The finalists for WashingtonExec’s 2024 Pinnacle Awards were announced Sept. 20, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place live, in-person Nov. 21.
Next is Alex Bender, vice president of communications and marketing at Core4ce, and finalist in the Marketing Executive of the Year, Private Company, category. Here, she talks about recent achievements, shares career advice and more.
What key achievements did you have in 2024?
Earlier this year, my team executed Core4ce’s inaugural Innovation Summit, a high-energy forum for collaboration and knowledge-sharing that we designed to spark creative solutions for Core4ce’s Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers. I also coordinated with our R&D team to unveil Core4ce’s newly-branded innovation incubator – The Forge.
The R&D team is really at the forefront of solving a range of public sector challenges related to data – ensuring that customers can easily access and analyze the data they need, when they need it – so from a marketing standpoint we’re focused on increasing the visibility of solutions that speed the time from data collection to actionable insights, all in the interest of immediately meeting critical mission demands.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the mission?
Core4ce recently announced our acquisition of Azimuth Corporation, a company with expertise in R&D and operations support. Core4ce and Azimuth have different but complementary technical capabilities, so my primary focus in the coming months will be to navigate the integration phase of this acquisition and ensure that we’re amplifying the breadth our combined competencies with focus and clarity.
Core4ce has a deep bench of subject matter experts – from best-in-the-business ethical hackers, to seasoned cybersecurity professionals and data analysts – and with the addition of Azimuth, we’ve enhanced our Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, AI/ML, threat protection, and warfighter support capabilities as well. Everything we do on the marketing front is ultimately aimed towards forging partnerships and connecting customers with the expertise they need to gain competitive advantage and protect national interests.
What is your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?
Become an advocate for the marketing profession. To be responsible for marketing is really to be responsible for shaping your company’s brand and reputation – which are critical components in driving not only growth and sales, but also customer and industry relationships, recruitment, and corporate culture. Particularly at a time when we’re seeing widespread experimentation with platforms like ChatGPT to generate vague and verbose prose, the need for marketing professionals to apply a critical lens to corporate communications – anticipating audience perception, considering subtext, and weaving a clear, cohesive, and consistent narrative – is more important than ever before. While there are a broad range of use cases for AI to augment marketing efforts, be mindful that ChatGPT is designed to respond to a prompt, not to question whether it was a judicious prompt to begin with.
Fun Fact: What is something about you that most people do not know?
I’ve had the opportunity to serve as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, focusing on graphic design principles and developing persuasive electoral and advocacy campaign materials. I’m also an alum of the program, so it’s been rewarding to stay involved in that world to some degree even though my career took a slightly different trajectory. I’m particularly interested in how campaign branding has evolved over time and the rising influence of political memes in shaping voter perception, and would love to fully research the latter topic and publish a book at some point in the future.