Ashley Faus

Director of Integrated Product Marketing, Atlassian

Marketer, writer, speaker by day... singer, actor, fitness fiend by night!

I've handled all aspects of marketing strategy and execution, from product marketing, to demand-gen, to content and events. I love telling the high-level stories that resonate with an audience and connecting the dots between types of assets and distribution channels.

My writing has been published on TIME, Forbes, The Journal of Brand Strategy, and The Muse, and I've spoken on various marketing topics for INBOUND, Harvard Business Review, and MarketingProfs.

Visit https://ashleyfaus.com/ for more information about my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI".

(Views are my own)

Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

Funny how we only ever hear the first part of that^^ quote, often said with a derisive tone.

Nobody wants the "master of none" 😬

And yet... I proudly claim the moniker of "marketing generalist"!

My superpower is connecting the dots, working across multiple teams, and integrating across channels.

If you need someone who sits at the intersection, I gotchu.

And this is why I'm always slightly surprised but delighted when I'm recognized in a specific marketing discipline.

My current title is "Lifecycle Marketing", but I contributed enough PMM-related content to earn a spot on the 2025 Product Marketing Influencer list.

And Alt Marketing School offers courses across allllll the marketing disciplines, including trendier topics, like the creator economy.

Personally, I think we're in a generalists' economy right now.

With teams running lean, leaders looking to bring in more AI and automation, and the rise of the fractional or solopreneur, generalists are making a comeback!

So cheers to all the folks who are making their mark in each (or every) discipline 🎉 

See the Alt Marketing School list: https://amschool.click/top

See the Product Marketing Alliance list: https://lnkd.in/dTmpNtJ5

Buy my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/4jqaKDW

Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio at Atlassian

I almost ended up naked onstage 😳

I was playing a bride, wearing this ridiculous '80s-style dress (pictured below), with a dropped waist, heavy beading, and a ridiculous train.

And on opening night, the zipper down the back of the dress started coming undone...

Inching.
Down.
My. 
Back.

And no one could help me 😬

I felt the sleeves start to slide towards the edge of my shoulders.

I felt an unpleasant breeze on my lower back.

And I realized that I'm just hoping I don't end up naked in front of the audience.

So... when I tell you that I've had things go wrong onstage, I'm not talking about a momentary hiccup with the slides or stuttering over a few words or going blank on my next sentence 😅

What this means for you, as a professional sharing your knowledge at a conference or Town Hall or QBR: it's gonna be ok.

YOU CAN DO IT!

At minimum, you won't end up naked onstage.
And the audience probably won't even notice a flub!

I get a lot of questions about how to overcome the fear, swallow the nerves, and feel confident stepping onstage.

One of my counterintuitive exercises is to catastrophize.

What's the WORST thing that could happen?

How would you react (and recover) if it happens?

Thinking through the worst-case scenario takes the surprise and sting out of it, because usually, it's not that bad.

And now you know how to react 😎

I said I ALMOST ended up naked onstage... handily, I've had a lot of practice reacting to things going wrong.

I straightened my posture to widen my shoulders, put my hands on my hips and across my chest to keep the dress from slipping off completely, and angled my back away from the audience to maintain a little dignity.

And then I asked the costumer to secure the zipper before the next performance, 'cuz we're not trying to have things go wrong twice 💃

Wanna be on a podcast? 

Drop your name and topics in the comments 👇👇

What hosts want to know:

💡 What's your expertise and unique angle?
🎤 Can you speak in an engaging way?
📣 Will you help bring in listeners?

Don't have prior appearances? 

I gotchu:

--> Go live on LinkedIn or post a short clip to share your advice

--> Confirm that you'll share about your episode on LinkedIn (and any other channels where you are active, like a newsletter, website, etc.)

Let's connect some hosts and guests!

(Full disclosure: I'm trying to streamline my inbox a bit, so my goal is to make this an easy place for folks to connect without a middleman 😀)

AI can be the epitome of a productivity mirage.

It FEELS productive to craft the perfect prompt, thinking of all the details that an LLM might need to tailor its response to your specific use case.

It FEELS like progress to refine and refine again and refine just once more for perfection.

It FEELS like insight to ask, "But what about _____?" over and over again.

And. Yet.

Blathering on with the chatbot is not, in fact, DOING anything.

Did you actually use all that research that it pumped out for you to take action?

Did you make the updates to the slide deck or blog post, based on the recommendations?

Did you go to the event and see for yourself whether your ICP actually attends?

I've been struggling with this mirage over the last few weeks 😳

In particular, I'm sparring with Claude to improve my talk track and slides, based on session scores and audience comments from my fall speaking engagements.

I feel like I've been so productive!
I spent so much time typing!
I considered so many angles!

My slide deck has not changed.
My speaker notes are not updated.

And as I go back through the chat history, I'm left feeling a bit overwhelmed, annoyed, and generally unmotivated to take the necessary action to ACTUALLY IMPROVE.

AI is only as good as the action it enables.

You can "doom scroll" and "water cooler chat" and "push pixels" around in an LLM just as easily as any other tool (maybe more so 😅).

Don't fall prey to the productivity mirage.

There are MANY smart marketers in the world.

They have great ideas, they've executed impactful programs, and they've written useful books.

The difference between what they share and what I share is literally THEM and ME.

It's not just about the idea.
It's about the person sharing the idea.

WHO says it is just as important as WHAT they say.

People trust people like themselves.
People resonate with different people.

So using your authentic voice, talking about your lived experience, and sharing your unique expertise is the reason someone trusts you, follows you, and listens to you.

If you're looking to be more visible, get more opportunities, and accelerate your success in 2026, you gotta listen to this episode 😀

Thanks for hosting a great conversation Wednesday Women!

Hear the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/e-BwQmxb

Join my Stanford class, starting on Jan. 26: https://lnkd.in/eCe697Zx

Buy "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/4jqaKDW

Got big goals in 2026? 

I joined Erica Anderson Rooney to talk about my career journey, and I gave some SPICY takes:

♟️Chess vs. Checkers promotion advice

☑️ Minimum Viable Action (MVA)

💡The trouble with "bright" girls

✨ The real pitfalls of perfection

This episode tackles a few more personal issues than my usual fare, so if you want a candid conversation to kick off the New Year, I gotchu 😎

Listen to the full episode: https://lnkd.in/eMp-UCs5

Exercises to help you speak confidently: https://lnkd.in/e8wvrZpD

Grab my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/3YjquAk

"But what if they build a personal brand and then leave!?!"

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

This is common pushback on not only allowing employees to share their insights, speak on podcasts, build a following on LinkedIn, etc., but encouraging and enabling them to do this.

The ironic part is that these statements are usually sitting alongside a mandate to "get the employees sharing company content on social media"!

Here's the thing: NOBODY wants the soulless company content 😬

Not the employee you're nagging to share it.
Not the viewer scrolling the feed.
And frankly, not even most of your users.

People want to hear from people, which means helping your employees share in their unique voice is a much better approach, all the way around.

And yes, some employees will attract recruiters and brand collabs and advisor offers, such that they might just decide to leave your company.

But the valley is small, and careers are long!

These former employees might become customers, partners, investors, or brand champions... there's so many ways to exchange value 🙌

And in the age of AI?
HUMANS are even MORE important!

I covered several related topics in my conversation with Finn Thormeier on The Executive Brand podcast, tune in for more details on:

- Why and how to build internal influencers
- The 4 pillars of thought leadership
- Choosing the "best" B2B creator

Rant: Freakin' LinkedIn, you are BUGGY!! Pull yourself together!!

I've noticed that when I schedule posts, they often show up wonky.

It un-tags accounts that I at-mention.

It replaces images and videos with link previews.

The formatting in generally is just not what it looks like in the preview.

But apparently, now it's DOUBLE POSTING content?!?!

I schedule a post, went to "post now" and fixed the issues noted above, and then published... only to find that it apparently posted the same content, but with the mistakes, later in the day.

WHHHHYYYY!?!?

I didn't catch it in time to delete the rogue post, so I figured I'd ask if anyone else is seeing this janky behavior.

It's VERY frustrating.

I'm using native features and trying to follow whatever stupid rules the algorithm randomly enforces.

But good grief.

FIX THE BUGS.

/rant

"All effective marketing is human-centered. While we're busy being distracted with shortcuts, Faus helps us refocus on what matters." ― Seth Godin, Author “This is Marketing”

"Trust is under siege from nearly every angle. Yet marketers like you and me want (need!) to build trust with our audiences. The question is... How? Ashley draws you a map." ― Ann Handley, best-selling author and Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

"Most of the go-to playbooks are outdated, but it's hard to find a replacement for stale marketing practices. Ashley constructed a powerful new set of frameworks, along with practical advice and real-world examples. "Human-Centered Marketing" brings us back to what actually matters: the people behind the screen." ― Nancy Duarte, best-selling author and CEO of Duarte, Inc.

If you've been on the fence about grabbing a copy of my award-winning book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI", this is the perfect time to buy 😀

On Wednesdays, we keynote 💃

Honored to present keynote session at B2B Marketing Exchange with ADWEEK, talking about human-centered marketing!

Grab your tickets with special pricing through Feb. 16, and yes, you CAN sit with us 😎

"Don't panic, bring a towel."

We're going on an adventure!

Join me on January 14 to talk about the B2B creators you need in your galaxy this year.

I'm talking with Nadia Davis, MBA from CaliberMind about how to:

👩‍🚀 Find the RIGHT voices for your marketing mix

🚀 Build a thought leadership program that delivers the RIGHT outcomes

💫 Measure the RIGHT metrics across B2B creators

Register for free: https://lnkd.in/eYsKtvYN

Christopher S. Penn is an internationally renowned keynote speaker who energizes audiences with his expertise on artificial intelligence in marketing. A recognized thought leader, he demystifies complex AI concepts, providing practical strategies that empower marketers to achieve breakthrough results. Christopher’s insights on leveraging AI for data analysis, content creation, and strategic decision-making have shaped five key trends in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing and PR, modern email marketing, marketing data science, and AI/machine learning in marketing. His journey in AI began in 2013, a decade before tools like ChatGPT brought the technology into the mainstream, giving him a deep understanding of its potential and practical applications. His engaging and informative presentations leave attendees with actionable takeaways they can implement immediately.

As co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights, Christopher leads a team of experts dedicated to helping businesses unlock the full potential of their data using cutting-edge AI solutions. His proven track record of success includes building AI-powered systems that have delivered double-digit ROI for prominent brands such as Cisco Systems, T-Mobile, Citrix Systems, GoDaddy, AAA, McDonald’s, Twitter, and many others. He is a 2025, eight-time IBM Champion in IBM Data and AI and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. He is a published author in the Journal of Applied Marketing Analytics, and his work is also reflected in over two dozen marketing books, including the bestselling “Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI“.

Learn more:
ChristopherSPenn.com
trustinsights.ai
MarketingOverCoffee.com

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Christopher Penn

One of the ways I stay grounded is a morning walk with my spouse and dog. We follow the same general route each morning, and we bring along a trash bag and a trash picker. Along the way, we pick up litter. The first few times I did this, it was weird. Then it became routine. Then we found other people doing it, and entire organizations of local, like-minded folks who want to do something to support their communities.

I can tell you the names and professions of over half the people who live on my street, just because we've run into them during one or more dog walks. And people have said to us, "Oh, we see you all the time." They notice. They feel like we're part of the glue of our community.

There's a lot about the world we can't change. There's a lot about the world we can change but definitely shouldn't discuss in public spaces online. But what we can do right now, in this moment, are little things like cleaning something up every day. You don't have to make grand gestures or huge announcements.

Why? Because when you do something little over and over again, you become present in your community.

Look outside your window. How many people do you see out and about? That epidemic of loneliness you hear about? It's partly because we don't make use of the communities around us. Yes, it's amazing to have digital communities, but it's much more difficult to go out to coffee or lunch with most of them.

Communities thrive in presence and wither in absence.

When you go for a walk, you trigger a virtuous cycle. Humans are pack animals and copycats. When you pick up a piece of trash, you signal to the people around you that your community is worth making an effort for. It's the opposite of broken window syndrome.

And here's the thing that folks who work in security know—the more present you are, the easier it is to detect changes. You see the ebb and flow of daily life—and you know when something's amiss in ways that you can't if you're just behind a screen all day.

Go for a walk. Pick up a piece of litter. Say hello to a neighbor. If you're not present, others don't know they could be as well.

Co-Founder & Chief Data Scientist at TrustInsights.ai, AI Expert, AI Keynote Speaker

Moltbook proves all the dudes running LinkedIn comment bots could have tried a lot harder to make their bots say something actually interesting.

"Figure out 3 workarounds."

One of AI's superpowers can be summed up in this sentence, especially when you're doing work like coding, stats, analysis, or other similar kinds of work.

Very often, our human brains get stuck. We run into an obstacle, and we bang our heads against the obstacle. "What do you mean, WP Engine no longer supports .htaccess files? That's so stupid!" or "What do you mean, my favorite analytics trick doesn't work here? That's so stupid!"

We get stuck. We're so used to doing things a certain way, our way, that our ego and stubbornness block us.

Guess who doesn't have that problem? Generative AI. AI doesn't have an ego unless we give it one (don't). It only knows to be helpful, to try to fulfill our directives. Which means if you're good at delegating, good at giving instructions, then it's trivial to tell it something like:

"Here's what I want you to do. Here are the limitations, obstacles, and challenges you'll face. As you plan this task, figure out 3-5 workarounds for these limitations while sacrificing no functionality or outcomes."

It will do a better job than we do, for two reasons. First, it doesn't have strong opinions about the "best" way to do something. It will look at all the probable ways to accomplish a task. Second, it has a much wider view than we do of our task. We all suffer from the curse of knowledge, from what's in our heads. This applies blinders to us for any given task. Asking a machine with a broader perspective to come up with workarounds takes that bigger picture into account.

It's time to think bigger, and the way to do that is with AI helping you see a bigger picture.

#AI #GenerativeAI #GenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #MachineLearning #IntelligenceRevolution

Are you turning over your prompts?

If you do work for others under contract - as an employee, as a contractor, as a business - there's a good chance somewhere there's a term: "work for hire".

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER. I CANNOT GIVE LEGAL ADVICE. CONSULT A QUALIFIED LAWYER IN YOUR JURISDICTION FOR ADVICE SPECIFIC TO SITUATION.

In traditional consulting, if you do a work for hire, everything you make for that work is assigned to your client. (for the purposes of this post, client means whoever you work for, whether you're a full timer, contractor, indie, etc.) If you're a programmer and you write code in Python, you turn over your code as your work product. That's what work for hire broadly means - you make a thing, you hand over the thing.

Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI cofounder) famously said back in 2023, "The hottest new programming language is English", speaking about the still-new ChatGPT back then.

Prompts are code. They're just code in English or Danish or Swahili, not Python or Rust or Swift.

Which means if you are creating a work for hire using generative AI, your client is entitled under a work for hire contract to your prompts. Unless you specifically worked with your lawyer to exclude things like prompts, they are entitled to them in the same way they would be entitled to your source code if you were handing over a compiled binary (an app).

Key takeaways:

1. If you're the client, check with your legal team about whether you are entitled to prompts as deliverables.
2. If you're the worker, check with your legal team/your lawyer about how your contracts are structured (for full timers this is your employment agreement) and whether or not you can realistically carve out stuff like prompts as excluded background technology.

Either way, please have a conversation with your qualified legal resources sooner rather than later about whether things like your prompts and agents are yours or not for any given project.

Don't have one? Talk to folks like Ruth Carter (they/them) and Sharon Toerek.

#AI #GenerativeAI #GenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #MachineLearning #IntelligenceRevolution

Do you have first principles in AI?

One of the most useful things you can do in AI systems, but especially agentic AI, is have a clear list of 3-5 first principles. These are the overarching guidelines that tell the machine what it always should be doing no matter what.

Part of the reason AI sometimes delivers substandard results is that there are too many conflicting directives and is not sure which to give priority to. You'd feel the same way if someone came to you with 132 things on a to-do list - and some of the tasks were conflicting.

If you had 3-5 first principles that you could use to judge which tasks were most important or which things override other things, you'd have a much easier time getting things done.

Here's an example of some of mine:

1. Fix over create: always update or fix before creating new. The exception is if your fixes exceed the required cyclomatic complexity.
2. Build a reusable test suite: never do one-off tests.
3. Put things where they belong. The orientation file tells you exactly where to put outputs.
4. Never defer necessary work. Whether or not a task is in scope, out of scope, heavy effort, or seemingly trivial, you are forbidden to put it off.
5. Use agents as much as possible.

For me and the work that I'm doing in Agentic AI, these first principles, especially in software development, help keep AI on the rails and understand exactly what it's supposed to be doing at any given time. 

I have additional rules that are project specific, but these first principles nudge it towards correct behavior. And if I give it conflicting instructions, I have to explain myself and why my instructions should override first principles.

Think about what first principles you would develop for all your AI work. You might have ones like "always ask our ICP" or "always use Markdown" or whatever it is that you have to correct AI the most. Keep it within 3-5. More than that, and you're basically making a stew of confusion.

Try this concept out. It will save you an enormous number of headaches.

#AI #GenerativeAI #GenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #MachineLearning #IntelligenceRevolution

#ICYMI: Stop chatting with AI and start building with it.

Most people use Claude for basic chat, but if you aren’t using Claude Code in the terminal, you’re missing out on the engine's true power. In our latest "So What?" episode, we break down why this command-line environment is the gold standard for high-level tasks, from custom agents to control with Git.

#claude #code #aimodel #terminal #claudeterminal

Sometimes the secret sauce is just a collection of little things.

In AI, a lot of folks understandably focus on prompts - they're the recipes that AI uses to cook with. But anyone who's spent more than a minute in a kitchen knows that things like ingredients, appliances, chef skills, menu, etc. all matter.

When you look at what the highest performing folks have in their environments of tools like Claude Code/Cowork/Antigravity/etc., very often the secret sauce doesn't live in a prompt. It's quirky little environmental things that fix a bunch of minor deficiencies that add up to big gains.

Here are two of mine that don't live in any prompt, from my Claude user settings:

1. terminal-notifier: this is a super simple command line app for the Mac that allows any app to send a notification. My Claude Code has a hook that calls terminal-notifier when Claude Code needs my attention. This is a MASSIVE productivity booster because I don't have to babysit Claude Code.

2. Date hook: In my Claude Code, I have a hook for SessionStart that injects the date into the chat: "The datetime is 2026-02-02 10:00:00 ET". For those who have used Claude in its various incarnations, you know that its training data ends at the beginning of 2025, so it perpetually thinks it's 2024. By having this tiny string in the chat, it always knows what the actual date, which means its searches are more correct, its reports are more correct, etc.

These little niceties greatly improve the agentic experience for me. There's a bunch of other stuff, but these are two things that can make a big difference for very little effort.

What's in your secret sauce environment that makes everything better with almost no effort?

#AI #GenerativeAI #GenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #MachineLearning #IntelligenceRevolution

In this week's In-Ear #Insights (the @TrustInsights #podcast) @katierobbert & @cspenn ask the big question: Should leaders #Hire, #Retrain, #Outsource, or #Replace with AI? We break down the toughest decisions facing managers today and explain why 'durable skills' are your secret weapon.

#Analytics #Data #FutureOfWork #Leadership #AIEthics

This week, we explore the power of local AI for automating document scanning and organization. You will discover how to turn tedious administrative tasks into high-speed productivity engines using free tools on your own computer. You will learn to process thousands of pages without sending private data to external servers or paying usage fees. You will gain the skills to build custom software that organizes your digital archives regardless of your coding experience. You will unlock a versatile method for handling messy files that saves time and secures your information. Watch this video to learn local AI document processing today.

#AI #GenerativeAI #GenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #MachineLearning #IntelligenceRevolution

Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Using Local AI for Document Scanning (2026-02-01) :: View in Browser The Big Plug Two new things to try out this week: 1. Got 

Open article: Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Using Local AI for Document Scanning (2026-02-01) by Christopher Penn • 19 min read

Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Using Local AI for Document Scanning (2026-02-01)

Why do AI projects fail?

Most of the time, it's not the technology. It's everything that goes with the technology.

Imagine getting a brand new car, something nice like the BYD U9 Extreme. Goes up to 308 MPH / 496 KPH. Torque vectoring, 3000 HP, 4 electric motors. US $252K new.

And you use it to go get groceries at the store around the corner.

Then you complain that you're getting no ROI, that electric cars suck, that other people are going faster than you.

It isn't the car's fault. It's that you had no understanding of how to properly use it, which one to buy, what your purpose was, who was going to drive it, or how you'd measure success. 

This is the state of most AI projects now. You bought the nice car, but you didn't do any of the rest. My cofounder and CEO Katie Robbert came up with a helpful, completely free tool that you can use to audit ANY AI project, big or small, personal or professional, the Trust Insights AI Readiness Assessment Quiz.

Try it at: https://lnkd.in/ep4af5eJ 

Take the project you're working on right now, whatever it is. Ask yourself the 20 questions on the quiz and tap or click your answers. If you don't get an A or a B on it, it's time to pause and reflect. Think about the project and what's likely to fail - because a grade of C or lower on it means a real risk of the project going nowhere.

And then give it to coworkers and colleagues working on their own AI initiatives. See how they score. I scored OpenAI's newest announced tool, ChatGPT translate (ridiculous), and it scored a C with generous answers. If someone there had used this tool, it would have told them to pump the brakes and rethink it. (it's a tool no one asked for and a problem that was solved years ago, and OpenAI is getting ROASTED in their Discord)

While it won't prevent every AI debacle, it's a good gut check, especially before you get underway. Bookmark it and use it often, and always before you invest a lot of time or effort into an AI project.

#AI #GenerativeAI #GenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #MachineLearning #IntelligenceRevolution

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The Battle

Ashley Faus

Christopher Penn

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Performance ScoreAshley Faus's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreChristopher Penn's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Ashley Faus

Christopher Penn

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ashley Faus's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreChristopher Penn's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreAshley Faus's LinkedIn Performance