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What shapes a Global Marketing Leader's perspective? For Antonia Wade, PwC's Global Chief Marketing Officer and Marketing Week's Marketeer of the Year, Leadership Excellence stems from finding balance between professional ambition and personal fulfillment.
Sitting in her study – her physical "Clearing" amid family life with two teenagers, a husband, and a dog named Biscuit – Antonia reflects on the formative experiences that built her leadership philosophy. Her journey from Architecture student to being Global Head of Marketing at PwC wasn't straightforward, but architectural thinking gave her the perfect foundation: balancing creativity with pragmatism while solving complex problems.
The conversation explores how Antonia manages a Worldwide Team across time-zones without sacrificing her own boundaries. "If I'm emailing at the weekend, even if I don't intend for people to respond, they feel like they have to," she explains, highlighting how leadership behaviors unconsciously shape team culture. This awareness permeates her approach – protecting weekends, making time for cooking (her delightful "squirrel" distraction), and prioritizing family.
At the heart of Antonia's Leadership perspective is a powerful guiding principle: "You are where you are today because of the decisions you made 5 years ago." This insight helps her evaluate current choices with future impact in mind while giving her team a framework for intentional career development. She complements this with advice from a former mentor: focus on "the things that only you can do" rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Beyond her professional insights, we discover Antonia's near-win in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award, her love of reading a novel weekly, and how she wrote her book "Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey" during gardening leave and airport layovers. Her parting advice embodies her leadership philosophy: "Be curious but also be bold and ambitious. You might as well push for the things you want – you certainly don't get what you want if you don't ask for it."

Antonia Wade, Global Chief Marketing Officer at PwC and Marketing Week's Marketeer of the Year, shares her leadership journey and personal philosophy for maintaining balance in a demanding global role.
• Finding your "clearing" - both physical and mental spaces for reflection and rejuvenation
• How studying architecture created a foundation for balancing creativity and pragmatism in marketing
• The importance of setting boundaries with work communications to model healthy behavior for your team
• Making decisions today with awareness of their impact on your life five years from now
• Focusing on "what only you can do" rather than trying to be everything to everyone
• Finding inspiration through global travel,

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