Jennifer Kattula (Microsoft, Meta, & America Express) A Conversation on: Spearheading AI at Work and at Home, Bringing Workplace Systems into the Home & Creating an Intentional Life #38

In this episode of CEOs & ABCs, Kevin sits down with Jennifer Kattula, Global CMO of Microsoft Advertising, to explore what happens when a systems thinker applies the same rigour she uses to lead AI transformation at scale to the way she designs her family life at home. Jennifer's path to one of the most senior marketing roles in tech started in chemical engineering, wound through the early days of Meta, and landed at Microsoft, where she is now leading one of the most ambitious AI adoption programmes in enterprise marketing. But the more interesting story is what happened when she became a mother. She did not plateau. She accelerated. And she has a clear theory about why. Kevin and Jennifer dig into how she is building AI agents that save her team hundreds of hours a week, why she never starts her morning in email, and what it actually means to spend your time only on the things only you can do. Then the conversation turns to something equally ambitious: the family brand. Jennifer and her husband wrote a one-pager before they even got married, run a yearly family visioning session with wine and spreadsheets, and have built five house rules their kids can actually recite. She has since turned that entire framework into an application called House Rules, designed to help any family build their own manifesto with intention. This is a conversation about AI, ambition, design thinking, and what it looks like to treat your family with the same strategic seriousness you bring to work. In This Episode, You'll Learn: - Why the only thing that prepares you for AI disruption is getting your hands dirty with the tools now- How Jennifer is leading AI transformation at Microsoft Advertising and what enterprise adoption actually requires beyond usage numbers- What it means to spend your time only on what only you can uniquely do, at work and at home- Why becoming a mother made Jennifer more focused, not less, and how ambition and parenthood can compound- How she and her husband built a shared family vision before they got married and why they still revisit it every year- What a family brand actually is and how to build one using the same frameworks that make companies great- How the House Rules app works and why the people who have used it say they feel seen- Why structure and frameworks create more freedom, not less, especially at home- How Jennifer thinks about AI and kids: what she is protecting, what she is introducing, and what she does not have figured out yet- What robots cannot replace and why leaning into your weirdness is a genuine competitive advantage Key Takeaways: - Spend your time on what only you can uniquely do. Everything else is a delegation or outsourcing decision.- AI adoption does not equal AI effectiveness. Role-specific solutions and clean data underneath are what make it actually work.- Becoming a parent forced a focus that ambition alone never did. Constraints, used well, are a creative advantage.- Families need a brand: a mission, values, operating principles, and a shared sense of how you show up in the world.- Structure is not the enemy of presence. It is what makes presence possible.- You cannot lead a transformation you are not personally inside of. Model the behaviour, do not just mandate it.- The best question in any interview right now: what are you building? About Jennifer Kattula:Jennifer Kattula is Global CMO of Microsoft Advertising, where she leads brand, demand generation, and AI transformation across one of the world's largest advertising platforms. Before Microsoft, she spent nearly 12 years at Meta, building and scaling marketing functions from the ground up across a range of disciplines. A trained chemical engineer turned marketer, Jennifer brings systems thinking to everything she touches,... Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction and Jennifer's Career Journey(00:02:22) - From Chemical Engineering to Tech Marketing(00:06:25) - Learning and Building at Meta(00:09:41) - Leveraging AI for Career Growth(00:19:50) - Teaching my Kids AI(00:33:51) - Creating Family Vision and Intentionality(00:40:02) - Family as a Brand: Values and Identity(00:43:38) - Using AI at Home and in Parenting(00:43:39) - Building the House Rules App for Families(00:47:13) - Ambition, Motherhood, and Focus(00:53:30) - Closing Remarks and Future Aspirations