Nadia Khan, chief marketing officer, LTN
Talk us through an average day in your role
While it’s hard to define a typical day in my role, one constant is communication. Acting as a fulcrum between customers, LTN’s leadership, and different teams within our organisation, I dedicate a lot of time to speaking with people, exploring customer pain points, and helping shape strategies to best overcome those challenges.
I’m fortunate to lead a fantastic marketing team full of talent and passion for media. Strong leadership isn’t about telling people what to do; we’ve hired people that bring unique areas of expertise to the table and are united around a common goal; I trust my team to come together and deliver exceptional results. So, I spend a lot of time engaging with my team, listening to new ideas, and building out new strategies.
Right now, we’re focused on ensuring marketing becomes more data-driven. Our industry is changing fast, which means that as our customers adopt more data-focused approaches to decision-making, so do we. Navigating digital transformation alongside our customers is critical to enabling us to deliver on their business goals. Our customers are at the very core of everything we do — and part of my job is keeping us in tune with their evolving needs.
How did you get started in the media industry?
My first taste of the media industry was while I was studying for my MBA and as LTN was entering a new growth phase. I worked on a project for the company to develop a strategic marketing plan and haven’t looked back since. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to grow our marketing function over the past five years and work as part of a fast-evolving organisation at the heart of the broadcast landscape. From the start of my journey in the industry, I’ve always felt passionate about marketing representing the customer. My focus has always been on capturing and understanding their insights to enhance their experience through our service offering.
What training did you have before entering the industry?
I graduated with a Master of Business Administration from Emory University in Atlanta, which was invaluable in my professional development. In fact, I still use many of the frameworks I learned in business school today. My degree taught me how to use frameworking to create a lens through which you can problem solve, and that’s played a huge role in setting me up to tackle complex challenges and solve problems on a day-to-day basis.
One of my biggest takeaways from my training was understanding the customer perspective and learning how to design a customer-centric organisation. I try to embed this into my team as a core value in everything we do, and it’s a value that has always been deep-rooted within LTN’s DNA. Developing and owning our technology gives us the foundation to respond quickly to fast-changing customer needs. As new markets develop and emerging technologies come to the fore, I know that we’re in a great position to help navigate change and lead innovation for our media partners.
Why do you enjoy working in the industry?
This industry is continuously evolving – perhaps faster now than ever before. A constant state of flux provides the perfect fuel for media brands to be very creative and pioneer new technologies. We’re already seeing bold media companies emerge as leaders as we enter the next phase of transformation in broadcast media.
Being able to build a diverse and dynamic marketing team is hugely enjoyable and rewarding. Our industry is sometimes guilty of being apprehensive to change, but bringing in a diversity of talent – and thought – has helped disrupt traditional norms and empowered new perspectives and creative concepts. Ultimately, with so much innovation happening right now, it’s a fun and exciting industry to work in — and we’re lucky to be a part of it.
What piece of advice would you offer someone looking to explore a role similar to yours?
Short answer? Passion for problem-solving, a focus on the customer, and confidence in your abilities.
But really, my key message is around communication — ‘speaking different languages’. Not in the literal sense of being bilingual (although that’s a plus!) but developing the ability to cut through the jargon and translate perspective, insights, and data to diverse customers, teams, and stakeholders in a way they can understand based on their focus, knowledge, and goals. Data empowers marketing to act as a conduit for key insights, but only if you communicate why it really matters and the bigger business impact behind it all.
