GTM & Marketing Operator · AI Adoption · Human-Centered Strategy

Helping people make better decisions in increasingly complex systems.

I'm a go-to-market and marketing operator, which mostly means I find the messy, half-defined problems teams have been working around and build something that actually fixes them. At Shopify that's spanned enterprise GTM, sales enablement, AI readiness, and regional strategy across APAC — the kind of work that doesn't come with a playbook yet.

Shalini Karthikeyan
$52M
Pipeline generated
8K+
Leads in 24 months (company record)
12 yrs
B2B marketing leadership
25%
Lead conversion vs 12% global avg

What I do

My career started on the revenue side of marketing — channel work, demand generation, leading teams and owning budgets, with a fair bit of beating pipeline targets along the way. Over time, though, the work I gravitated toward changed. I found myself less interested in the campaigns and more interested in the systems underneath them.

There's a pattern to it: I notice where teams are quietly losing time and momentum — signals scattered across tools, work being done by hand that shouldn't be, no clear sense of what to tackle first — and I build something that closes the gap. Lately that's meant teaching myself AI-native tools like Claude, Cursor, and Gumloop and building go-to-market workflows on my own, without waiting on engineering.

What I care about now is the part of AI adoption that's less about the models and more about the people: how a team actually folds these tools into real work in a way that feels useful and earns trust. I do my best work where the playbook is still being written — and I care just as much about building teams people want to be on as I do about shipping the work.

Experience, as a story

Current

Senior Lead, Revenue Marketing — APAC · Scale Programs

Shopify
Feb 2025 – Present

I joined Shopify to lead revenue marketing across APAC, stepped in as interim team lead through a period of change, and now focus on scale programs. In practice my work has touched enterprise GTM, signal intelligence, sales enablement, AI readiness, and regional strategy — usually whatever ambiguous, no-one-quite-owns-this-yet problem needed someone to build a system around it.

The throughline is leverage: finding where teams are losing it, and building something that gives it back. I've built AI-assisted GTM workflows that prioritise accounts automatically, surface buying signals, and make enterprise outreach across APAC feel personal at scale — most of them built on my own with tools like Claude, Cursor, Gumloop, and agent workflows, so we got the scale without waiting on engineering.

✍️ To add: hard metrics from your time here — program reach, pipeline influenced, time/cost saved by the AI workflows, adoption numbers. Send these and I'll fold them in.
Enterprise GTMSignal IntelligenceAI-Native WorkflowsSales EnablementAPAC Strategy

Head of Marketing, APJC

Cisco
2023 – 2025

A big change effort handed me an expanded remit: product, solutions and demand marketing for Cisco's $50B networking portfolio across Asia-Pacific, Japan and China. I shaped the marketing strategy behind the newly expanded portfolio, and the work helped generate over $80M in pipeline.

The harder, more interesting part was the culture shift — moving the team off traditional marketing and toward data-driven, digital-first ways of working, which lifted both ROI and how we showed up in the market. That got me a seat on the Senior Leadership team, where I helped shape the Country Impact Plan and Country Digital Acceleration agenda (FY22–24), working closely with C-suite execs and partners to keep marketing tied to the business.

$80M+ pipeline$50B portfolioChange managementSenior Leadership Team

Marketing Lead, ANZ

Cisco Meraki
2020 – 2023

I owned the end-to-end marketing plan for Australia and New Zealand on a co-managed $1.1M budget, and built it into one of the best-performing demand engines in the region. Lead conversion hit 25% against a 12% global average, pipeline grew 205% quarter-on-quarter (235% year-on-year), and the lead-gen approach I rebuilt drove over $45M in new business a year.

I ran the whole thing — campaign strategy, acquisition channels, creative direction, and the cross-functional delivery with product and audience marketers. Three new channels and customer journeys I found added $500K+ in pipeline, and partner-led education programs brought in another $2M+ in revenue. I tested and measured everything, so what we learned fed straight into the next campaign.

$12M+ pipeline205% QoQ growth25% conversion$1.1M budget

Senior Channel Marketing Manager

Cisco Meraki
2019 – 2020

I designed and launched targeted partner campaigns that generated over $10M a year, with more than 60% of revenue coming through partners. Working across leadership, product, strategy and sales, I built the A/NZ channel marketing strategy from scratch — onboarding 80 partners and generating over $6M in pipeline.

$10M+ annually80 partners onboardedChannel strategy

Earlier foundations

Channel Marketing Manager

Dell EMC
2017 – 2019

I lined up partner account plans and marketing priorities with the local go-to-market strategy — across brand awareness, demand creation and sales enablement. I also ran the Marketing Development Funds (MDF) program, handling allocation, tools and process for over $500K in funds across partners and distributors.

Marketing Executive

Tech Data
2014 – 2017

I managed and ran 80 channel marketing strategies and 100 vendor campaigns end-to-end, on budgets from $10K to $100K. One multi-touch campaign generated $8M in revenue — my early proof that disciplined, measurable marketing actually moves the number.

Recognition

Leadership & development

JUMP Women in Leadership (Dramatic Resources) · Emerging Leaders Fastrack (Cisco Meraki) · Young Leaders Program (Avnet) · ABM Certification (Demandbase) · Distributor Marketing Accreditation (Dell EMC).

Community

Women of Meraki volunteer — leading events and charity initiatives supporting STEM students and women in tech. STEM mentor at Cisco for penultimate-year students. Bachelor of Commerce, Macquarie University.

Let's talk pipeline.

Open to senior marketing leadership and ABM roles. Based in Sydney.