Tamara Niesen

About Tamara

I’m a marketing leader with over 20 years of experience building brands, teams, and go-to-market strategies for high-growth B2B SaaS, device, and platform companies.

Currently, I serve as Chief Marketing Officer at WooCommerce, the world’s most popular ecommerce platform, powered by WordPress. WooCommerce is part of Automattic’s global portfolio of open-source products, which also includes WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and Jetpack.

At Woo, I lead a team focused on brand, demand generation, product marketing, partner marketing, lifecycle marketing, and performance marketing. I champion open commerce as a movement — one that empowers merchants, builders, and agencies to create without limits.

Before WooCommerce, I led Global Demand Generation and Go-to-Market at Shopify, driving revenue growth and market expansion for Shopify Plus. I’ve also held marketing leadership roles at Housecall Pro, D2L, and BlackBerry.

I believe in building T-shaped marketing teams — people with deep expertise in their craft and broad enough knowledge across disciplines to understand how everything works together as a system. That’s been a personal goal throughout my career, and it’s an always-on exercise that should never be “complete.”

I’m based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

What I Believe

“Marketing is a symphony. Many instruments, different functions, coming together to produce beautiful music.”

“Ruthlessly experiment and thrive on change.”

“I establish trust by being authentic, real, vulnerable, delivering on my word, and being transparent.”

“The future is about true partnership — co-creating solutions, bringing insights from the community, and helping shape where things go next.”

“Nothing is more satisfying as a marketer than saying, hey, we’ve listened and now we’re bringing it to you. It’s not just marketing jargon and fluff. It’s real stuff.”

What I Do

I lead marketing at WooCommerce — part of Automattic’s global portfolio of open-source products. My work sits at the intersection of brand, demand generation, and go-to-market strategy, always with merchants and the community at the center.

I believe marketing at its best is a symphony: many instruments, different roles, coming together to produce something beautiful. I’m passionate about building teams that ruthlessly experiment, thrive on change, and put customers first.

Career

WooCommerce (Automattic) — Chief Marketing Officer, 2024–Present

Led the Woo brand refresh, scaled marketing investment, developed the high-value merchant go-to-market strategy, and launched an AI transformation framework across marketing operations.

Shopify — Director, Global GTM & Demand Generation

Drove revenue growth and market expansion for Shopify Plus through global demand generation and go-to-market strategy.

Housecall Pro — VP, Product Marketing

Led product marketing for a mission-driven home services platform.

D2L — Marketing Leadership

B2B SaaS marketing for a leading learning technology company.

BlackBerry — Marketing Leadership

Early career marketing in device and platform technology during BlackBerry’s enterprise era.

University of Waterloo — Education

Featured

Writing

Podcasts & Speaking

Connect

LinkedIn

WooCommerce

Sharebird