Jill Cress

For more than 30 years, Jill Cress has honed her skills as a strategic and passionate consumer marketer with deep expertise in financial services, media and technology with a reputation for building culture and driving transformation. She has held leadership roles across marketing, general management, product and enterprise strategy at leading Fortune 500 Companies.

At PayPal, Jill leads a global team of marketers responsible for growing engagement and revenue across the PayPal and Venmo portfolios, reaching well over 350 million consumers around the world, through brand-building, modern marketing growth tactics, and cohort-led lifecycle strategies. Her teams’ partner across the business to inform the product roadmap and experience design for PayPal and Venmo (.com and app). She led the enterprise efforts to take an insights-led approach to redefining the PayPal and Venmo brand systems – including design, verbal identity, and sonic branding.

As Chief Marketing & Communications Officer of National Geographic, Jill led an extensive brand overhaul, harnessing the power of the iconic “yellow border” and redefining the brand’s Purpose. She partnered with peers to lead the businesses digital transformation, migrating subscriptions to its digital platform and building platform-specific content strategies to increase engagement and to significantly increase customer lifetime value. National Graphic’s bold communications and differentiated marketing led to increased engagement and driving double digit subscription growth across its platforms, ultimately leading to its sale to Disney in 2019 as part of the 21st First Century Fox acquisition. National Geographic became the most followed brand on Instagram with over 100 million followers and won the 2017 Super Clio for its Super Bowl commercial, "Genius."

In her 20 plus years at Mastercard, Jill began her career in sales and account management before leading strategy for Europe and then serving as general manager for MasterCard’s UK and Ireland business. She held multiple Senior Vice President roles in Marketing across global consumer segments, B2B product and partner marketing. As Executive Vice President she was responsible for the global consumer strategy, positioning and delivery of the Priceless marketing architecture to support Mastercard’s 3.0 vision as a technology company.