Heather Salerno Joins Catalant as Chief Marketing Officer

Heather Salerno has joined Catalant as Chief Marketing Officer, bringing experience in marketing strategy, business growth and brand development as the company advances its Consulting 2.0 model.

Heather's appointment follows a defining chapter at Appcast, where she spent more than six years progressing from Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Growth Officer. In her most recent role, she led Sales, Marketing, and Brand & Creative, expanding her responsibilities beyond marketing into broader commercial growth.

Earlier in her career, Heather worked at CEB, now part of Gartner, an experience she has connected to the challenge of helping organisations solve complex business problems through data and insights.

Her move to Catalant brings together these experiences at a company seeking to offer organisations a more flexible, fit-for-purpose approach to consulting and transformation.

From marketing leadership to business growth

Heather's career reflects an expanding remit across marketing, brand strategy and commercial leadership.

At Appcast, a recruitment advertising technology and services company, she initially led global marketing, with responsibilities spanning brand development, demand generation, strategic account-based marketing, customer engagement and market positioning.

In 2022, she was appointed Chief Marketing Officer after serving as Senior Vice President of Marketing. In 2024, she moved into the Chief Growth Officer role, taking on leadership across Sales, Marketing, and Brand & Creative.

That progression broadened her responsibilities from building marketing capabilities to supporting growth across multiple commercial functions.

Her work at Appcast also involved using recruitment marketing insights and labour-market expertise to develop content, engage prospective customers and strengthen the company's market position. These areas of experience are relevant to businesses that need to communicate complex offerings clearly while connecting marketing activity to commercial outcomes.

Heather has described her time at Appcast as a defining professional chapter, recognising the colleagues and partners who contributed to her development and leadership experience.

A connection to data-driven problem-solving

Heather has also drawn a connection between Catalant's approach and her earlier experience at CEB, now part of Gartner.

CEB built its reputation around research, benchmarking and business insights designed to help executives make better decisions. Heather's reference to that experience highlights a shared emphasis on addressing client challenges through structured thinking, evidence and practical insight.

At Catalant, this connection takes shape through the company's Consulting 2.0 model. Rather than relying solely on traditional consulting structures, Catalant connects organisations with experienced professionals and former corporate operators whose expertise can be matched to specific business needs.

The approach is designed to give clients access to relevant expertise through flexible engagements, helping them address challenges in areas such as strategy, operations, technology, transformation and value creation.

For marketing leadership, communicating this proposition requires more than promoting a consulting service. It involves articulating how the model differs from conventional approaches, demonstrating its relevance to business leaders and showing how access to experienced specialists can support execution.

Advancing Catalant's Consulting 2.0 model

Catalant positions Consulting 2.0 as a flexible alternative to traditional consulting, built around fit-for-purpose expertise, adaptable engagements and a focus on business outcomes.

The company draws on a network of experienced independent consultants, former executives and specialists who can work with organisations on complex strategic and operational challenges.

This model addresses a central consideration for business leaders: accessing the right expertise at the point it is needed, without necessarily adopting a fixed consulting structure for every challenge.

Catalant works across areas including transformation and value creation, strategy and finance, digital and AI, operations, and sales and marketing.

As organisations navigate technological change, AI adoption and increasingly complex transformation priorities, explaining how this model translates into practical business value will be important to its continued growth.

Heather's background in marketing, commercial leadership and insight-led strategy provides a foundation for helping communicate Catalant's positioning to business decision-makers.

Culture as part of the leadership decision

In announcing her move, Heather highlighted the importance of team culture alongside the business opportunity.

She described looking for colleagues who were smart, authentic and collaborative, with a culture that valued strong results without sacrificing kindness or enjoyment at work. She said her early conversations with Catalant created an immediate sense of connection.

Her comments offer a personal perspective on the appointment, placing the people behind the business alongside its market opportunity.

For senior leaders joining a new organisation, alignment around working relationships and company culture can be an important consideration when deciding where to invest their experience and energy.

Heather thanked Catalant CEO and Co-Founder Patrick Petitti and the wider team for welcoming her to the company.

Looking ahead

Heather's appointment comes as Catalant continues to develop its Consulting 2.0 model for organisations seeking flexible access to specialist expertise.

Her experience at Appcast spans marketing leadership, brand development and broader commercial growth, while her earlier connection to CEB reflects an interest in insight-led approaches to business challenges.

At Catalant, these experiences come together in a role focused on helping communicate the company's proposition and support its growth ambitions.

As organisations reconsider how they access expertise and deliver transformation, the ability to connect a differentiated service model with clear business value will remain central to Catalant's marketing strategy.

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About Catalant

Catalant is a business consulting platform that connects organisations with experienced independent consultants, former corporate executives and specialists to address complex business challenges. Its Consulting 2.0 model emphasises flexible, fit-for-purpose engagements designed around client needs, with capabilities spanning strategy, transformation, operations, digital and AI, and other business functions.

Source: Heather Salerno's LinkedIn announcement.