I truly can’t live without is my family. My children are my whole entire world; they inspire me to do everything I can to leave the world better than I found it. My husband encourages me, supports me, empowers me, keeps me grounded, and is my partner in raising our two children. I love what I do, and being a CMO means being deeply committed to my work, but I hold the time with my family sacred. I encourage my team to take the time they need to connect with their loved ones and not lose sight of what matters most.
If 2023 was the year that AI was talked about, 2024 is the year that AI is actually being adopted in meaningful ways that will shape the future. At Autodesk, AI isn’t new to us, but we are better understanding how it can impact the work that we do and the way we can better help architects, engineers, designers, manufacturers, filmmakers, and more design and make the world.
I’m inspired by the sense of optimism that is beginning to squash the feelings of uncertainty that are bound to bubble up when new technologies emerge. Our State of Design and Make Report found that more than three in four Design and Make professionals say they trust AI for their industry, with 78% saying they are confident that their company will make the right decisions regarding AI. This is indicative of an upward trend toward confidence in tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. I believe technology can be a force for good in the world, and the data we’re seeing is showing us that people are committed to making that vision a reality. It’s this vision of a better future for the next generation that gets me out of bed in the morning.
