MAICON brings together top visionaries and experts in the field of AI during a three-day conference packed with actionable sessions and networking events—all to position you as the change agent your organization (and career) needs. In this ongoing speaker series, we’re featuring these extraordinary leaders, with forward-looking predictions, actionable tips you can use today, and a preview of their MAICON 2025 sessions.
Maila Ruggiero is ABM Manager and Co-Lead of the Marketing AI Council at Snowflake. Her journey with AI began in 2022, when ChatGPT first became widely available. At the time, she was part of the digital marketing team at VMware and quickly recognized the potential of generative AI.
“It’s about how we can use AI to give our own skills superpowers,” she explains. “Taking what you're already awesome at and what you’re an expert in, and pairing that with AI to magnify your previous impact.”
Seeing the opportunity for innovation at VMware, Maila connected with like-minded colleagues, forming one of the first Marketing AI Councils in B2B technology. She helped secure CMO sponsorship and funding, eventually taking a leadership role in the internal AI strategy for global marketing at VMware.
Her hands-on experience paved the way for her current role at Snowflake, where she co-leads a cross-functional team of seven on the Marketing AI Council. There, she focuses on increasing AI adoption, promoting responsible use, and building frameworks to accelerate AI-driven marketing initiatives.
“I am a firm believer that every marketer can learn the skills to be a builder to some extent,” she says. “The barriers from taking an idea and building a prototype have never been lower.
"You used to need to know how to code, but LLMs unlock a new wave of AI-powered solutions that can be built by non-technical people.”
Maila approaches her work with the goal of “out-innovating” herself and helping other teams do the same. At MAICON, she’ll share practical strategies for leading AI initiatives that deliver measurable results.
AI adoption and ongoing innovation can feel insurmountable at first, but you don’t need a technical background to create AI models.
In this session, Maila will share the “specific building blocks” to drive both adoption and innovation at scale and the lessons learned rolling up her sleeves to build proof of value. Expect actionable insights and real-world examples, including insight into all of the following:
You’ll leave with practical strategies to launch and lead your own AI initiatives from the ground up.
“Executive AI rollouts don’t guarantee employee adoption,” Maila explains. “That disconnect can make or break the overall impact and many companies are running into it right now. The key to adoption is when people don’t feel like AI is ‘being done to them’ and start seeing it as theirs to own.”
The moment people realize that their own unique strengths, expertise and judgment is what makes these tools valuable is when you start to shift a culture that embraces building with AI. That's why it’s critical to have dedicated resources and systems that encourage responsible experimentation, frameworks that help spot opportunities, and training that shows the human’s role in making AI valuable.
“At Snowflake, we’ve seen adoption grow not because it was mandated, but because marketers experienced firsthand how attainable it is to co-create and build with AI,” says Maila.
If you want AI use at your company to move beyond treating LLMs like another search engine, you need to create the conditions where employees can build workflow solutions themselves. That’s how you change the perceptions and behaviors from consumers to active builders and truly start to transform the way teams work and solve daily challenges.
Maila predicts the emergence of a new type of professional: the AI workflow designer.
These roles will likely come from marketers, project managers, and operations leaders who already know the daily pain points of teams and can prototype solutions by using prompts, templates, and low-code tools.
“They won't necessarily write code but would architect how AI gets applied in real work,” Maila said.
Blog: AI-Driven ABM: Scaling Precision and Impact for B2B Growth
Personalized ad copy is crucial for ABM success, but creating it at scale can be a challenge. To tackle this, Maila tested whether AI-generated ad copy could drive higher engagement and improve campaign ROI.
Working with Snowflake’s brand team, Maila used Cortex AI to craft prompts and guidelines for a large language model, then built a Streamlit app to streamline the process. The results were impressive: campaigns using AI-generated copy achieved a 54% lift in click-through rates compared to the original creative.
“With AI, we no longer have to choose between efficiency and personalization — we can have both,” says Maila. “Now we can scale messaging that cuts through the noise and truly speaks to prospects’ needs, challenges, and goals.”
From Unmatched Data to Hundreds More Meetings: Snowflake's AI-Driven Marketing Breakthroughs
In this post, dive into how Snowflake’s marketing intelligence and developer relationships teams are using Snowflake AI tools to drive significant improvements in how they connect with customers and allocate resources.
What does it take to lead AI innovation while rolling up your sleeves to create impact?
In this session, Maila Ruggiero, ABM Manager at Snowflake and two-time founding member of Marketing AI Councils, shares her journey from strategist to builder—proving that anyone, regardless of technical background, can create AI models that drive measurable results.
Recognizing that a clear AI path wasn't yet fully defined, Ruggiero focused on leveraging internal resources to bring AI innovation from the ground up. After six months of trial and error with different prompting techniques, she built a model that generated hyper-personalized, account-specific messaging that was on-brand and outperformed historical benchmarks. That single project became a proof of value and inspired the launch of an AI Council at Snowflake.
Attendees will leave with practical insights and inspiration for leading AI initiatives within their own teams.
Follow Maila’s journey and stay inspired by her insights on AI and marketing innovation.
Join Us at MAICON 2025Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON) was created for marketing leaders and practitioners seeking to drive the next frontier of digital marketing transformation within their organizations.
We’re excited to host our 5th annual MAICON—Marketing AI Conference—at this pivotal point for our industry. Join us from October 14 to 16, 2025, in Cleveland, Ohio, and use the special code SPEAKERSERIES100 at checkout to receive $100 off your registration!