Jessica Villanueva

I'm a marketing leader at OfferUp, where I focus on connecting products, storytelling, and growth in a way that resonates with our users. I've spent about 12 years in marketing across agency and in-house roles, which has really shaped how I think strategically and executionally. Early on, I've always had to wear a lot of hats, manage multiple clients, and think both strategically and executionally. After the agency world, I moved into in-house roles, including time supporting an internal agency model, which gave me a different perspective, and I was able to get closer to the business, partner more deeply with internal stakeholders, and really think about marketing in a more integrated way. Now that I'm at OfferUp, it's a mix of strategy and execution, but also a lot of cross-functional alignment, because it is more of a startup environment, similar to my roots in the agency world, where we wear a lot of hats and we own a lot of responsibility. There's a lot of trust given to us. From a personal perspective, I'm a mom too, a wife, a daughter, a sister, and those roles have really shaped how I see success and how I spend my time. I'm first-generation Filipino-American, and that's part of my identity. I've been raised to really value stability, hard work, and making my family proud, which has really influenced a lot of my career path. More recently, I've been in a phase of redefining what success looks like for me. I think my resume speaks for itself - I'm confident I can market a brand, I can run a campaign, I can present in front of a board and the C-suite, but on paper, success is there for me. I lost my dad unexpectedly, which was a huge turning point for me around 2 years ago. Losing him made me think more about alignment and how I actually want to live. I think influence, especially at a marketing and leadership level, is less about visibility and more about clarity and trust, and that trust weaves into not just your professional life, but also your personal life. A lot of my career has always been built about doing the right thing, building something solid, and making something stable, but as any woman leader out there, I think for a long time I didn't really know how to listen to myself. Losing my dad shifted that for me. It made me rethink what I'm optimizing for. Maybe now, career-wise, it's less about proving something and more about alignment and how I want to live.