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Ukonwa Ojo is the Founder and CEO of Zaia Ventures, a company committed to building and scaling businesses that serve underrepresented and marginalized communities. She is an experienced global operational P&L and marketing executive with a 25-year track record of leading cross functional teams to scale multi-billion dollar brands/businesses. Her achievements demonstrate her ability to consistently deliver operational results across geographies and industries through astute financial management, market leading innovation and product development, and award-winning marketing initiatives that resonate deeply with consumers. She was most recently the Global Chief Marketing Officer and US General Manager for Amazon Prime Video & Studios.
During her tenure as Prime Video CMO, she combined data driven/analytical decision making, cross functional team leadership, and award-winning creativity to deliver the best performance in Prime Video history. She led the team to double annual customer acquisitions, which helped Amazon Prime Video replace Netflix as the #1 US Streamer for the first time ever, launched 8 of the top 10 shows in Prime Video History, and improved marketing efficiency by 4000bps to its lowest ever. In addition, she helped the streamer garner 5 Golden Globes, 4 Oscar Nominations and 2 wins, 50 Emmy Nominations and 8 wins and 111 Entertainment Clios.
Ojo previously served as Global Chief Marketing Officer for the World’s #1 Makeup brand, MAC Cosmetics, with $4.5B retail sales in 100+ countries. She led restructuring and change management initiatives to establish one global organization to deliver Brand Strategy & Growth Agenda, Product Development, Innovation Pipeline, Advertising, and Communications. She helped upgrade MAC’s digital infrastructure, capabilities, and content, and instituted a new agile way of working to deliver triple digit acceleration in online DTC sales in all geographic regions.
Ojo served as the Global Chief Marketing Officer for Coty Consumer Beauty’s $2.5B portfolio of COVERGIRL, Rimmel, Sally Hansen, Clairol, and Mass Fragrances. She led the team through a large-scale restructure and turnaround and helped the organization deliver sales and market share improvements across all brand groups. She delivered the most significant repositioning in COVERGIRL brand history, overhauled the portfolio to improve profitability, launched the #1 innovation in all beauty segments, and led a social/digital transformation. She began her career at Mead Westvaco and has held several brand and general management roles at General Mills, Reckitt, and Unilever.
During the course of her career, Ojo has received more than 60 awards and honors including the Financial Times Top 100 list of Minority Executives for three consecutive years, Forbes World’s Most Influential CMOs, Business Insider’s Most Innovative CMOs and CMOs to Watch, WWD’s Brand Builder of the Year, Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 and Essence Black Women in Hollywood. She is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and a Member of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Twitter Influence Council, The Black Executive CMO Alliance, and The Executive Leadership Council. Ojo is a graduate of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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