#Iconic_Audencians: Tifenn Dano Kwan (GE 02), living her American dream

Tifenn Dano Kwan has led world-class marketing strategies for some of the largest SaaS organisations, and anyone reading her LinkedIn profile will recognise that she is a highly accomplished marketing executive. She worked for 3 years at IBM in Paris and Sydney, then for 14 at SAP in Sydney, Singapore and San Francisco. In January 2020, she joined Dropbox as CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), where she pulled off the challenge of fully integrating and digitising the marketing journey, at a time when users needed it most. During our conversation, she confided to us – a few hours before it was made public – that she was taking the plunge and leaving Dropbox for a CMO role at Collibra, a hypergrowth data intelligence startup.

She has received various prestigious awards: in 2019, she made it to the Top Rank list of “50 women CMOs who rock marketing”, and last year she received the “Global CMO of the Year Award” from the leading media house Accent. She has also been recognised as an “OUTstanding role model” in the LGBT+ Executives category for guiding the younger generation on the importance of being out and comfortable in the corporate world. Her LinkedIn profile also highlights the respect she commands from her peers and collaborators: “embodiment of an avant-garde leader”, “great at unifying teams”, “committed to mentoring and building people up”, “passionate and tenacious”, “results oriented”, “collaborative”, “compassionate” are some of the terms used to praise her .

What Tifenn’s profile does not reveal is the life promise at the origin of her prestigious career. From a young age, she was aware that the small conservative town in Brittany (France) where she grew up would be too small for her dreams. Her family had specific expectations for her, but Tifenn had the courage to listen to her guts and follow through on her big plans. She found her calling in marketing, travelled the world and found a way to make it in America. She settled in the Silicon Valley – a land that provides her with the stimulation she thrives on, as well as the freedom she aspired to embrace her identity fully. In this inspirational interview, Tifenn shares the principles that have helped propel her career forward, and talks integrity in tech, funky gay weddings, as well as the virtues of a morning coffee ritual.

 

It all began back in 2020 when we celebrated Audencia’s 120th anniversary by launching our very first iconic alumni collection. For this second series, we are delighted and proud to showcase 12 new profiles of Audencians from around the globe. The alumni that you will discover have very generously given up their time for an interview with fellow alumna, Katia Hérault (GE 2001), for which we are immensely grateful.