Teresa Barreira leads marketing at Publicis Sapient, with prior tenures at IBM, Accenture, and Deloitte. She has seen every major technology shift. AI is different.

In this episode of Earn The Right, Apoorv Agarwal sits down with Teresa Barreira, Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Publicis Sapient, to unpack how AI is fundamentally reshaping marketing, leadership, and the future of human work.

Teresa is one of the most influential marketing leaders operating at the intersection of enterprise transformation, AI adoption, and creative strategy. With more than 25 years of global leadership experience, she has built and scaled marketing organizations inside some of the world’s most complex enterprises, often during periods of rapid technological change.

But this conversation goes beyond tools and tactics.

Born and raised in a small village in northern Portugal, Teresa emigrated to the United States as a teenager. She learned English by watching soap operas. She began working in her family’s business at the age of ten. Those early experiences shaped a leadership philosophy grounded in accountability, adaptability, and human judgment. These are qualities she believes matter even more as AI becomes embedded in everyday work.

At Publicis Sapient, Teresa is redefining modern marketing by building AI-first operating models, experimenting with agentic systems, and rethinking roles around tasks rather than titles. Her mandate is clear. AI should not replace humans. It should elevate them.

This is a conversation about what actually changes inside companies once AI moves from theory to operations. It explores how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and where human judgment still defines impact.

In this episode, we’ll explore

• Why every company is becoming a software company: AI is not just automating marketing tasks. It is forcing organizations to learn how to build, test, and iterate systems as a core capability.

• Why creativity beats consistency in the age of AI: When execution becomes automated, originality and judgment become the true competitive advantage.

• Why AI replaces tasks, not jobs: Breaking roles into tasks reveals where humans create value and where automation actually helps rather than threatens.

• Why most AI pilots fail inside enterprises: They optimize existing workflows instead of redesigning how work should happen in the first place.

• Why CMOs must become builders, not just operators: Modern marketing leaders are expected to design systems, not just oversee outputs.

• Why exploration matters more than specialization: AI rewards curiosity, adaptability, and learning speed over narrow expertise.

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