AT&T’s CFO and CMO have key advice on how to think about marketing

Good morning. Traditionally, many CFOs viewed marketing as a cost center, but more are now seeing it as a growth accelerator.

AT&T (No. 37 on the Fortune 500) illustrates how finance and marketing can work together to support business expansion. I sat down with Pascal Desroches, AT&T’s senior EVP and CFO, and Kellyn Smith Kenny, chief marketing and growth officer, to learn more.

CFOs often have a reputation for saying “no” to new marketing ideas, but Desroches has taken a different approach in his career.

“You can’t be in an organization where everybody’s terrified of the CFO—it just doesn’t work,” he told me. Desroches recalled advice from his mentor, the late media executive Dick Parsons: “As executives, we have to leave our door open, even for bad news, because it gives us an opportunity to problem-solve.”

Kenny agreed. “I’m working with Pascal to massively overhaul and transform the digital experience for customers,” she said. “None of that would be possible if Pascal was just saying, ‘No,’” she quipped. Desroches approaches every conversation, decision, and investment with an enterprise mindset—how do we help the company succeed? “But he also holds people accountable, which is exactly what you need your CFO to do,” Kenny added.

A focus on the customer

Desroches credits his customer-focused perspective to his 20 years in the media industry prior to becoming CFO of AT&T in 2021. Understanding and marketing to consumers was essential, he said.

AT&T’s marketing team provides insights that shape new products and services. Increasingly, customers prefer a single provider for wireless and broadband, Desroches said. “Kellyn and her team championed this, and our investments reflect their feedback,” he said.

Kenny works closely with both Desroches and is a direct report to AT&T CEO John Stankey, solving problems for each business unit within budget, he explained. “Her ability to deliver results within financial constraints has been incredibly impressive to watch,” Desroches noted.

Before joining AT&T in 2020, Kenny served as global CMO at Hilton and held senior roles at Uber, Capital One, and Microsoft. “In my bones and my DNA, I’m always thinking about how a marketing investment will drive the company’s financial performance,” she said.

Shared metrics for growth

Research backs the CFO–CMO collaboration. A recent McKinsey analysis of Fortune 500 executive teams, based on publicly available data, found that companies with a single growth-focused executive, like a CMO, grow up to 2.3 times faster. Successful marketing teams use shared KPIs to demonstrate financial impact, making it easier for CFOs to support new initiatives.

One of Desroches and Kenny’s joint projects—the AT&T Guarantee, introduced in January—promises reliable connectivity, fair deals, and prompt service. If AT&T falls short, it takes corrective action, such as bill credits.

“We anticipated a certain amount of credits, but the actual need has been lower,” Kenny said. She and Desroches credit AT&T employees for reducing outages and keeping customer wait times under five minutes.

Since launching the AT&T Guarantee, the company has seen higher net promoter scores (NPS) following network disruptions. Finance and marketing teams jointly track NPS, “brand love,” and the share of customers who bundle multiple services. Other shared metrics include customer lifetime value, average revenue per account, and churn—which is decreasing among customers who’ve experienced issues, Kenny said.

AT&T also reported on Wednesday that it added 401,000 net postpaid phone connections in Q2, reflecting strong customer growth.

A finance person sitting at your leadership team table, “who is fluent in the practice of marketing and growth goes a long way,” Kenny said.

Have a good weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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Fortune 500 Power Moves

Stephen Williamson, SVP and CFO of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (No. 104), has decided to retire from the company, effective March 31, 2026. Jim Meyer, VP of financial operations since 2023, will succeed Williamson as CFO, on March 1, 2026. Meyer, age 46, joined Thermo Fisher in 2009 and held a number of finance leadership positions of increasing responsibility within the laboratory products, analytical instruments and customer channels businesses.

Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.

More notable moves this week

James G. Mackey was appointed CFO of BankUnited Inc. (NYSE: BKU). Mackey will join the company as senior executive vice president, reporting to BankUnited chairman, president and CEO Rajinder P. Singh, effective Aug. 15. He will assume the role of CFO on Nov. 1. Mackey will succeed longtime CFO Leslie Lunak, who plans to retire effective Jan. 1, 2026. Most recently, Mackey served as the CFO for Wells Fargo’s consumer lending division. Previously, he was the CFO for Freddie Mac and Ally Financial and was a divisional CFO for Bank of America’s corporate investments, corporate treasury and private equity divisions.

Hyeji Kang was appointed CFO of Allianz Commercial and Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE ("AGCS"), effective Oct. 1. She will succeed Oskar Buchauer, who has decided to step down. Hyeji became CFO at Allianz Re in March 2024, having joined AGCS in 2015 as chief actuary in the Americas region. She was later head of actuarial function, global head of reinsurance and catastrophe management, and head of global performance steering for AGCS and Allianz Commercial.

Will McDade was appointed CFO of Alphia, one of the largest pet food manufacturers in North America. Before joining Alphia, he served for 10 years as CFO and secretary of Interstate Batteries, where he led accounting, finance, IT, strategy, procurement, quality, customer service, and M&A. He additionally served as chief operating officer in 2024. Prior to Interstate, McDade spent 15 years with Keurig Dr Pepper, where he held multiple senior leadership positions in both supply chain and finance, and led a five-year transformation program.

Robert McMahon was named CFO of West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. (NYSE: WST), effective Aug. 4. McMahon will succeed Bernard Birkett, CFO, who announced his intention to retire earlier this year. McMahon has been the CFO of Agilent Technologies Inc. since 2018. Before that, he was the CFO at Hologic, Inc. and spent 20 years with Johnson & Johnson, in executive financial roles of increasing responsibility.

Brian Ketcham will retire from his position as SVP and CFO of Lindsay Corporation (NYSE: LNN), a global manufacturer, effective Dec. 31. Since joining Lindsay in April 2016, Ketcham has guided the company’s financial strategy. The company is launching a search for a new CFO with the assistance of an executive recruiting firm. Ketcham will serve as a consultant commencing upon his retirement and through Dec. 31, 2026.

Big Deal

Bearish bets are accelerating in parts of the stock market this year. Short sellers have again increased their positions against health care and consumer discretionary stocks through the first half of the year, making them the most shorted sectors in U.S. equity markets by a wide margin, according to a report by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Short interest in health care reached 6.5% at the end of June, up from 5.3% at the end of 2024, while short interest in the consumer discretionary sector stood at 6.1%, up from 5.0% at the close of last year.