World Vision CMO resigns after 2-year transformation stint
- 12 April, 2019 10:38
World Vision’s chief marketing, data and product officer, Teresa Sperti, has resigned after a two-year stint that has seen her transforming the not-for-profit’s marketing and member engagement.
Sperti joined World Vision in the newly created role in May 2017 from Officeworks, where she spearheaded the retailer’s national CRM and digital marketing efforts. She has built a solid career in marketing and digital and her resume includes stints heading up digital, ecommerce and loyalty at Coles’ liquor division, marketing and product leadership at realestateview.com.au and The IT Job Board in the UK.
In a statement to CMO, Sperti said she was ready for a change and was weighing up several avenues to explore professionally. She plans to take some time off to consider her next move and undertake consultancy and advisory work.
“My time at World Vision has been one of great growth, challenge and has been incredibly rewarding,” she commented. “It has been a very fast and furious two years leading transformation efforts and one which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I wish the organisation the very best of luck for the future.”
Sperti said her proudest overarching achievement during her World Vision tenure has been her ability to develop a highly engaged, high-performing team, now sitting at 70 employees. Over the past two years, engagement has improved 25 per cent.
It’s also been a time of large-scale transformation across marketing, data and product. “We’ve been building the foundational capability to drive and accelerate growth in new segments and enable diversification across revenue streams,” Sperti said.
Among these capabilities has been the successful implementation of marketing automation and a data lake to deliver data agility, accessibility and automated experience delivery.
In an interview with CMO last year, Sperti described her marketing approach as an investment into the charity, “not a cost”.
“You can’t deepen impact without growing your donor base,” Sperti says. “But equally, investment in technology enables us to be more efficient and effective as a charity, and that’s really important as well. So while investment does cost money, there are inherent benefits, both for the way we engage supporters, but also in the way we operate as an organisation that are important when you’re operating in the charity industry.”
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Sperti has also established a new product development capability for the organisation to drive product innovation to diversify revenue streams and meet changing donor needs. What’s more, growth in child sponsorship acquisition has recorded its best results in the last seven years.
It was work that saw Sperti achieve 16th position on the 2018 edition of the CMO50 of Australia’s most innovative and effective marketers.
World Vision has now appointed Zane Kuramoto as acting chief marketing, data and product officer while it seeks to confirm its longer-term recruitment plan.
“Teresa joined World Vision at a time when there was a need to transform our marketing and product function and donor experiences and in just two years drove rapid change across the organisation,” World Vision Australia CEO, Claire Rogers, said in a statement.
“Teresa has successfully transformed our marketing, brand, product and data strategy and approach to achieve greater impact in an increasingly competitive environment.”
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