Jo van Vuuren. Marketing at the highest level.

I've spent more than two decades at the senior end of marketing — as CMO, Marketing Director, and VP of Marketing in businesses that were either defining their category or fighting hard to stay at the top of it. That list includes lastminute.com, Monster.com, Holiday Autos, and TES Global, the world's largest professional network for teachers. The common thread across all of it was figuring out how to connect what a business does to the people who need it — and making that connection work commercially.

More recently, I have chosen to work directly with founders and leadership teams as a fractional CMO and strategic advisor. The businesses I work with are typically at an inflection point: past the stage where tactical marketing execution is enough, not yet ready for a full-time senior hire, and looking for someone who can come in, get up to speed quickly, and start making things move. That is where I work best.

My sector experience is broad by design. I've led marketing in tech and SaaS, in education from EdTech platforms to higher education institutions, in green tech and clean energy, and in hospitality. Each sector has its own language, its own buying psychology, its own competitive dynamics. Having worked across all of them means I bring perspective that specialists rarely can — and I'm not wedded to a single playbook.

I have also been through two business sales — as the marketing lead on both sides of the process. That means I understand what commercial growth readiness for a sale actually looks like from the inside: what investors and acquirers look for, what due diligence surfaces, and how to build the marketing foundations — strategy, data, brand, and positioning — that hold up under scrutiny. For founders building toward an exit, that experience matters.