Why English Majors Will Win The AI Era. Caitlin Lacey's Journey From Facebook Ad Review To Global Product Stages

Caitlin Lacey was supposed to teach Shakespeare to high school sophomores. Instead, she started at Facebook in 2010 answering ad review tickets; a move that turned into a decade shaping how billions of people connect online.

Now as Director of Global Product Marketing at Cisco, Webex, she oversees the WebEx collaboration suite and the hardware business that powers conference rooms, airports, and enterprise spaces around the world.

Her career has been defined by one principle: get out of the group chat and into the real world. Whether she was dogfooding early Facebook features or launching immersive collaboration tools at Cisco, Caitlin approaches technology through the lens of human connection and storytelling. S

Episode Highlights:

• Curiosity took her from answering ad review tickets to leading global product strategy, shaped by dogfooding products with her own family and learning how humans actually want to connect.
• Cisco Spatial Meetings lets design teams and city planners collaborate in real time within Apple Vision Pro, manipulating 3D models together and laying the foundation for when immersive collaboration becomes standard.
• Getting global alignment across teams in different time zones is the hardest part of her job, and she'd use a magic wand to get everyone in one room for 30 minutes to align on the market story.
• A CMO threw her on stage to demo a product two months after she started at Cisco, and that bet on her potential changed her trajectory and shaped how she now looks for sparks in her team.
• AI isn't going anywhere, but the humanity behind it is taking center stage, which means English degrees are about to become more valuable than they were five years ago.

The best stories start from a place of curiosity. Caitlin learned this at Facebook, proved it at Meta with emerging tech, and now applies it every day at Cisco as she defines the future of workplace collaboration.

Her path shows that the most valuable skill in tech isn't technical knowledge—it's the ability to understand what people need and tell them why it matters.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube to hear how Caitlin built her career by asking the right questions and believing in her team's potential.

About Caitlin Lacey

Caitlin is a product marketing leader with 15+ years of experience shaping go-to-market strategy across emerging technology, hardware, and collaboration software.

She leads marketing for Cisco’s Employee Experience portfolio, spanning devices and software that power hybrid work.

Known for building high-performing teams and crafting narratives that drive adoption, she brings a sharp focus on business impact and human connection.

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