Leslie Forde is the CEO and founder of Mom's Hierarchy of Needs, a long-time B2B marketer, a strategic advisor to HubSpot, and the author of Repair with Self Care. She also runs the longest running national parent study on pandemic and post pandemic mental health. In this episode of Women in B2B Marketing, we talk about the emotional, mental, and logistical load carried by working women and why burnout has quietly become a default state for so many of us.

Leslie shares why women struggle to ask for what we need, how the past five years have reshaped the caregiving landscape, and what leaders and companies can do to support caregivers instead of unintentionally burning them out. We also unpack the rise of the Hype Women movement, the importance of making space for asks, and how community can fuel both confidence and belonging.

Here is what we cover:

• Why self care scores have dropped below pre pandemic levels in her national study
• Warning signs of burnout that appear long before we notice them
• Why high achieving women struggle to ask for help or support
• The unseen load mothers carry and how it affects work, relationships, and health
• What employers misunderstand about caregivers and the simple changes that matter
• Why ERGs often run on unpaid labor from women and how leaders can fix that
• The link between psychological safety, vulnerability, and the ability to ask for what you need
• How the Hype Women movement creates space for community, courage, and honest requesting
• Why many mothers feel like they are failing in every role and what actually drives that feeling
• How women can start reclaiming time, rest, and care in realistic attainable ways

Key Links:

Guest: Leslie Forde: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieforde

Her book, Repair with Self Care:

https://a.co/d/fu3UGes

Mom's Hierarchy of Needs

https://momshierarchyofneeds.com

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra

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Originally published on August 26, 2024

This replay features the wonderful Surbhi Agarwal, 25+ year industry vet and former CMO at Applied Intuition. We talked about her path from engineering to product marketing to the CMO seat, what really changes when you leave companies like Intel and Google for a fast moving startup, and why she builds marketing around trust, clarity, and collaboration.

Surbhi’s story as an immigrant navigating visa setbacks, rebuilding her career across three countries, and eventually helping grow a business to 10M ARR is powerful. Her honesty about leadership, resilience, and finding your voice as a woman in B2B has stuck with me ever since.

- Jane

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In this episode of Women in B2B Marketing, host Jane Serra sits down with Surbhi Agarwal, 25+ year tech exec. Surbhi shares how she went from engineering and sales into product, then product marketing, and into the CMO role, and why she still thinks like a product marketer every single day.

This episode covers:

• Surbhi’s path from electrical engineer in India to CMO in Silicon Valley
• What she learned moving from Intel and Google to a messy, fast paced startup
• Why she believes product marketing is the strategic core of marketing, not a “support” function
• Her “golden triangle” model connecting product marketing, demand generation, and brand
• How she reorganized a 70 person global marketing team, broke down silos, and cut spend while improving performance
• The difference between running marketing in a hardware world where failure is not an option and in a software world where shipping at 80 percent is the norm
• How she uses OKRs, RACI, and skip level conversations to create clarity and psychological safety
• The early career visa setback that forced her to move back to India, then to London, Taiwan, and France, and how that built resilience and a deep customer mindset
• Her “full glass of trust” philosophy and how she builds collaborative, high trust teams across cultures and time zones
• Why she tells younger women to stop assuming men and women are treated the same at work, and to find their voice and negotiate earlier

Surbhi also shares the kind of honest advice we do not hear enough in leadership circles, including why waiting quietly to be rewarded rarely works, and how women can navigate ambition inside systems that are still far from equal.

Key Links

Guest: Surbhi Agarwal, 25+ year Tech Executive/ CMO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/surbhiagarwal/

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/

Kim Winter has spent nearly a decade building and scaling product marketing across Yotpo and multi product orgs. In this episode of Women in B2B Marketing, we unpack how true product marketing starts with market context and the voice of the customer, then fuels everything from positioning to pipeline.

Kim shares how to operationalize VOC with CS, why PMM should own recurring deliverables like quarterly competitive reviews and persona refreshes, and what changes when PMM reports into product, the CMO, or directly to the CEO. We also dig into the rising path from PMM to CMO, and how to keep marketing intentional instead of turning into a production shop.

Here’s what we cover:

• The “bottom of the pyramid” for PMM: market context, competitive landscape, and VOC
• How PMM focus shifts by product stage, from finding fit to scaling mature lines
• Design partners vs customer advisory boards, and when to use each
• Recurring PMM deliverables that create visibility and influence across the org
• Where PMM should sit and how KPIs shift under Product vs CMO vs CEO
• Why PMM fuels customer marketing and tight alignment with Sales and CS
• Debunking the “PMM = messaging at the end” misconception
• Making marketing intentional: tie every output to a clear goal and buyer need
• Practical ways to gather customer insight fast without boiling the ocean
• The PMM to CMO trend and what makes product marketers strong marketing leaders

Key Links:

Guest: Kim Winter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-winter/

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/

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