Sunlighten→
Chief Growth Officer at Sunlighten in Leawood, KS
Skills
Job Description
At Sunlighten, we're not just about infrared saunas, we are on a mission to improve lives through innovative health and wellness solutions. As a global leader in infrared sauna therapy, our in-house Marketing team is on the hunt for a Chief Growth Officer. Our CGO will own global marketing, brand strategy, customer acquisition, non-sales-assisted commerce revenue, and profitable growth across the Sunlighten wellness platform: Sunlighten, Sunlighten for Business, Sunlight Day Spa, Ice Barrel, and future brands and offerings. This Executive will advance a connected wellness experience while remaining accountable for each brand’s differentiated positioning, growth strategy, marketing investment, and performance accountability across domestic and international markets.
This Executive will lead through established functional leaders to set strategic direction, establish priorities, allocate resources, develop talent, improve processes, and drive performance through clear expectations and accountability for execution. You will align headquarters, our European team, and teams established in additional countries, including the planned Middle East expansion, around global priorities and local market needs, while remaining actively engaged in addressing execution challenges and leadership gaps.
The Chief Growth Officer will protect and grow Sunlighten’s revenue engine while leading the evolution of customer discovery, evaluation, purchasing, and post-purchase engagement experiences through AI across digital platforms, partners, and emerging technologies. This leader will own digital and non-sales-assisted revenue, partnering with the Chief Sales Officer to create a seamless customer journey and strengthen demand for the sales organization.
Grounded in Sunlighten’s mission to help people feel better and do more of what they love, with the people they love, the CGO will lead teams to build trust through education, communicate differentiated value, personalize customer experiences, and strengthen relationships beyond the initial purchase.
Executive Accountabilities:
Global Wellness Platform and Brand Strategy
- Set the global marketing strategy for the wellness platform and differentiated plans for each brand. Define each brand’s audience, identity, customer promise, channel priorities, and role within the platform. Preserve distinctive brand strengths while connecting products, services, and education to customer needs and guiding future growth.
- Allocate budgets, talent, agencies, and shared capabilities across brands and markets with Finance and business leaders. Set brand and market goals, evaluate returns, and identify cross-brand opportunities without diluting positioning or customer experience.
- Align marketing strategy and execution across headquarters, the European team, and future country teams. Establish global and local decision rights, country plans, market-entry priorities, launch readiness, and investment thresholds. Adapt language, content, channels, partnerships, and customer journeys to local needs.
Premium Product Commerce and Differentiation
Own commercial strategy, merchandising, and growth of non-sales-assisted transactions for high-value, considered-purchase products. Lead clear product positioning, education, and value communication across both direct digital buying and sales-assisted journeys. Demonstrate differentiation through quality, performance, science, design, and the ownership experience, supported by credible evidence and fair comparisons.
Set positioning, launch, campaign, and commerce priorities with Content, Creative, Product, Sales, and Digital Experience. Ensure product information explains science, technology, fit, total ownership cost, financing, delivery, and support accurately. Improve product comparison, configurability, checkout, and recovery; make the underlying product knowledge and commerce capabilities usable beyond the website.
Growth Customer Experience and Execution:
Profitable Growth and Revenue Continuity
Own profitable growth strategy, marketing investment, forecasts, acquisition economics, and demand generation across the wellness platform. Lead through the Director of Growth, who remains accountable for daily acquisition and channel performance. Sustain qualified opportunities for the approximately 70-person human-assisted sales organization while directly growing non-sales-assisted commerce revenue and contribution margin.
Build tomorrow's commerce without interrupting today's sales engine. Test AI-supported and self-service buying paths alongside established channels using defined hypotheses, control groups, evaluation windows, and scale-or-stop criteria. Judge success by incremental revenue, margin, customer value, quality of sales opportunities, and the full sales-cycle impact—not lead volume or chatbot engagement alone.
Require creative tests across paid search and social, YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, CTV, television, display, sponsorships, and creator partnerships. Set clear hypotheses, budgets, evaluation windows, and scale or stop criteria; hold leaders and agencies accountable for results.
Activate experts, creators, owners, PR, affiliates, and commercial partners to communicate differentiated value and generate measurable growth. Equip the CSO and Sales organization with trusted product education, qualified demand, and continuity of customer context. Establish joint routing and handoff standards; the CSO retains ownership of sellers, sales execution, closing, and human-assisted revenue.
Content, Light Science, SEO and AI Discovery
Lead through Content to turn proprietary science, product expertise, and consumer insight into an authoritative, evidence-backed knowledge system. Coordinate Product Development and scientific, legal, or regulatory review for approved claims and specifications. Make trusted knowledge reusable in marketing, sales enablement, AI search, product advisors, partner experiences, and the Sunlighten app.
Own SEO, GEO, and AI discovery priorities across brands and markets. Content owns evidence-backed answers and editorial strategy; Digital Experience owns structured product data, accessibility, technical architecture, and implementation. Measure qualified discovery, AI recommendation accuracy, citation presence, and attributable or experimentally validated business impact, including interactions that never visit the website.
Customer Intent, Digital Commerce and Connected Buying Journeys
Translate stated goals, browsing patterns, product comparisons, pricing behavior, and other consented intent signals into timely, relevant education, recommendations, assistance, or purchase. Integrate SMS, live chat, CRM, lifecycle journeys, and ecommerce; distinguish subscribers, researchers, high-intent customers, and sales-ready opportunities without creating unnecessary friction.
Partner with the CSO, Growth, Lifecycle, Analytics, Technology, and Sales Operations to improve Saleswings, CRM, Marketing Cloud, scoring, triggers, response standards, and handoffs. Maintain context and customer consent when a digital journey becomes sales-assisted. The CGO owns the demand and digital journey; the CSO owns human-sales execution and its transaction revenue.
Lead AI-assisted product selection, conversational comparisons, personalized recommendations, agent-accessible product information, and authorized digital transactions through Digital Experience and Technology. Customers must be able to choose AI, self-service, or a salesperson and move between them without repeating information. Coordinate post-purchase education, app engagement, community, referrals, and connected customer experiences with their functional owners.
Leadership, Experimentation and AI-Native Transformation
Set a compelling direction and inspire capable leaders to build through uncertainty. Operate weekly director one-on-ones to remove barriers and make decisions; monthly post-mortems to scale, improve, or stop initiatives; and quarterly strategic resets to select a small number of high-impact priorities and reallocate resources. Clarify decision rights, improve processes, automate repetitive work, and make difficult talent or investment choices when needed.
Own a commercially grounded AI-native roadmap across acquisition, scientific knowledge, digital commerce, personalization, sales handoffs, and post-purchase experiences—not just internal AI productivity. Understand data systems, architecture, testing, security, and build/buy/partner tradeoffs well enough to direct specialists, not replace them. Run disciplined experiments and scale proven capabilities while safeguarding customer privacy, authorization, scientific accuracy, brand trust, and financial performance.
Must be local to Kansas City or willing to relocate as this role operates out of Sunlighten HQ in Leawood, KS.
15+ years of relevant commercial, marketing, digital commerce, product-growth, or customer-experience leadership, including meaningful responsibility for multidisciplinary teams, budgets, and measurable outcomes.
Personally built, transformed, or materially scaled a direct-to-consumer or brand-owned B2B business, ideally involving premium, high-consideration products and complex journeys.
Demonstrable personal accountability for revenue, acquisition economics, customer experience, organizational decisions, and execution—not simply participation in a successful company.
A strategic leader who delivers through capable teams, sets clear expectations, and holds leaders accountable. Sufficient practical depth to diagnose problems and intervene directly when execution or capability falls short.
An entrepreneurial, inspiring, hands-on executive who builds exceptional leaders, aligns specialists around a coherent direction, makes difficult tradeoffs, and creates a culture of experimentation and accountability.
Demonstrated ability to protect an existing revenue engine while introducing a new operating model.
Fluent in data, testing, modern commerce technology, CRM, personalization, AI discovery, structured knowledge, and emerging agent experiences. Can challenge architects, select sensible build/buy/partner approaches, and translate uncertainty into commercially useful experiments; coding skills and prior large-scale agentic-commerce launches are not required.
Able to challenge inherited models, simplify processes, and accelerate delivery without relying on additional headcount.
Experience translating strategy across brands, regions, and markets; demonstrated ability to lead international teams or launch in new geographies. Europe and additional-country experience preferred; Middle East exposure useful but not essential.
Experience integrating digital and consultative buying is strongly preferred.
Excellent financial judgment, brand and customer empathy, persuasive executive communication, disciplined use of scientific evidence, and a record of winning trust across Marketing, Sales, Technology, Product, and international teams.
Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience; advanced degree preferred.
Fully Equipped Fitness Center On-Site
Free Lunch Program featuring a James-Beard Award Winning Chef
Health (HSA & FSA Options), Dental, and Vision Insuranc
401(k) with company contribution
Profit Sharin
Life and Short-Term Disability Insuranc
Professional Development and Tuition Reimbursemen
Associate Discounts on Saunas, Spa Products and Day Spa Services
Sunlighten provides equal employment opportunity. Discrimination of any type will not be tolerated. Sunlighten is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by state, federal, or local law.