Episodes

Will Croushorn helps lead and build Wendy’s FreshAI, bringing AI into the physical world through the drive-thru experience. He also teaches AI product management at Caltech. His career has spanned film school, helping start a school in the Middle East, and developing AI-powered customer experiences at scale. In this episode, Will shares his personal perspective on how AI is changing the way we work, what remains distinctly human, and how curiosity and a focus on serving people can guide the opportunities ahead.

Ryan McClurkin is an investor and co-founder of Insighta. His work has spanned merchandising, customer, e-commerce and advanced marketing analytics, giving him firsthand experience with the challenges brands face when trying to connect advertising investment with business outcomes. His work includes multi-touch attribution, marketing mix modeling, incrementality testing and predictive customer lifetime value, as well as exploring how AI agents and AI-ready data environments are changing marketing analytics.

Danielle Franklin DeSarzant is a University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business alum and an experienced marketing leader whose career spans nearly two decades in marketing and sales. Her work has included go-to-market strategy for major Intuit brands including Mailchimp and QuickBooks. Her experience encompasses audience strategy, customer insights, messaging, multichannel execution and the use of data to connect marketing activity to customer behavior.

Benjamin Jones-Gerrard is a marketer specializing in helping small businesses with clear, practical marketing. His work spans storytelling, video and image content, organic and paid social, SEO and websites. For approximately three years, he has combined that work with full-time travel across Europe from a self-converted campervan.

Katt Wade is a UK-based paid-social specialist whose career includes agency experience and seven years at eBay, where she worked across major social platforms and performance activity. Her experience spans campaign execution, always-on activity, measurement, platform experimentation and collaboration with major technology platforms.

John Carroll is Executive Director of City Leadership in Memphis and has played a central role in developing the organization’s family of 901 campaigns, including Choose901, Teach901, Serve901 and Give901. His work combines community development, storytelling, recruitment, leadership and place branding.

Joe Johnston is Head of Insights and Experimentation at Launch, a UK performance-marketing agency. His work focuses on CRO, experimentation, customer behavior and improving performance across digital customer journeys. His approach combines research, behavioral thinking, hypothesis development and structured testing.