Episode #297: 

Valeria Balaro, Chief Marketing Officer at Star, explains how AI is forcing companies to rethink growth, talent development, marketing influence, and customer engagement. She discusses why human judgment, differentiated thinking, and cross-functional collaboration are becoming more valuable in the AI era. She also shares why modern CMOs must evolve beyond lead generation into true revenue leadership.

“Company growth is changing completely, and AI is accelerating it greatly. It’s an accelerator, but an accelerator can go both ways, into the positive and into the negative.” – Valeria Balaro

In this episode, Valeria shares how AI is reshaping growth strategies, marketing leadership, customer engagement, and workforce development. She explains why differentiated thinking, human judgment, and cross-functional collaboration are becoming essential competitive advantages in modern business. The conversation also explores why CMOs must evolve into revenue leaders who influence systems, operations, and long-term company growth.

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[Transcript]

[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspective podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we’ve got a really interesting conversation with Valeria Balaro. And Valeria, you’re a Chief Marketing Officer at Star, and Star is, the way you described it, and I’m going to ask you to expand a little bit more, is an AI-native technology consulting firm.

[00:00:27] Steve MacDonald: And we’re going to talk about AI in ways today. It’s such a popular conversation, right, to have on podcasts and things like that. But we’re going to really talk about how, in the right ways, it’s putting pressure on the C-suite, on the right ways it’s having us rethink how we bring in talent and we nurture talent, how we develop value for our clients.

[00:00:51] Steve MacDonald: It’s not just about doing things more efficiently, right? Which is amazing, and that’s a big, big part of it. But if you would not mind explaining a little bit more about your background before we get started.

[00:01:04] Valeria Balaro: Sure. Hi, Steve, it’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:07] Valeria Balaro: It’s very exciting to be having the conversation with you here today. To share a little bit about Star and myself. As you mentioned, I’m CMO at Star. Star is about a 1,000-people-strong technology consulting firm. We call ourselves AI-native technology consulting, and what that means essentially is that we support our clients across a number of industries like automotive, health, media, and finance with product platform development and digital transformation, and we do it in an AI-native way.

[00:01:39] Valeria Balaro: That means that the way we create technology, the way we create code, the way we design is AI native. So our designers and engineers, they are using AI in the development process. They are also advising our clients on the use of AI. We have a very strong regulatory consulting practice as well that helps our clients develop AI solutions that are going to fit within the regulations and be approved and be ethical.

[00:02:11] Valeria Balaro: You know, we’re focusing very strongly on that element. And of course, you know, we have been around for about 18 years, and we were not always AI native because that did not exist. In the last sort of two or three years, we have made that shift. And really, it’s changing the whole physics of delivery.

[00:02:30] Valeria Balaro: So if, for example, in the past we could take two weeks to create a proof of concept, that’s something that can be done in a day or in a couple of hours now. So, we have sometimes projects where AI writes all the code and, you know, humans just check it, et cetera. So, the way companies like ours are able to work now is completely changing.

[00:02:53] Valeria Balaro: So yeah. So that’s why I’m here to talk about it. It’s very exciting.

[00:02:56] Steve MacDonald: I love that. It’s changing the way companies are thinking and growing. Like you talked about, the growth rules are being rewritten, right? How we compete, how we create value for our clients, and in the timeframe that they expect it.

[00:03:12] Steve MacDonald: If you could just kind of break it down and say, how do you think the growth rules are being rewritten today, and what do we need to know about that?

[00:03:21] Valeria Balaro: Yeah. So I think growth rules, you know, how a company grows is changing completely, and AI accelerating is accelerating it greatly.

[00:03:30] Valeria Balaro: And I mean, it is equally exciting and terrifying because, you know, on one hand, you are able to automate so much and do things so much faster. On the other hand, if you do not have really good human judgment, then you could be taking bad decisions really, really quickly, you know? So it’s an accelerator, but an accelerator can go both ways, into the positive and into the negative.

[00:03:58] Valeria Balaro: I think it’s forcing every company to answer what part of the value that we create is coming from the craft and what is just the labor. And I think that’s kind of an important difference because you need to understand what do we have to double down on and what we could never eliminate, and we need to make sure that we hone that into a unique differentiator, competitive advantage.

[00:04:25] Valeria Balaro: And what can we afford to just automate? What of it is just repetitive tasks, labor that can be taken on by machines effectively? So, that forces people to think about their companies differently and really, really understand why people buy from you. Why do they choose you over your competitors? You know, and double down on those things.

[00:04:46] Steve MacDonald: So what you just said there, why do people buy from us? Why do they see us as different and better than our competitors? And in the world of B2B, and Forrester said it really well, that content’s the foundation, right? It’s our entry point. It’s our handshake.

[00:05:04] Steve MacDonald: It’s our introduction. It’s what demonstrates our value. It’s what communicates our advantages. But you talk about, and this was one of the first areas of AI that saw a lot of disruption, right, was content, and then just the explosion of noise that came out. And, you know, you’ve been working so long now in AI and working with companies, and as a CMO you know the importance of content.

[00:05:31] Steve MacDonald: And so what’s your perspective on this, right? You know, like, how do we stand out when everybody can create content that looks pretty good, sounds pretty good these days?

[00:05:40] Valeria Balaro: Yeah, absolutely. Well, content is our fuel, right? As a marketer, especially as a B2B marketer, that is the key thing that we produce. So it is very important.

[00:05:50] Valeria Balaro: And, you know, people say AI is the great equalizer, and it is. It’s absolutely true. But what that means is that everybody across the world, whoever has access to a mobile phone, can create content, right? And they all have access to the same tools. So they can create content of the same level of quality as each other, regardless of your experience, et cetera.

[00:06:18] Valeria Balaro: So, that equalizer element has a dark side, and the dark side is the fact that it can create a sea of sameness. And, you know, basically, I would say that the easier it becomes to create content, the more valuable good content becomes.

[00:06:36] Valeria Balaro: And of course, you know, there is a difference between really bad, lazy prompting that would create just this slop, as we call it, and advanced, thoughtful prompting where people really understand how they need to create content using AI, et cetera.

[00:06:55] Valeria Balaro: But even so, I would say that what differentiates us is the original thought, is the ability to have a differentiated, unique point of view. You know, at Star, we use AI to create content, but we never use it to create thought leadership.

[00:07:11] Valeria Balaro: And the key difference here is that, for thought leadership, we want to have that expert view, that thinking from our specialists who have years and years of experience. But then we can take that and translate it into five blog posts and three articles and social media posts, et cetera.

[00:07:30] Valeria Balaro: But you need to have a base that is based on real, true human differentiated thinking that comes from experience and judgment. For example, I am a Forbes contributor, and I sometimes write articles for Forbes, and those take me hours to write.

[00:07:46] Valeria Balaro: And because I’m synthesizing my experience, I’m trying to find something unique about the way I think, rather than just generating tasks through AI. And I think that’s the kind of content that is useful and that is valuable, not because it’s perfectly optimized for search but because it’s genuinely mine. It translates my thoughts.

[00:08:08] Valeria Balaro: And so I think that’s the edge that AI cannot replicate. So yeah, I think if you want to stand out, have something worth saying, and that authentic thought is going to be more valuable than ever.

[00:08:22] Steve MacDonald: Another way to interpret what you just said is because AI is forcing us, disrupting us, AI is forcing us to do what we should always have done before anyways.

[00:08:35] Steve MacDonald: The strategy that you just talked about, real authentic expert point of view, founded in the voice of the customer, their pain points, their challenges, that has always been our strategy, right? What AI has done is it’s allowed us to sound a lot smarter without having to do that deep work, having to have that unique point of view, right?

[00:08:59] Steve MacDonald: It’s like, wow, that was really good. Look at that. Let’s just put that out. But we do not talk about AI as reinforcing the fundamentals of what is needed to differentiate, to create a competitive advantage, to establish ourselves like a Gartner or Forrester, like a trusted advisor, right? That was my takeaway from what you were just saying there, is we have got to double down on the things that we know make us successful, that we know differentiate us, right?

[00:09:30] Steve MacDonald: That we know will build trust in the marketplace behind our voice. So thank you. I think that’s a very different perspective than most people talk about AI, and I appreciate it. You talked about how AI is changing how you develop talent internally, and I love to say here, but I’ve never explored it from this perspective. You know, PE firms, venture capital firms, they invest in the talent first, the idea second.

[00:10:00] Steve MacDonald: That’s how important high-performing teams are to what creates growth, right? You could have a phenomenal idea. If we do not have the team to execute it, it’s not going to happen. So how do you think about AI and talent and how we have to develop and think about talent differently today?

[00:10:21] Valeria Balaro: Yeah.

[00:10:22] Valeria Balaro: That’s a really interesting question, Steve, because, you know, another question I get asked a lot too often is, with AI being there, do we need as many people? You know, do we need juniors, right? So it’s, you know, how AI is changing that equation of what are people actually doing in work, and how do they grow, and how do they grow that expertise and that unique voice and that experience.

[00:10:50] Valeria Balaro: And I think one of the darker sides of AI, I think, is that so much of the work that typically was done by juniors can be automated. And of course, it’s great for cost savings, but we are essentially now creating a vacuum in which, you know, people who are young, who do not have experience or a unique point of view yet, but have to develop one, they do not have an opportunity to do so.

[00:11:18] Valeria Balaro: You know, and at some point they will have to progress in their careers. They will have to become managers. Let’s say, you know, they have mastered AI. They have started using it maybe somehow indiscriminately, but they’re getting away with it. And they’re becoming managers, but they have never learned to be practitioners.

[00:11:38] Valeria Balaro: So what kind of managers can they be, right? You need that judgment. And I’m always going back to this, like, judgment, you know. There was a time where judgment was a bit of a negative word. I feel it’s never been more positive than now. You need to have judgment, and that comes only through trying something repeatedly and failing, you know?

[00:12:00] Valeria Balaro: Because you write a headline, you get it bad, you do something wrong, your boss gives you bad feedback, you feel really ashamed. That’s where learning happens, right? That feeling of like, “You know, I really messed it up. I do not want to feel like that again.” That’s how you learn what’s good and what’s not good.

[00:12:21] Valeria Balaro: So you need to go through that before you’re able to develop the instinct for what is actually good, what does that look like. And so, you know, if AI is writing those things, creating those headlines, doing the job that the junior person would have done before, and it’s doing kind of an okay job and, you know, where is that exposure that can create judgment for the person, right?

[00:12:48] Valeria Balaro: So everything is kind of okay, but how do you learn what separates okay from great or okay from not so okay? So yeah, you’re maybe learning to edit, but you’re not really learning to create. And I think, you know, that’s a real risk for the young people in the workplace.

[00:13:08] Valeria Balaro: But another thing that I have noticed is that also, you know, some senior people are using AI also indiscriminately, and that is a bigger problem and a less forgivable one. Because I think, you know, you can tell, and especially when, you know, a senior person outsources somewhat strategic decisions to AI, you can tell, and I think that is, you know, something that can erode a lot of trust really quickly in the senior people as well.

[00:13:40] Valeria Balaro: So I think you just have to be really careful, you know, really deliberate. Obviously, you cannot avoid, and you should not avoid using AI, but you need to build that judgment, and you need to always exercise that judgment.

[00:13:49] Steve MacDonald: So exercising that judgment is obviously a lot more than content creation. And you talked about that the role of the CMO is actually growing and how it infiltrates really the entire organization.

[00:14:06] Steve MacDonald: And here’s why this is important. I talk to a lot of CMOs. I talk to a lot of CMOs that have imposter syndrome, that do not feel like they have a seat at the table, that feel like they’re as good as the last lead that they brought into the organization, that they’re on top of one of the biggest cost centers in the organization, so therefore they feel kind of like they’re the CMO in the bubble, right?

[00:14:27] Steve MacDonald: And we’re the shortest tenure in the C-suite. So the CMO role needs purpose in a way that it has never had it before. And when we talked, I thought, “Oh my goodness, everybody’s got to hear this.” So you talked about how the CMO role has to influence things like systems and revenue and operations, and we’ve never talked that way before.

[00:14:53] Steve MacDonald: So I would love to hear your vision of the CMO role and how it’s changing.

[00:14:59] Valeria Balaro: Yeah. So, you touched on something that’s absolutely true and has been a big frustration for every CMO, is that being as good as the last lead you brought in, or being seen as a cost center rather than a revenue generator.

[00:15:18] Valeria Balaro: Or even, you know, in many companies you do not have the systems, the ability to attribute the success that marketing has created. So I think that is the big issue with our role because, on one hand, marketing can and does influence revenue and create revenue quite directly.

[00:15:38] Valeria Balaro: But at the same time, it does so much more than that, right? And some things that we cannot quantify, you know. So how do you quantify brand? I mean, there are some methodologies that people use, but realistically when you have your CFO at the table, then, you know, he does not necessarily want to hear about brand equity and what that means. He wants to know how much money you’re spending and how much money you’re bringing in, right?

[00:16:01] Valeria Balaro: So I think that’s really, really key. And more than ever now, marketing is seen as a revenue-generating function, and there is an expectation that you have to show ROI. So at Star, I run both marketing and new business development.

[00:16:18] Valeria Balaro: So the BDR team is a part of the marketing organization, which would have been an unusual combination a couple of years ago. But now, you know, there’s more and more teams that are structured this way because marketing does not stop at lead generation.

[00:16:35] Valeria Balaro: You know, at Star, marketing contributes between 30% and 60% of pipeline, of net new pipeline. And we track our contribution all the way down to revenue, right? So we know that attribution is really strict, and we are showing that on a quarterly basis. That is the expectation of CMOs and, yeah, of the marketing teams. Nobody cares about leads anymore, right? You need to show revenue.

[00:17:03] Valeria Balaro: And so I think, you know, when you said that CMO is becoming this orchestrator of systems, yes, 100%. Because to be able to show that, you need to have influence on what is the technology that your company has, what systems do you have to be able to show that attribution all the way from the lead from your website down to revenue.

[00:17:23] Valeria Balaro: You need to have good customer data. Again, that’s kind of a decision that is jointly owned with the CTO. You need to have oversight or good collaboration with revenue operations, with product experience, et cetera.

[00:17:41] Valeria Balaro: Marketing is sitting in the center of all of these functions, and it’s really exposed to all of them because if you do not have access or if you do not have influence over one of these areas, then you’re not going to be able to create a true revenue-generating function, because you need all of these little pieces of the puzzle to work together.

[00:17:57] Valeria Balaro: And yeah, as I mentioned, you know, revenue is a part of the story. It’s a part of a bigger story, but one that you cannot always tell easily or people are not always interested to hear. So I see it as brand and pipeline being part of one story. It’s not two separate issues. We need to weave them together and show how they are influencing what we do and helping the company grow from different angles.

[00:18:28] Valeria Balaro: So I think, you know, we need to reframe how we evaluate the CMO’s effectiveness and not look at, okay, you know, as a CMO, not ask yourself the question, “How can I get credit for the marketing contribution?” But, you know, rather, “What is it that I can influence? How can I influence the growth of this company?”

[00:18:53] Valeria Balaro: And some of this influence will come through traditionally brand activities. Some of this influence will come through traditionally performance-based activities. So at Star, we always measure pipeline, we always measure revenue, but also since last year, we have started measuring influence.

[00:19:11] Valeria Balaro: And that’s, you know, I’m still showing it alongside the other metrics to the board because I want them to get used to it and to understand what that means before that becomes the primary metric. But I’m really convinced that is the most important thing we can show. How does marketing influence, rather than only focusing on pipeline?

[00:19:34] Steve MacDonald: So much to unpack there. I love that marketing attribution is extraordinarily important, but the more and more we say, “Look at the five touch points we had, therefore we had huge influence,” right? It’s becoming less meaningful just to show attribution numbers.

[00:19:55] Steve MacDonald: And what the organization wants and what it needs is for marketing to not be just part of a baton pass. “We created the lead, we had these touch points, there you go. It’s yours, sales, take it,” right? That we need to and are expected to take part all the way through, not even just the close of the deal, right? But there’s customer marketing, right? You know, NRR is really important and how we retain customers.

[00:20:23] Steve MacDonald: And so I love your perspective that we’re more involved, we’re at the center of all of this as an ecosystem. So my question is, how do you show influence? And how do you actually not only show it, but how do you activate it inside the organization?

[00:20:42] Valeria Balaro: Yes. So that’s a really good question. That’s back to the systems, right?

[00:20:48] Valeria Balaro: Because you cannot just show it as easily if you do not have the systems in place. So for example, at Star we started using Demandbase, and that has been really, really helpful to show the influence side of things because we can see all of the touch points, you know, as you mentioned, that it takes to close a deal.

[00:21:05] Valeria Balaro: So we operate within quite high-value deals, right? So our sales cycles are very, very long. You know, we need to have tens of touch points. We need to engage buying committees of 10, 12, 16 people. So it’s a complex process to sell something at Star. So having that visibility is really, really important.

[00:21:30] Valeria Balaro: And having some really clear rules, okay, you know, with attribution you always have to, because otherwise you end up with meaningless data. So you need to have really strict rules about what is the time period we’re going to look at, which activities are we going to consider, you know, marketing versus sales, how are we going to assign different weights to the different activities, et cetera.

[00:21:58] Valeria Balaro: So sort of we measure it in that way. We measure all the touch points, and we see which ones of those have been meaningful, and then we will say, “Okay, this was a meaningful touch point.”

[00:22:10] Valeria Balaro: For example, a person did not just read an article on the website, but they have taken an action, right? They have joined the webinar. They’ve given us some of their time. They’ve come to an event. They’ve engaged in a, you know, they’ve asked a question during a webinar. You know, something like that.

[00:22:27] Valeria Balaro: So we want them to have taken an action and to really engage with us, and then we measure all of this engagement, and we’re like, “Yes, this was a meaningful touch point.”

[00:22:39] Valeria Balaro: So, I think, to be able to do that, you need to really focus on your buyer’s journey. How does your buyer buy? And really understand that. You know, what is it that needs to happen for them? So you need to take quite an empathetic point of view from your buyer’s eyes.

[00:22:59] Valeria Balaro: And I really like this phrase, and I do not know where I’ve heard it. It’s not mine, but I do not know who to attribute it to. But it said, “As marketers, our job is not to sell. It’s to help buyers buy.” And I really love that because you cannot be a good marketer if you do not understand how your buyer buys.

[00:23:17] Valeria Balaro: So I think understanding the journey, understanding where the different touch points in the journey that we can influence or that we can make meaningful so that they remember us, even if they’re not ready to buy yet. How do we track that over time? How do we make sure there’s continuity?

[00:23:36] Valeria Balaro: So yeah, having that journey really mapped out and having a good understanding of what happens at every stage, that’s how we can influence.

[00:23:38] Steve MacDonald: So what you just said there, like how do we help at every stage? I think as marketers, we need to be thinking more about every stage. And here’s an example.

[00:23:40] Steve MacDonald: This was a Forrester stat. 86% of B2B deals stall at some point, right? So we tend to have inside of our own organizations, like, “Get us into the conversation with the right people, we’re going to close our fair share,” right? Our thinking should be, “That’s going to be one son of a gun to close,” right? We’re going to work hard.

[00:23:59] Steve MacDonald: It’s going to feel like it’s lost, like it’s one step out the door. We’re going to have to resuscitate. That should be our mentality, right? And so that’s very late-stage deals, right? And the later the stage of the deal, typically the less involved marketing can be.

[00:24:15] Steve MacDonald: But those are some of the places where marketing or product or conversations with other executives in the company really go a long way. It’s just one example. Like what would be your suggestion or just your point of view for how CMOs can stay involved, right? And not have influence really start to wane as the deal progresses, because that’s not what our board wants.

[00:24:39] Steve MacDonald: That’s not what our CEO wants. That’s not what our CRO wants, right? We all need to be working as a team all the way through. So when you started talking about influence and being involved at all stages, I just think that we’re, as an industry, as CMOs, we’re not as good. Like the longer it goes, the more we’re reliant on somebody else to be really taking the ball and running with it.

[00:25:09] Valeria Balaro: Yeah. I think the difference here is how do you measure success?

[00:25:14] Valeria Balaro: And if you measure success through the number of leads that you have delivered, you have no incentive to stay connected to the later stages of the buying process, right? If you’re like, “Oh, we’ve delivered 1,000 leads this time. They’re hot leads. Great. Off you go, guys. We’ve done our job.” You know, pat ourselves on the back.

[00:25:32] Valeria Balaro: That’s… Yeah. And then we get that friction between sales and marketing because sales are like, “These were not good quality leads,” and, you know, “They’re not doing it.” You know the story, right?

[00:25:46] Valeria Balaro: So I think we need to reward right behavior with right metrics. So when I set the OKRs for my team, there is no OKR about leads. There is nothing about leads in there. There’s nothing about MQLs. There’s nothing about SQLs. Nothing. We have OKRs around pipeline and revenue.

[00:26:07] Valeria Balaro: And if you’re, as a marketer, you cannot open pipeline, right? You cannot close a deal as a marketer, right? That needs to be done by sales. So we need to put in place processes and rituals that allow us to be involved at all of those stages and not just at a stage of, “Here we go. Here’s a lead. We’re washing our hands now.”

[00:26:32] Valeria Balaro: And so when the team is incentivized based on revenue and pipeline, they are very much interested to make sure that, you know, the meeting takes place, there’s a follow-up, that they have shared something, and, “Have you invited them to our webinar, and have you shared this new thought leadership,” et cetera, et cetera.

[00:26:55] Valeria Balaro: So the team is actively working with the sales team and reminding them to do the different touch points, and reminding them that, you know, we have this really relevant piece of content that has just come out that is going to be relevant to this client because we know they’ve been engaging on our website with similar content, right?

[00:27:16] Valeria Balaro: So we’re constantly following this because, you know, we have these high-value clients and high-value prospects. So we are following them personally, and we are looking, you know, where can we add value to them so that we can help progress their deal through the pipeline.

[00:27:36] Valeria Balaro: And I think, you know, too many times marketing is focused on top of the funnel and not enough on the whole funnel, right? And also too frequently marketing is only focused on new business and not on existing clients.

[00:27:51] Valeria Balaro: So I think, you know, we constantly at every stage of the funnel have to prove that we are credible, that we are the right partner, that we are relevant, we really understand them, we speak their language. We just need to do that continuously even after they buy.

[00:28:06] Steve MacDonald: I have to tell you, you just had my number one takeaway from everything that we’ve talked about here. And I was writing it down, and I’m going to have to go back and listen to it again.

[00:28:19] Steve MacDonald: But you said, “We have to be personally following these opportunities, and we have to be thinking about at every stage, am I sharing? Am I reengaging? Is the meeting happening?” Right? The picture that I got was, remember as kids, like, we’d do the three-legged race, right? Where you’d tie one leg together and you’d have to work in unison together, right?

[00:28:39] Steve MacDonald: What I took away is you working in unison with sales in a way that is atypical from the way we’ve done it. The being so involved, right? I just love the way that you articulated that.

[00:28:53] Steve MacDonald: And so what I’d love to now ask you, one last question. That was my whole takeaway from this conversation. If you had one thing that you wanted anyone that’s going to be consuming this podcast to take away, the C-suite executives that are going to be watching this podcast, what’s the one most important thing that you would want them to remember?

[00:29:07] Valeria Balaro: Do not underestimate marketing and marketing’s importance. And that’s to the point that you made earlier, that so many marketers feel like imposters. They do not have a seat at the table. I think too many companies make marketers feel like that.

[00:29:25] Valeria Balaro: You know, they see marketing as this kind of a nice-to-have department that can do some fun things, but is not really generating business. It’s more like a support function. And I mean, in many cases it is, but I do not think that’s just the fault of the marketers. I think it’s a combined situation.

[00:29:46] Valeria Balaro: I think marketing can be an incredibly effective channel for revenue generation, but it needs alignment on the board level, on this most senior level of the organization. You need to have the trust of your CEO, of your CTO, of your CFO.

[00:30:03] Valeria Balaro: You need to have really strong collaboration with the sales team. You need to be there, and you need to understand their life and their point of view, and how difficult it is to go and speak to clients or with people that you’ve never met, and to pitch and to try to sell to people who do not want to be sold to.

[00:30:22] Valeria Balaro: Like, you need to have empathy for those people and how difficult their jobs are, and to understand how you can make it easier for them. So I think really see marketing as a revenue-generating function, and demand that from your marketers.

[00:30:39] Valeria Balaro: If you are a CEO, demand that from your marketing department, that you need to show me how you generate revenue. And that will force your marketing team to, if they’re not doing it yet, create a deeper collaboration with sales, to understand revenue operations, to understand product better.

[00:31:00] Valeria Balaro: If they are going to be measured on pipeline and revenue, they’re going to find a way to do that. So yeah, I would say do not treat marketing as a support function.

[00:31:06] Steve MacDonald: I wish we had another two hours because this is fascinating, and I just want to say thank you because the mission of this podcast is to bring different C-suite perspectives, experiences, insights, solutions, and failures together and let’s share and let’s learn.

[00:31:23] Steve MacDonald: If we can do that, that’s the rising tide that lifts all boats. And you were a phenomenal part of that rising tide today. And I just want to say thank you for coming on today.

[00:31:34] Valeria Balaro: Thank you, Steve. I really enjoyed it and really enjoyed our chat. So thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this.