Marisa Thalberg
Chief Marketing Officer
Taco Bell Corp.

As the Chief Marketing Officer, Marisa Thalberg leads all product and brand marketing, consumer insights and brand engagement functions.  Product/concept development and management, consumer insights, creative, merchandising, digital/social, media, strategic partnerships, and public affairs/PR teams report to her.

Marisa most recently spent eight years at The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., where she pioneered the company’s global digital and social marketing, building this capability across the company’s collection of over 30 prestige beauty brands, leading them into new approaches to consumer engagement. 

Prior to this, Marisa’s background has spanned both the client and agency worlds, including serving for several years as Head of Global Advertising at Unilever Cosmetics International. Other highlights in her career include tenures as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Sure Fit, Vice President of Advertising for Revlon, and agency account leadership for a number of world-famous brands, including P&G Haircare, Marshalls, Johnson & Johnson, Clairol and Victoria’s Secret. 

Marisa has become a frequent industry speaker at conferences and events including The CMO Summit, IAB Leadership Summit, Luxury Interactive, BlogHer, InternetWeek and the WWD Summits. 

Concurrent to her advertising and marketing career, in 2002 Marisa became the founder of the organization Executive Moms (www.executivemoms.com), which became a leading social network and content provider to this important demographic of women. In this capacity, she has appeared in numerous TV and print media nationwide.

Among the honors she has received, Marisa has been named an Adweek “Brand Genius,” one of the top 5 Social Business Leaders in the Nation by The Economist, a Top 50 Women in Marketing by Brand Innovators, an Advertising Working Mother of the Year, and an Advertising Age “Woman to Watch.” Her favorite, however, was being selected by UNICEF as their iconic representative of U.S. working mothers for their State of the World’s Children report. 

She currently serves of the board of the Orange County School of the Arts and the Business Leadership Committee of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Marisa is a Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude graduate of Brown University. She, her husband David, and their two daughters, Hannah and Avery, are devout New Yorkers acclimating nicely to their home (no doorman!) in Orange County.