Chris Wallner

Picture of Chris Wallner
With a track record of major wins in the financial industry, accomplished product management, development and e-commerce executive Chris Wallner is now dispensing executive-level marketing insights as a member of Chief Outsiders. Wallner has previously notched C-level marketing roles for banking titans Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and for internet startup iOwn.com. Most recently, Chris led product management, strategic partnerships and digital channels at Rabobank, a specialty, California-based agricultural bank with $15 billion in deposits. Under his command, Rabobank recorded J.D. Power benchmarks in customer satisfaction for five consecutive years.
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Recent Posts

What Is Marketing, Really? Why Founders and CEOs Must Lead the Most Misunderstood Function in the Business

What Is Marketing, Really? Why Founders and CEOs Must Lead the Most Misunderstood Function in the Business

Thu, Jul 9, 2026 | Posted by Michael Lang

 

Executive Takeaways

  • Marketing is a core enterprise capability, not a support function, and deserves the same CEO-level engagement as Finance and Operations.
  • Without a unifying system, individually reasonable decisions accumulate into random acts of marketing.
  • Modern tools make execution faster, but they don't create strategic clarity, so the gap between activity and alignment keeps widening.
  • CEOs can't delegate marketing entirely. Leading it means ensuring insight, strategy, and execution stay connected.

This blog is part of Chief Outsiders’ Marketing Leadership for CEOs series, an ongoing examination of the critical dimensions of Marketing (the capital “M” is intentional, as you’ll see) that every CEO needs to understand.

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