GTM & marketing operator · AI adoption · human-centred 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 Keyan
$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 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 building AI-native workflows with Cursor, Gumloop, and standard LLMs on my own, without waiting on engineering.

The part of AI adoption I find most interesting is human, not technical: 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 as much about building teams people want to be on as I do about shipping the work.

That shows up most in how I lead. I led ANZ for nine months, built playbooks the team still uses, and I share what I build, so the AI workflows and systems run through the team rather than just me. I'm usually the person people come to when they want to think a problem through. Earlier, at Cisco, I coached a struggling rep back into a trusted contributor, the kind of people leadership the company recognised with an award in 2023. I lead with the numbers too, not just reporting them but turning them into the call we make next.

Experience, as a story

Current

Senior Lead, Revenue Marketing, APAC

Shopify
Including 9 months as Team Lead
Feb 2025 to present

I joined Shopify as Senior Lead for Revenue Marketing across APAC and stepped up as Team Lead for nine months during a challenging commercial season. In that time I went from ramping to being the go-to person for ANZ, running regional strategy, enterprise GTM, sales enablement, and AI-native workflow infrastructure simultaneously.

The throughline is the same as it's always been: turn the messy, under-resourced problem into something the team can actually use. Here that's meant building an account intelligence system that sends 17+ AEs across five APAC markets a personalised weekly signal brief, shaping the highest-performing compete campaign in Shopify globally, and launching a mid-market run rate program from scratch that grew to 185% of deal target with no dedicated headcount. A redesign of regional executive events around trusted media partners delivered 90% attendance and immediate pipeline, and is now scaling across cities. The compete campaign is being adopted across EMEA as standard practice. Most of the infrastructure was built independently using Cursor, Gumloop, and standard LLMs, with no engineering dependency.

ANZ LeadershipEnterprise GTMABM clustersAI-Native WorkflowsAPAC Signal IntelligenceSales EnablementCursorGumloopSalesforceSalesLoft

Head of Marketing, APJC

Cisco
2023 to 2025

A restructure 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 lifted both ROI and how we showed up in the market. That earned me a seat on the Senior Leadership team, where I helped shape the Country Impact Plan and Country Digital Acceleration agenda (FY22 to FY24), working closely with C-suite execs and partners to keep marketing tied to the business.

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

Marketing Lead, ANZ

Cisco Meraki
2020 to 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 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 to 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 ANZ 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 to 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 to 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.

Want to talk pipeline?

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