Brian Tomlinson

🚀 Head of Content, Staffbase | Change Communication, Marketing | I help digital leaders and corporations connect ideas, minds and metrics to drive meaningful transformations

Hi, I'm Brian 👋🏽
Most leaders think the path forward is optimization.
They're always adding — more skills, more certifications, more grind. And they usually end up burning themselves and their teams out.
I believe it's reinvention.
That's why I created Personal Innovation — a systematic approach to help mid-career professionals reinvent themselves into AI-powered leaders.
The framework is built on 3 pillars:

CLARITY — Know who you are and what you want
GROWTH — Build the systems, skills, and confidence to evolve
IMPACT — Lead with influence and create work that matters

AI accelerates every pillar — helping you think clearer, move faster, and lead with confidence.

My story:
A few years ago, I asked myself: What do I actually want?
I realized I wanted authenticity, growth, and meaningful impact. So I stopped waiting for permission and reinvented myself.
Now I help mission-driven companies build thought leadership engines and content systems that drive demand. I coach mid-career professionals through their own reinventions. And I help leaders navigate the AI era without burning out.

What I bring:
For 20+ years, I've specialized in making complex ideas accessible and systematic — from building education programs for 12,000+ employees across 126 countries to growing social channels to 100k+ followers.

I believe professional reinvention should be systematic, not accidental. 

That's why I build:
→ Content engines that translate expert thinking into action
→ AI-driven systems that scale impact without scaling effort
→ Frameworks that make leadership development accessible to people who don't have MBAs or executive coaches

My background spans sales, digital transformation, and marketing leadership — across mission-driven tech, enterprise software, and global startups.

I'm also a runner 🏃🏾‍♂️, reader 👨‍🏫, podcaster 🎙️, and father of two 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒.

I love working with leaders who:
- Feel stuck despite their success
- Want to evolve without losing themselves
- Value systems over motivation
- Are ready to lead with AI, not resist it

If that's you, we should chat.

Join my newsletter or drop me a DM.

Head of Digital Communications & International Enablement

Staffbase

I am responsible for marketing generated and marketing influenced pipeline managing a team of 35+ talented marketers across Germany, the UK and North America. 

Currently leading the following teams with 7 direct reports: 

- Demand Gen including performance marketing
- Customer Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Brand & Audience
- 3 regional marketing leads (DACH, UK, Benelux Nordics & North America)

VP Global Marketing

adjust.com

As Head of Inbound Marketing, my primary objective was to create and accelerate sales pipeline for our core markets.
I managed a team of 7 direct and 1 indirect reports in a variety of marketing roles that included: Digital Marketing (Performance Marketing & SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Demand Generation, Web Development.

Head of Inbound Marketing

Adjust is the industry leader in mobile measurement and fraud prevention. 
I joined the company after Series D and stayed on until post Series E at 100+ ARR.
 
Investors included, among others, Capnamic, Eurazeo, Highland Europe and Morgan Stanley.

I joined the company with the mission to build out our inbound marketing team. In my role as Inbound Marketing Lead, my key responsibilities included:

- Hiring key additions to the team
- Managing a team of 5 talented marketeers that spans paid marketing, email, social media, content management, campaign management, analytics and website management
- Responsible for demand generation globally
- Responsible for creation and optimization of integrated marketing campaigns

Measured on qualified traffic, new business lead gen, pipeline generation.

Inbound Marketing Lead

Optimizely

After 2.5 years in a regional marketing capacity, I took on the role of the first product marketing manager for EMEA. My main responsibility was communicating product changes and improvements to our teams in EMEA. Further responsibilities included:

- Conducting competitor analyses and creating competitor overviews 
- Tailoring positioning of new features to the EMEA market
- Communicate new launches to our audience of prospects and customers

Product Marketing Manager EMEA

As we grew our team in EMEA, we saw the need to focus our marketing efforts by region. I took over everything DACH marketing, our biggest and fastest growing market within EMEA. As Marketing Manager DACH, my responsibilities included:

- All our lead generation programs including performance marketing
- Reporting on pipeline efficacy and campaign ROI
- Managing of our internal as well as external events including our roadshow series, breakfast events with partners, tech partner webinars as well as our conference presences including Internetworld, Dmexco etc.
- Email Marketing and campaign management in Marketo
- Responsible for the German web properties and main writer of the German blog
- Partner Marketing
- Alignment & Enablement of SDR function for DACH

I was measured on volume and quality of leads and sales accepted opportunities.

Marketing Manager DACH region

Optimizely is the leading experimentation platform for marketers and product teams. 
I joined the company shortly after their Series C as the first marketing hire in Europe, stayed on until after Series D and left at about 70 Mio ARR.

Investors included Index Ventures, a16z, Benchmark Capital and Bain Capital Ventures. As the first marketing hire in Europe, these were my primary responsibilities and achievements:

- Localized our company website and blog into German
- Localized and adjusted our paid search campaigns with the goal to acquire new leads
- Responsible for planning, execution, budgeting to ROI reporting on our presence at leading European tech events
- Created new program of owned in-person events
- Created highly successful partner webinar program
- Responsible for email marketing, marketing automation and overall lead generation efforts in EMEA

Measured on traffic growth, lead and opportunity pipeline.

EMEA Marketing Manager

Rockstart

Rockstart is providing office space, mentorship, training and investment to startups to help them scale. I organized Rockstart Answers, an interactive event series for entrepreneurs and coaches to learn from each other. Moreover, I wrote for our blog and helped expand the services we provide to startups.

Business Development Intern

Dell

I formed part of the Large Business and Public marketing team for Multi Country Latin America, helping with the reporting and the adoption of sales tools and sales simplification in the region. Moreover, I supported and organized customer facing events in Central America as well as marketing campaigns. As part of the Data Stewardship team I was responsible for account and data accuracy and worked on streamlining and improving sales and demand generation processes in Latin America.

Marketing and Data Stewardship for Latin America

Decisionlab

I was involved with projects for large scale international clients on the German and Spanish market, working closely with their end-customers and guaranteeing the goals of the client for their marketing and corporate social responsibility campaigns were achieved.

Freelancer

Bookboon.com - World's largest eBook publisher

Bookboon is the largest publisher for educational ebooks. I was responsible for marketing our products to mainly online newspapers and education portals in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. I achieved this through online marketing, affiliate marketing and partnerships.

Marketing Director Germany

CBTA 42 Villacorzo

As a voluntary teacher I designed the curriculum for the English language programme and gave lessons in Spanish and English to around 400 students for the length of one year. Additionally, I was involved in the organization of cultural learning activities as part of the extra-curricular activities of the school.

Voluntary English teacher as part of German social service

A few things to know about me: I love building marketing teams in the software space. I deeply care about growing people, honesty and continuous feedback. Specialized in all things B2B demand generation, data driven marketing techniques and the latest marketing tools, especially in SaaS. 
I enjoy working closely with sales and CS and strive for tight GTM alignment.

Passionate, empathetic, driven & always learning. In my free time, I love to travel, run and just be outdoors.

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Brian Tomlinson

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