Fernando Academia Jr., CDMP, PCM

Full Stack Marketer | Digital Marketing Instructor | Speaker/Trainer

I solve marketing technology challenges for mid-market companies ($5M-$50M revenue) across FinTech, HealthTech, and E-commerce.

Build and optimize marketing technology ecosystems driving measurable outcomes:

→22x-31x ROI improvements through platform optimization
→100% client retention across $50K-$66K MRR portfolios
→12-40% performance gains in customer acquisition and retention
→Email engagement improvements from 12% to 40% through AI-powered automation

📌 My MarTech Expertise

Platform Strategy & Implementation
Marketing automation (Netcore Cloud, MoEngage, Salesforce, CleverTap), CRM systems (HubSpot, Odoo, Pipedrive), analytics platforms (Tableau, Looker Studio, Power BI)

AI-Powered Optimization
Customer segmentation, predictive analytics, campaign automation, personalization at scale

Integration Architecture
Connect marketing platforms with CRM, data lakes, e-commerce systems, and enterprise applications

Team Development
Build marketing technology capabilities through training, process design, and change management

📌 Experience Highlights

Previous Leadership:

• Strategic advisor managing portfolios for top 3 digital banks, largest telemedicine platform, international e-commerce brands, and 90M+ user digital wallet
• Marketing strategist for US-based growth consultancy serving 5-10 clients
• Instructor at CIIT Philippines, teaching digital marketing to 80%+ student satisfaction

📌 Education & Executive Training
Executive MBA, Asian Institute of Management (2025)

Executive Education:

‣ Digital Transformation (Global Network for Advanced Management, Dublin)
‣ Customer-Centric Innovation & Metrics (FGV EAESP, São Paulo)
‣ CMO Leadership Program (Asian Institute of Management)

🤝Fractional CMO Services
Available for select engagements helping companies:

→Audit and optimize marketing technology stacks
→Implement AI-powered customer engagement platforms
→Build customer data and segmentation strategies
→Develop marketing performance measurement frameworks
→Train teams on marketing automation and analytics

🚀 Current Venture
Building SukiNomics, a networked, gamification-powered loyalty platform transforming customer engagement for Philippine MSMEs.

Open to: Fractional CMO roles, advisory positions, and strategic partnerships with growth-stage companies needing marketing technology leadership.

Not available for: Direct competitors to telecommunications industry.

Member

Fernando Academia Jr., CDMP, PCM, CSSWB

Time to doubt if you’re really customer-centric…
Hear me out…

Just got this a few days back… My completion certificate for the Customer-Centric Innovation, Disruption and Metrics program with FGV EAESP  in São Paulo.

Three insights I am applying immediately that I see applicable to most enterprises in the Philippines:

1️⃣Customer value chains (not the Porter’s Value Chain) reveal where disruption happens.

Professor Thales Teixeira #decoupling framework shows that startups win by breaking apart activities incumbents bundle together.

The threat comes from unhappy customers, not new technology.

2️⃣Firm-side synergies are different from customer-side synergies.

Most companies optimize for their own efficiency. The winners optimize for customer convenience. 

Magazine Luiza’s transformation proved this works even in traditional retail.

3️⃣ Growth metrics must follow customer behavior.

Measuring what matters to the company is easy. Measuring what matters to customers requires discipline.

The gap between these two measurements signals opportunity or vulnerability.

Knowing this now, would you still say you have a customer-centric orientation?

OR are you inherently firm-centric trying to appear customer-focused?

Thank you to Professor Leandro Guissoni, Ph.D.  and the FGV team for an awesome learning experience.

Fernando Academia Jr, EMBA, CDMP, PCM

Marketing Technology and Digital Transformation Leader | Building SukiNomics | 15+ Years helping eCommerce/SaaS/FinTech scale with MarTech & Strategy

Fear sat at my table for years.
I burned through it. This is what remained.

I managed 5 concurrent jobs at one point.

I delivered well enough to win awards.

3 career resets. Each one compounded.

I learned...
...in classrooms,
...in masterminds
...in conversations
...through certifications,
...through YouTube,
...and through execution.

Solo. With teams. In chaos. In structure.
Follower. Connector. Leader

In abundance. In famine.

I performed when resources were plentiful.
I performed when there was nothing left but willpower.

But none of that mattered until I dealt with fear.
↳Fear of office politics and its unspoken rules.
↳Fear of being overlooked.
↳Fear of being misunderstood.
↳Fear of being seen as arrogant.
↳Fear of being stuck in environments that do not match my pace.

Fear had a seat at my table for years.

I processed all of it.
Extracted the signal from the noise.
Kept what served me.

I no longer carry those fears.

What remains:
↳ Clear intentions about what I am building
↳ The resets. The repetitions. Enough to trust myself to lead.
↳ Freedom to choose the mission. Not just the job.
↳ Directness without tiptoeing around egos
↳ Genuine care for people and outcomes
↳ Comfort with mistakes. I course-correct fast.
↳ Relentless drive. A sense of urgency that moves before the room is ready.

BUT fear does not disappear on its own.

You burn through it until it stops controlling you.
What remains is who you actually are.

That clarity is the signal. Fear was the noise.

That shiny new platform you just launched? Give it six months. The spreadsheets will return.

More than 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail.

According to McKinsey research, organizations spend roughly six months per year managing change.

Most of that effort produces no lasting result.

The reason is counterintuitive.

Transformations do not fail because the technology is wrong.

They fail because organizations cannot absorb the change.

Me watching transformation launches since 2010:

- Millions invested in new platform
- Leadership declares victory at launch
- Dashboards everywhere
- Optimism at all-time high

Me watching the same company six months later:

- Old spreadsheets return
- Dashboards go unused
- CRM sits untouched
- Marketing, IT, and Sales back in their silos

The technology worked.

The organization did not.

Here is what actually went wrong.

No one asked who owns the data.
No one aligned the teams before the rollout.
No one mapped how Marketing, IT, and Finance would work together after launch.

New tools without cross-functional alignment do not break silos.

They create new ones.

Successful transformation leaders do something different.

They diagnose absorption capacity before selecting tools.

Absorption capacity is simple: can your organization actually use what you are buying?

They ask 5 questions before spending a single peso:

1. Can our teams actually use this?
2. Do we have the skills?
3. Will the culture support it?
4. What processes need to change first?
5. Who owns what after go-live?

Most leaders skip this work because it is uncomfortable.

It exposes gaps.
It slows down the timeline.
It forces difficult conversations across departments.

But leaders who embrace that discomfort build something durable.

The challenge is not finding better tools.

The challenge is building an organization that will not abandon them.

A person in business attire trying to drink from an industrial fire hose at full blast. Water sprays everywhere. A small cup sits unused nearby. Hyper-realistic style. The message is immediate: the problem is not the supply. The problem is capacity to absorb.

You bought the tools. You hired the people. You scheduled the meetings.

Why does nothing move?

Here is the uncomfortable truth:

Organizations invest in tools. They invest in campaigns. They invest in talent.

But nobody invests in the person who connects it all.

Look around your company right now.

Everyone attends meetings. Everyone brainstorms. Everyone operates within their own system.

But nobody owns active governance.

Nobody targets the silos. Nobody bridges the gaps between teams. Nobody connects the dots across sporadic efforts.

This is “the thing that no one owns.”

And it is killing your results.

Systems thinking calls this policy resistance. Multiple actors pull in different directions. Each resists changes made by others. Massive effort maintains a state nobody wants.

The data confirms it.

McKinsey found that martech is often used in isolation with little support, ownership, or visibility from senior leadership or the broader enterprise. 

Gartner reports that only 33% of martech capabilities are being used today. That number dropped from 58% in 2020 to 42% in 2022 to its current level. 

Read that again.

Two-thirds of what you paid for sits unused.

The problem is not that the tools lack power. Organizations lack the infrastructure, proficiencies, governance and integration to make use of them. 

47% of martech decision-makers cite stack complexity and integration challenges as key blockers that prevent them from getting value from their tools. 

So what is actually missing?

Someone needs to connect Marketing campaign data to IT infrastructure. Someone needs to align Brand messaging with Customer Experience touchpoints. Someone needs to feed Customer Support insights back into Product roadmaps. Someone needs to translate what Analytics discovered into what Operations can execute. Someone needs to ensure Customer Success metrics inform Marketing’s next move.

In systems thinking, this is the highest leverage point: information flows. Who knows what. Where data goes. What gets measured and reported. Missing feedback is one of the most common causes of system malfunction.

Here is the problem.

That role requires focus. That role requires authority. That role rarely exists on org charts.

Without cross-functional buy-in or visibility, every team tries to solve their problems their own way, leading to redundancy. 

So companies accumulate 75 tools on average. They tolerate overlapping functions. They accept data sitting in silos.

They resource everything except the integration layer.

The outcome gap is not a capability problem. It is a governance problem.

If you want enterprise outcomes, prioritize enterprise coordination.

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Channel handoffs are where revenue goes to die. This breakdown from NRF 2026 shows how to fix it with two real examples. Read full post below 👇 

This matches what I see in enterprise environments.

Fragmented architectures where customer context resets at every channel switch.

The cost shows up in abandoned journeys and manual workarounds.

The critical shift: manage omnichannel as a business capability, not as separate channel initiatives.

Read more below 👇

SVP Latam | Global Executive & Board Member | P&L & Business Transformation | Bridging AI, Strategy & Behavioral Science for Sustainable Growth

Omnicanalidade e Agentic Commerce 

Operar uma única jornada, com continuidade de contexto, dados e execução, foi um dos pontos que destaquei na NRF 2026 ao discutir a evolução para Agentic Commerce.

Omnicanalidade sem fricção acontece quando essa jornada deixa de reiniciar a cada troca de canal e passa a ser operada de forma contínua entre digital e loja. Do contrário, o impacto aparece em abandono, queda de produtividade, exceções operacionais e aumento de custos.

Essa capacidade exige integração de canais, estoque e dados, garantindo reconhecimento do cliente em todos os pontos de contato. 

Isso viabiliza decisões mais rápidas, com governança, e sustenta a evolução para Agentic Commerce, quando decisões antes manuais passam a ser orquestradas por sistemas e agentes, sob regras claras de risco, serviço e custo.

Para mostrar a execução, compartilhei dois exemplos reais da Thoughtworks: 

↳ transformação do fluxo de venda em loja com um app que leva contexto e conclusão para a ponta; 
↳ e Click and Collect tratado como decisão dinâmica para melhorar previsibilidade, produtividade e cumprimento da promessa e uso de IA e Agentes no processo.

Para a agenda executiva, isso precisa ser tratado como capacidade de negócio, não como projeto de canal. 

Na sua operação, omnicanalidade é iniciativa por canal ou capacidade ponta a ponta com governança e evolução clara rumo a Agentic Commerce?
___

English Version:

Operating a single journey with continuous context, data, and execution was one of the points I highlighted at NRF 2026 when discussing the evolution toward Agentic Commerce.

Frictionless omnichannel happens when the journey no longer resets at every channel change and is instead operated continuously across digital and physical touchpoints. 

When it does reset, the impact shows up in abandonment, lower productivity, operational exceptions, and higher costs.

This capability depends on integrating channels, inventory, and data, ensuring consistent customer recognition across touchpoints.

That enables faster, governed decisions and supports the shift toward Agentic Commerce, where previously manual decisions are orchestrated by systems and agents under clear constraints around risk, service, and cost.

To illustrate execution, I shared two real Thoughtworks examples: 

↳ transforming in-store sales with an app that brings context and completion to the frontline; 
​​↳ and Click and Collect treated as a dynamic decision to improve predictability, productivity, and promise-keeping ( AI and Agents embedded in the operation).

From an executive perspective, this must be managed as a business capability, not a channel project. 

In your organization, is omnichannel managed by channel initiatives or as an end-to-end capability with a clear path toward Agentic Commerce?

Pearl Lemon Group

Head of Public Relations

Arizona State University

Business Student

Simply Happy Cleaning 

Business Owner

Outback Steakhouse

Bartender/Waitress

I specialize in creating impactful narratives that foster connection, trust, and meaningful change. My work lies at the intersection of psychology, storytelling, and an advocate helping individuals, organizations, and communities communicate with clarity and purpose.

Previously, I led public relations strategies at an award-winning marketing agency, where I focused on brand positioning, media relations, and audience engagement. Before that, I worked as a psychotherapist specializing in relationships, emotional well-being, and mindfulness. This unique combination of experiences has given me a deep understanding of human behavior and the power of authentic communication.

Now, I’m seeking new opportunities in the mental health field, where I can apply my expertise in psychology, education, and client support to make a direct impact. I believe that mental health care should be accessible, compassionate, and rooted in evidence-based practices. Whether through therapeutic work, advocacy, or psychoeducation, my goal is to empower individuals and communities to thrive.

Outside of work, I’m passionate about mindfulness, emotional resilience, and holistic well-being. I approach every challenge with intention, ensuring clarity and purpose in all I do.

Let’s connect! I’m always open to meaningful conversations and opportunities in the mental health space!

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