Chief Marketing Officer, Kyndryl Holdings
Search every verified Maria Winans interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Maria Winans, Chief Marketing Officer at Kyndryl Holdings, has discussed her role in building the Kyndryl brand from its inception following the company's spin-off from IBM. She stated that her initial responsibilities included creating the brand and motivating approximately 90,000 employees to embrace the new company. Winans described the brand's purpose as being "at the heart of progress," with a focus on humanizing the company's services and emphasizing relationships and partnership. She noted that the name "Kyndryl" was derived from "kinship" and "tendril" to represent enduring relationships and continuous growth. Winans has also spoken about Kyndryl's marketing strategy, which she described as data-driven and focused on outcome-based storytelling that centers on the customer. She highlighted the company's "Double Your Impact" campaign, which she said was designed to address the dual demands on CIOs of managing current operations while driving future transformation. Winans has emphasized the importance of agility, risk-taking, and learning from failure in marketing, and she has encouraged young marketers to "lean into discomfort for growth" and to "embrace risk as part of the journey." She has also discussed her commitment to diversity, noting that as a Hispanic executive, she has dedicated efforts to supporting the Hispanic community and advocating for minority representation at all levels of the organization.
“So I'm really passionate about the opportunity. I'm passionate about being a data-driven marketing kind of organization and team thought leadership.”
“I'm really outcome-based storytelling, where we put the customer at the beginning and the end.”
“We're very focused on empowering our teams in the field, in our global marketing centers and markets, to surround the customer and to ensure that we show up at our best in our messaging and our value propositions.”
“I get to create the brand. I get to position the company from the very beginning. So when I look back, I say, 'Wow, you know, it goes back to that career kind of only opportunity. What CMO, what marketer doesn't want to be part of creating something that you know is going to stand history and time.'”
“When I came on board, I had two jobs at the very beginning that I had to really grasp on and tackle. One was create the brand, and then the second was how do we motivate 90,000 employees who had built their career in our prior company to get excited about this journey.”
“What that led me to believe and to understand more importantly than anything was that the brand had to have purpose. It had to be intentional and it had to humanize what we needed.”
“When we became public, we became the largest technology services startup at scale overnight. I had two jobs: create a brand for a new company and motivate 80,000 people, many of whom had been part of IBM for years, to get excited about this new journey.”
“Our brand had to humanize what we do because we don't sell products; we sell the services of our people. Our people are our product. So the brand had to be about relationships, purpose, and partnership.”
“We created the name 'Kyndryl' by combining 'kinship,' meaning strong partnerships and trust, with 'tendril,' a plant that grows and grabs onto something. This represents deepening connections and continuous growth in innovation with our customers.”
“The 'Double Your Impact' campaign is grounded in empathy for CIOs who must balance running today's operations while driving tomorrow's transformation. We cast real identical twins to symbolize the need for a 'double' of oneself to manage these dual demands.”
“We work with WPP as our creative agency partner, primarily with VML, who pushed the edge creatively. For brand narrative, our partner is Lander and Fitch, who have been strategic collaborators since the beginning.”
“Branding is an art and a science; every word, every edge of our Kyndryl logo and brandmark was created with purpose to last 10 to 15 years or longer.”
“Kyndryl is the largest infrastructure services brand in the world, running mission-critical workloads for customers. We are expanding into new areas like cloud migration, security, GenAI, networking, and employee experience, building on trust to be a strategic partner in transformative opportunities.”
“We are moving up the stack with advisory services and consulting, helping customers grow into transformative projects. Kyndryl uniquely helps customers run today's operations while transforming for tomorrow.”
“My advice to young marketers is to lean into discomfort for growth, don't play it safe, think bold, challenge assumptions, and embrace risk as part of the journey. I fear regret more than risk because growth requires experimentation and sometimes failure.”
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