Alice Sneary, B2B-IV
Alice Sneary is the Vice President of Portfolio Marketing at Forrester Research, where she has led her team for the past two years. In her role, she oversees marketing strategy across multiple products from an audience-first perspective, focusing on positioning, messaging, launch planning, and go-to-market execution. Alice’s approach emphasizes understanding customer needs, telling compelling brand stories, and aligning cross-functional teams to drive measurable business value. Her leadership has been instrumental in launching initiatives such as Forrester Decisions and Forrester AI Access, helping clients access insights and research seamlessly within their workflows.
Before joining Forrester, Alice spent nearly two decades shaping marketing and brand strategy in the education and library technology sectors. She led product marketing and brand integration during a major merger at a K–12 educational assessment organization, where she developed brand stories, messaging, and positioning from the ground up. Prior to that, she spent 16 years at OCLC, contributing to globally recognized brands, including the Dewey Decimal Classification System, and working on large bibliographic databases that power library systems worldwide. These experiences honed her skills in product marketing, creative strategy, and audience-centric brand management.
Alice holds a BA in English from University of the South, graduating magna cum laude, and an MA in Literary Criticism and Theory from University of Exeter as a Rotary Scholar. She is actively involved in the marketing and figure skating communities, participating with the U.S. Figure Skating Association and serving on the board of the Great Bay Figure Skating Club. Throughout her career, Alice has earned recognition for her innovative and collaborative work, receiving awards for company-wide collaboration at Forrester and early-career excellence at OCLC. Her professional philosophy centers on creativity, collaboration, and a deep commitment to delivering value for customers.
• Pragmatic Institute Level 5 Certified
• Forrester Level 4 Certification
• Mastering Demand And Account-Based Marketing 2024: Private
• Forrester Leading With Customer Obsession
• Forrester Portfolio Marketing Certification
• Forrester SiriusDecisions B2B Marketing Foundations
• Build
• Price
• Launch
• Focus
• Foundations
• Marketing
• The University of the South- B.A.
• University of Exeter- M.A.
• Magna cum Laude with Departmental Honors
• Rotarian International Ambassadorial Scholar
• President's Award
• Collaboration Award
• U.S. Figure Skating Association
• Great Bay Figure Skating Club Board Member
• Church Welcoming Committee Leader
• Advertising Federation (former)
• American Marketing Association (former)
• Phi Beta Kappa
• Alpha Delta Theta
• Habitat Honey Beekeeping (local honey sales at farmer's markets and local shops)
• Church Welcoming Committee Leadership
• Figure Skating Instruction (Learn to Skate curriculum)
What do you attribute your success to?
I have really good mentors and leaders that I have looked up to for years. I think listening is important, and really listening and then reflecting. I've been so fortunate to have mentors all along the way, and kind of right place, right time - they believed in me enough to give me the opportunity, and then I was able to take the opportunity and listen and learn enough to deliver, and then that leads to the next opportunity. I have a friend who says, when you see an open door, walk through it, and that has been such a good mantra to think about. When you see an open door, walk through it.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
To pursue broad learning and not limit yourself too early. I emphasize the importance of continuously developing new skills, especially in areas like AI, and remaining open to evolving opportunities. Get a broad swath of experience. I know there can be times where you think you need to really specialize so that you are round peg, round hole, and sometimes that is true. But as I am interviewing, I love to see that - yes, you check all the boxes - but I also love to see where you've got a lot of examples of divergent thinking and various experiences. Those sorts of experiences shape you in a way that brings a different energy that can be really helpful when you've got a team of people who are really skilled at what they do but don't have a breadth, and so sometimes that breadth is what that leader is looking for.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Do as much individual learning as you can, especially with AI. If you aren't practicing and experimenting, learning how to use prompts, learning how to take what you get and then refine it and refine it again, I would start now, don't wait. Get a broad swath of experience. I know there can be times where you think you need to really specialize so that you are round peg, round hole, and sometimes that is true. But I also love to see where you've got a lot of examples of divergent thinking and various experiences, like tell me about when you went and spent six months teaching English in Korea. Those sorts of experiences shape you in a way that brings a different energy that can be really helpful. Sometimes that breadth is what that leader is looking for.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
A major opportunity lies in adapting to evolving technologies like AI and integrating them into marketing strategies. I know messaging is changing so much with AI today, but really honing from the very tip-top brand messaging down through the different altitudes to what are the discrete benefits for the different audiences is where I spend most of my time. We are talking about updating our marketing operational sequence because everyone is feeling stretched - how can we get out of some of these meetings and use some of the AI tools to help. The challenge is staying current while maintaining strong messaging and positioning in an increasingly competitive and fast-moving market, making sure we're staying on top of the challenges that our clients are trying to solve.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think really being grounded and staying true to what are we trying to do here. There are so many doors that can open that you can walk through, but making sure are you continuing to stay pointed toward your true north - is this getting us to our goal? I also think collaboration is so important for our role in particular, so being able to take in other people's viewpoints and see it from their point of view, and then be able to together work toward that larger goal. Understanding that there are times where even if you're right, you can be really right hypothetically and really wrong in practical. Knowing when to really pursue your own ideas and when to say, you know what, I might not have the full picture, or you are a strong collaborator and even if I don't quite see it, I can appreciate that you may have a larger vision than I do. How do I make sure that I can check my own ego at the door - where can we keep moving versus be really right in the abstract but not keep us with a strong momentum.