The structured thinker: Shahn Welsh on adaptability, AI and what marketing is really in the business of
Maven x Maven: A spotlight on Shahn Welsh
We regularly sit down with a senior marketing leader to move past the slide decks and get into the real talk about what it actually takes to lead a marketing function today.
In this edition, we're talking to Shahn Welsh, Head of Digital Platforms and Content at Allianz Australia. Starting in graphic design and media, then spending over a decade across brand, CX, B2B Marketing and B2C Digital Sales, Shahn has one of the most genuinely end-to-end marketing perspectives you'll encounter. She's equally at home with a creative brief as she is with a conversion funnel, and sharper for having done both.
What's a defining moment - a win, a failure or a turning point - that made you the leader you are today?
It's probably not any single moment, but a thread that's run through my whole career: managing change and staying open to what's next.
I started out in print media, back when digital was something writers actively resisted. There was a lot of fear. Newspapers and Magazines felt permanent. But watching that shift happen in real time taught me something that's stayed with me ever since – the leaders who thrive are the ones who lean into what's new rather than hold the line on what's familiar.
I just refuse to buy into the fear. I think about: how can I use this? How can it help me and my team?
That mindset has shaped everything from how I've navigated structural changes inside large organisations to how I'm approaching AI right now. The technology changes. The human instinct to resist it doesn't. And I'd rather be on the other side of that instinct.
What's something about being a marketing leader that nobody warned you about?
That everyone thinks they're a marketer.
At every level, in every organisation, there are stakeholders with strong opinions about what marketing should be doing. In financial services especially, you might be making the case for brand to product teams, risk teams and legal teams – people who are deeply rational thinkers who want proof, not positioning.
A website isn’t a brochure anymore. In financial services, it’s the product distribution channel.
The skill nobody really prepares you for is communicating with influence across all of that. Not defending your decisions, but genuinely bringing people on the journey. It takes a different kind of patience – and a very clear sense of why your work matters commercially.
What’s your go-to tool, framework or approach that you turn to again and again as a marketing leader – and why?
Prioritisation. It sounds obvious, but in practice it's one of the hardest things to get right.
Right now, especially, there are multiple executives with competing priorities and not enough time or resource to do everything. Having a shared prioritisation framework – one that's transparent, agreed upon and clearly articulated – is what stops teams from spinning.
The principle I keep coming back to is simple: low effort, high impact goes first. Then high impact, high effort – those need a plan. The other two quadrants you either delegate or deprioritise. But just as important as the framework itself is getting alignment on the criteria behind it. When everyone understands why something is ranked the way it is, the conversations get easier.
As you grow as a leader, a second layer of this kicks in: figuring out what you actually need to do yourself, what you can delegate, what you can let go of entirely and what you just need to influence. Getting that right changes everything.
What personal strength do you leverage in your leadership – and where can it sometimes be a blind spot?
Achievement and high standards are real strengths for me – my Clifton Strengths confirmed what I already suspected. I hold myself to a high bar and I genuinely want the team to cross the finish line together.
But those same traits can tip into pushing and driving too hard, particularly with people who don't share those as their natural strengths. I've got a lot of creative thinkers in my team, and they often get to excellent outcomes through a completely different path than I would.
My job as a leader is to give clear goals and clear direction – then let people work out the how.
Learning to hold that tension – between my instinct to drive and their need for space – is ongoing work. But it's made me a better leader for it.
What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger marketing leader self?
Two things, actually.
The first is: be in the driver's seat of your own career, because no one else is. I didn't grow up with corporate parents, so the unwritten rules of career navigation weren't obvious to me early on. I wish I'd understood sooner that you have to actively shape the path, not just do good work and hope someone notices.
The second came from a leader I worked with when I was heading into maternity leave. She told me to enjoy every moment of it, because work would always be there. I heard it. I just didn't fully take it in.
There were restructures happening and my mind was always half in the office. Looking back, I wish I'd trusted that advice more. Your kids grow up. The inbox doesn't go anywhere.
What are you most looking forward to when it comes to marketing?
The transformation we're in right now reminds me of the shift from print to digital – and I find that genuinely exciting, not frightening.
There's a paper from my Masters of Marketing – Levitt's marketing myopia – that I keep coming back to. The core idea is that you have to know what business you're actually in. Trains didn't fail because trucks arrived; they failed because they thought they were in the train business rather than logistics. Newspapers that thought of themselves as communication businesses adapted. Those that didn't, didn't.
Marketing is in the business of communication. What that looks like will keep changing. What we’re here to do won’t.
As AI reshapes what's possible, I think we need to keep coming back to that anchor. We're specialists in being human. In making people feel something. In building brand perception all the way through the customer experience. That job doesn't disappear – it just gets more important.
Are there conversations marketing leaders should be having more openly?
Yes – and I think the most urgent one is about ethics.
AI can now do a lot of what graduates and junior marketers were hired to do technically. But if we let that happen without a conversation about our responsibility to the next generation of talent, we'll hollow out the pipeline. Large organisations often have brilliant graduate programs. We need to make sure those continue – and that Marketing is part of that.
Beyond that, I think we need to be more honest about the fact that nobody really has the rule book right now. Everyone's navigating this together, asking the same questions, trialling the same tools. There's real value in working it out collectively – in a way that actually benefits the industry and the people who work in it.
What we love about Shahn
What stands out about Shahn is the range – not just the breadth of her career, but the way she makes it all connect. From art direction to digital sales to AI strategy, she's never let a title define the limits of her curiosity. She is, in her own words, the marketer who gives the digital team a voice – and that instinct to bridge, translate and advocate is exactly the kind of leadership that moves organisations forward.
Her take on AI cuts through the noise in the best way: not fearful, not evangelical, just grounded. Stay in the business of communication. Be human. Do that well, and the tools will follow.
The takeaway for our community: when the uncertainty feels loud this week, come back to your anchor. What business are you actually in? Shahn’s kept that question close for her entire career – and it shows.
