Episode Details

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Kelsie Dube, Director of Marketing Operations and Automation at Unanet.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:09) - In This Episode
• (05:31) - Why New Marketing Ops Leaders Should Audit Before They Act
• (10:09) - How to Run a Marketing Ops Audit When You Join a Company
• (16:04) - How to Balance a Full Audit Against Your Boss's Priorities
• (19:00) - How to Spot a Process Problem Disguised as a Tool Problem
• (23:41) - How to Surface Shadow Processes and Duplicate Tools in an Audit
• (31:08) - How to Choose a New Martech Tool With a Tiger Team of Power Users
• (35:30) - How to Turn a Marketing Ops Audit Into a Prioritized Roadmap
• (41:20) - How to Align Your Team on a Measurement Philosophy
• (44:22) - What Happens to Junior Marketing Ops When AI Eats the Entry-Level Work
• (49:26) - How to Turn Marketing Ops From Ticket-Takers Into Business Partners
• (52:40) - How to Use One Interview Question to Screen for Team Fit
• (56:57) - How a Marketing Ops Leader Decides What Deserves Her Energy

Summary: Kelsie Dube joined Unanet and did the one thing most new ops leaders are too nervous to do: nothing, at least at first. In this episode she breaks down the 30-day audit she runs before changing a single tool, how she sorts 30-plus problems into big rocks, quick wins, and parked FY27 headaches, and why she'd rather build a "digital twin" to argue with than buy another platform. She gets into the tiger-team playbook that makes tool replacements actually stick, the measurement fight every team should have out loud, and what happens to junior marketers when AI eats the entry-level rung. It's a full field guide to walking into a new company and earning trust before you change anything, plus the interview question she uses to know if you'll thrive on her team.

• Kelsie's Marketing Operations Assessment Framework: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x3IJf9tHku4-fASS9AQE_F6sJ1FLK3PN/view?usp=sharing
• Liza Adam's Digital Twin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/smartest-ai-teammate-youll-ever-build-liza-adams-c7rnc/

About Kelsie Dube

Kelsie Dube is the Director of Marketing Operations and Automation at Unanet, where she joined in 2026 to rebuild the company's measurement and reporting foundation. Before that she spent 7 years at Sophos, climbing 5 roles from Marketing Operations Specialist to Director and leading the team through much of that run. She started her career in data entry, scrubbing lead lists and learning the VLOOKUPs she still uses most days, and that ground-floor view shapes how she thinks about the craft.

Outside of work she's a mom of 2, an amateur basketball player, and a snowboarder who guards the hours between 5 and 7 for her kids.

Why New Marketing Ops Leaders Should Audit Before They Act

The first 90 days at a new company come with a quiet dare. Ship something. Plant a flag. Prove they were right to hire you. Most new marketing ops leaders answer that dare by ripping out a tool they never liked and installing one they used at their last job, all inside the first 2 weeks.

Kelsie did the opposite when she joined Unanet. Her first move was to change nothing.

The reasoning was twofold. Without a real map of how work gets done, any change you make is a guess, and you'll probably aim it at the wrong target. And Unanet had said in the job description that they wanted someone who'd slow down and understand the business first, which is part of why she took the role. For a marketer who came up through ops and now leads it, that patience is the whole point. You have to under