Carol Carpenter: Hustle and Humor | CMO Profile

Carol Carpenter (second from right) with her husband and two children.

What is the best career advice you've ever received?

I've received a lot of guidance and career advice throughout the years. Very early on, I think my kids were 5 and 3 years old at the time, I was fortunate to understand the concept of work-life integration. This was a time when work-life balance was a relatively new term. People were working on a few emails from home, but smart devices weren't as ubiquitous as today.

My mentor told me, 'You're juggling a lot of balls, and some of those balls are glass. Your family is a glass ball. You can't drop it.' I still remember being on conference calls with my team in Japan while I was in the kitchen cooking meals for my family. And one of my kids would say, 'Mom, I think they said your name!'

How does VMware align with your values?

I came to VMware for a few reasons. First and foremost, for the people and our culture. I love the fact that our EPIC2 values are demonstrated every single day. I'm blown away by the sense of community and leadership evident across our entire organization, from our Power of Difference communities to our individual contributors. I am grateful to be part of a company that values its people and tries really hard to walk the talk on tough issues. It's such a huge part of how I grew up and the values that were instilled in me.

My vision for our team is that we are a more agile, strategic partner to our stakeholders, that we are data-driven and continue to embody the EPIC2 values of our company. I'm so excited to be working with the team here at VMware. I know we can and will elevate and set the bar for what world-class (business-to-business) B2B marketing can be.

You often say, 'Customer first.' How is VMware uniquely aligned to support today's businesses and leaders?

I believe in the strategic and unique position that VMware has in the tech industry and what is undeniably a multi-cloud world. Eighty percent of companies have multi-cloud approach already.* And it's going to continue to get more complicated.

VMware has the experience and offerings to transform customers' traditional infrastructure with modern cloud and application capabilities with an operating model to run any app anywhere. Key to this is providing companies with an unconditional path to the future. And what I mean by unconditional is that our customers can chart their own course on any cloud with secure and resilient infrastructure and operations thanks to the experience and offerings VMware brings to the table.

*VMware FY22 H1 Benchmark, Cloud and Applications. March 2021: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/cloud-solutions/vmw-driving-digital-business-with-app-cloud-transformation-vmware-market-insights-report.pdf.