Maya Moufarek saw how important the CMO role is while working at Google. · ZUMA Press, ZUMA Press, Inc.
Maya Moufarek is an entrepreneur and investor, based in London. She was founding CMO of Pharmacy2U Group, the UK’s leading online pharmacy.
I was born into a family of engineers and I remember when Dad brought one of the first CD players over from France to Russia, where we were living at the time. Tech was part of the world we grew up in.
When I later landed a job at Google (GOOG) in marketing and told Dad I was thinking of taking it, his reaction was: “It’s a white page. What are you marketing?” But Google’s homepage was offbeat to everything else you were seeing on the web at the time.
I was hired in 2005 by Lorraine Twohill, who is now Google’s (GOOG) global CMO. She was a very strategic stakeholder manager, not in the political sense, but in how to get things done in the most collegial and fastest way.
For me, it was an art of strategic preparation. What she taught me was that leadership is not always about having all the answers. A lot of your work is about collaborating with others and bringing input from people.
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Neither diversity nor gender parity were part of any mainstream or business conversation in the early 2000s. The tech industry is still male-dominated, but even more so 20 years ago.
Now, in hindsight, I realise how lucky I was to encounter senior female leaders in that environment in my first major job. It built my sense of belonging. I never felt like I was the odd one out and it impacted my whole career in tech and my ability to see myself in it later on.
Every time Lorraine had to push forward a project or get approval, she would engage with every stakeholder, gather their input, address their concerns and only then show up at the big meeting.
Many people come thinking they are prepared because they’ve done the work, but they haven’t brought people along. Lorraine would come in almost knowing it would be approved. I learned that you shouldn’t do it all alone. Input from other people is strategic intelligence and increases your chances of success.
Maya Moufarek was a founding member of the Google EMEA Emerging Markets team. · Home
At Google (GOOG) there were a lot of decisions by consensus. That might feel counterintuitive in a business that moves fast and innovates, but they gathered the wisdom of the crowds and then took decisions. As the business grew, you needed alignment to get anything done.
Lorraine was the first person I saw doing that well and sometimes she asked me to prepare for that work too. She was nurturing and even when she had an office, she still mostly sat outside. I remember negotiating my first salary increase with her directly.
Story Continues
My direct manager at Google (GOOG) who exemplified empowering leadership was Eileen Mannion — now vice president, marketing — who really built up my confidence. I was still relatively young, in a massively celebrated business, and a bit paralysed by the quality of the people around me.
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Eileen had what I call guided independence, but space to navigate my own path. She was there if I needed her and would remove roadblocks, but really let me shine through my own capacity. Great leaders create other leaders. I thrived on that balance and have very fond memories of her support.
This wasn’t just luck, it was transformational. There’s truth in the saying “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Seeing these women in senior roles didn’t just give me role models; it fundamentally expanded what I believed was possible for my own career trajectory.
From Lorraine I also saw how important the CMO role is and it was a masterclass in strategic stakeholder management. At Google (GOOG) they say the CMO creates the magic between the user and the product. Marketers were not only nurturing the brand but driving revenue.
Lorraine Twohill is now global CMO at Google. · Sportsfile via Getty Images
That dictated all my work, and all the way to Pharmacy2U. The term ‘growth operator’ came later, but everything I did was about growing the business.
There was no sales team at Pharmacy2U when we launched in 2014. The website was the sales team with the growth team and I in charge of the full funnel. If conversion was the way to grow, I could act on that. It’s not always more advertising that is the solution. That full funnel ownership was essential.
Since I exited Pharmacy2U in 2019 after a private equity sale, I’ve been running a portfolio career and I run my growth consultancy, MarketingCube.co. I enjoy the mix because it allows three ways to look into the ecosystem: as an operator, an investor and as a board member.
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What is unique about founders is that they often have a distorted view of reality. If you’re a realist, dreaming big can be hard. That distorted view fuels resilience through rejection, failure and pivots.
The other thing is humility; knowing what you know and what you don’t, and not being too hung up on what you thought the business would be when you started.
Starting my career surrounded by strong female leaders wasn’t just professionally advantageous, it was personally transformative. It taught me that leadership isn’t about fitting a particular mould; it’s about being authentically excellent while lifting others as you climb.
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