Executive: Chris Foley Pilsner, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
Company: Oakland University
Industry: Public research university; higher education
Company Snapshot: Mid-sized public research institution serving roughly 16,000 students with a strong regional, experiential focus.
Format: CMO Journeys Interview
In This Article
- Why It Matters
- Their Path, in Short
- Big Themes From the Conversation
- How They Choose the Right Agency Partners
- What Stood Out
- The Inside Scoop
Why It Matters
Chris Foley Pilsner is Oakland University’s first Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, and her path to the role runs straight through the agency world. She grew up inside creativity and client service, then moved into higher education, where the stakes are families, futures, and entire communities. Her story shows how classic agency training, data fluency, and a deep belief in education can work together. For agencies, she is both a former insider and a current buyer — someone who knows what great partnership feels like on both sides of the table.
Their Path, in Short
Chris grew up just outside Manhattan on Long Island, the daughter of two New York City public school educators. Education was always the family conversation. Her parents ended their careers as principals and superintendents, helping other leaders succeed. She knew she was not meant to be a classroom teacher, but the value of education was wired in early.
At Villanova University, she studied English, women’s studies, and political science. She was drawn to the intersection of image and power — fascinated by moments like the Kennedy–Nixon debate and how perception shaped outcomes. She graduated during a recession, knowing only that she loved to write and loved figuring out how people tick. That curiosity led her into advertising, first as a secretary to a senior account person. Someone took a gamble on her, and that is how she “stumbled” into the industry.
She became an account person at big agencies, working on consumer packaged goods, a bit of luxury, and pharmaceuticals. She learned how to sell products where you cannot always say the direct benefit, and she worked with multinational corporations. A transfer to London broadened her view of how business works and how to build disciplined client relationships — understanding the business situation, defining what needs to be done, and then delivering.
Life moved her next to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she joined a small regional agency just as social media was becoming mainstream. It was a different scale but another rich learning experience. A later move to Western Massachusetts shifted the picture again; there were few agencies there, and the region was rural. She began consulting and, through her husband’s connections at the University of Massachusetts, got a first look at higher education as a marketer. That consulting work became her on-ramp into a new industry.
In higher ed, she discovered a world that felt both familiar and very different. Her agency training served her well, but she also saw how immature the sector could be in marketing and communications. She had to explain why marketing mattered and why people and budgets for it were not a luxury. At UMass’s Isenberg School of Management, she worked for a dean who deeply valued branding. With his support, she hired a marketing consultancy to run the school’s first brand study and brought in its first ad agency — critical inflection points that gave her data, not just anecdotes, about the brand.
That experience led to a series of leadership roles in higher ed marketing and communications. Over time, she realized how much she enjoyed not just storytelling but also CRM, digital transformation, and data. Eventually, Oakland University asked her to become its first Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, charged with unifying brand, marketing, and communications for a regional public research university with big ambitions.
Big Themes From the Conversation
One theme that runs through Chris’s story is a love of what makes people tick. In agencies, she gravitated toward strategy and consumer insights, not just the flashy creative. She loved pairing classic CPG discipline with harder categories like spirits and pharma, where you must tell a story without saying everything outright. That same curiosity now applies to prospective students, parents, faculty, and alumni — understanding what they care about and how to talk to each of them clearly.
Another theme is how deeply she believes in the power of education. Coming from a family of educators, she jokes that she was never going to be a teacher, but she never lost the sense that education is essential. She talks about learning to sell things the world may not truly need, like another toothpaste, and then contrasts that with education, which she sees as a partial solution to many of society’s problems. That belief gives her work in higher ed a mission-driven energy.
Data is a third throughline. Early in higher ed, she realized they had almost no hard data about their brand — only stories and perceptions. So she brought in a firm to conduct a brand study and used that as a baseline. Later, working in CRM and digital transformation, she came to see data as “everything.” She laughs that if you had told her early in her career that she would geek out on spreadsheets and first-party data, she would have laughed. Looking back, she wishes she had taken that Excel course sooner.
She also thinks about brand as the end-to-end experience, not just a tagline. In her view, higher ed asks people to make a huge, complex, multi-year decision. No two students will have the same experience, yet universities still have to boil it down into a short, clear idea and then build a journey around it. For Chris, that means mapping the customer journey, simplifying the story without flattening it, and recognizing that branding includes customer service, advising, and every interaction — because “the brand is the experience.”
Finally, there is a quiet but firm commitment to sustainability and self-care. Chris loves her job and throws herself into it, but she is also intentional about exercise, meditation, and time with her two kids at hockey rinks and cross-country meets. She worries when leaders brag about never taking vacation or sitting on huge banks of unused days. In her mind, recovery is not indulgent; it is part of staying sharp enough to lead.
Watch CMO Journeys Interview
How They Choose the Right Agency Partners
When I asked her how she thinks about agency partners now, you can hear both sides of her career talking at once — the former agency account lead and the current CMCO in higher ed.
She starts with a simple reality: higher ed marketing and communications teams are pulled in many directions. One hour, they are handling a PR issue; the next, they are asked for a brochure or a recruitment campaign for a specific program. Because of that, she looks for agencies with a strong point of view and fresh perspectives. Her team does not always have the time or space to get out of the office and attend every conference. Agencies, on the other hand, are talking to many clients and seeing patterns across industries. She values that outside view.
Thought leadership is part of this. She talks about attending the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education and how glad she was that she went. What stuck with her were not lofty trend pieces but concrete case studies — stories of what other institutions tried, what worked, and what didn’t. She loves the collegial spirit of higher ed, where peers openly share lessons. The content that gets her attention looks like that: clear case studies with usable detail, not generic “AI slop.”
When it comes to finding agencies, peer recommendations are her first stop. In higher ed, she has seen a lot of consolidation and private equity activity and is wary of just trusting whoever shows up first in a search result. She remembers hiring a small Boston firm at Isenberg that did wonderful work. That experience reinforces her belief that the best partner is not always the biggest name; trusted referrals matter more than who dominates the rankings.
On specialization, she is very deliberate. Right now, she is running an RFP for brand research and positioning and has intentionally separated market research from creative development. She wants best-in-breed in each area. If one firm can do both, that is fine, but she does not want to bundle everything “all in” by default. For research and insight work, she likes firms with higher ed expertise, especially around data and use of first-party and syndicated data. For creative, she believes the work benefits when agencies also think beyond higher ed and bring in ideas from other categories.
If she were on the agency side trying to reach someone like herself, she would not start with a massive credentials deck. Instead, she responds to thoughtfulness and listening. She appreciates agencies that will take a meeting, kick ideas around for a short time, and share a couple of well-chosen case studies with some depth. She does not need “scads and scads” of examples; she wants a small number that show how the agency actually did the work and moved the needle. Respect her time, show that you understand her world, and back it up with real stories — that is how you stand out.
What Stood Out
One moment that stands out is how openly Chris talks about the evolution of her own craft. She began as an English major who loved words and the “gypsy craziness” of production. Over time, she found herself drawn just as much to CRM systems and first-party data, realizing that the future of marketing in higher ed depends on linking individual people to the story that fits them best. It is a reminder that creative and analytical muscles do not have to compete; they can grow together.
Another revealing moment comes when she talks about brand and experience. For her, branding is not just an ad or a campaign; it is the entire journey from first interest through enrollment and beyond. She sees students who are more comfortable with search, late-night questions, and digital self-service, and she talks about AI as a way to extend human support rather than replace it. That posture — curious, practical, and student-centered — says a lot about how she leads.
The Inside Scoop
This article focuses on the journey, the leadership philosophy, and how this CMO works with agency partners. To access the exclusive analysis, including priorities, initiatives, and opportunities, become a Next Big Win Pro member.
