Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Teenagers tend to daydream about fame, power and glory. Deb Ruffins dreamed of marketing.

"I've wanted to be a CMO since I was 14 years old," said Ruffins, the new chief marketing officer for Seattle-based Perkins Coie. "I am a huge marketing geek and all my career moves have been around getting here."

The Perkins Coie position is Ruffins' first C-suite job, coming after she spent the past five years in business development and marketing roles at Hogan Lovells. She held prior positions at Bingham McCutchen and accounting giants PwC and Deloitte.

"Deb has broad experience as a leader of business development and marketing teams for professional services firms," Bill Malley, Perkins Coie's firmwide managing partner, said in a statement. "Her outstanding skills, experience and understanding of the changing legal industry will help advance the firm's commitment to exceptional client service."

Ruffins said she had been on the lookout for potential CMO positions and was waiting for the right fit. Perkins Coie provided that.

"They are an Am Law 50 firm, have several great practice areas and a commitment to their clients," Ruffins said. "They just met many of the criteria I wanted."

The position had been open since June 2019, when the firm and former CMO Kip Guthrie parted ways after six years.

Ruffins, who is relocating from New York to Seattle for the position, said the immediate plan is to watch, listen and learn about the firm—the largest law firm headquartered in the Pacific Northwest and a big force in political law circles in Washington, D.C., especially for the Democratic Party.

"Listening to the partners and to the clients and seeing what their needs are is first," Ruffins said. "I don't have the institutional knowledge just yet. It usually takes about six months or so to pick that up."

Ruffins said that the firm is aiding that endeavor by assigning a mentor as part of the onboarding process.

She will inherit a staff of between 65 and 75 people, she said, overseeing marketing and business development.

She said that in a former position at PwC she had the opportunity to build out a business development team, and is looking forward to working with the in-house team at Perkins Coie.

"Marketing in Big Law has changed a lot since 2008," she said. "Marketing is about connecting buyers and sellers. The CMO's role is to orchestrate that activity, to make sure we are facilitating that exchange."

The CMO position has long been a difficult marriage for law firms. Impatient partners, changing firm strategies and the increasing visibility for the C-suite in legal firms can make a long tenure difficult to achieve.

Many firms have also had long gaps in between CMO tenures. Perkins Coie's search took the firm seven months.

"Law firms operate on precedent, which means looking into the past," Ruffins said. "Marketing is about thinking for the future. Sometimes those two thought processes don't fit together well."

Ruffins, who is black, said that one of the draws of Perkins Coie was that the firm seemed committed to diversity and diverse perspectives, from the first interview to her finally being hired.

"I was interviewed by six people of color," she said. "Five of them were partners. And I realized afterwards that I had never been interviewed for a job by a black person before."

Ruffins, who is well aware of the low percentage of black women who occupy her current role, is hoping that her work and dedication can be viewed by others as something to aspire to.

"I hope one of the things I can do is be a leader in the profession," she said. "I hope to be a role model for those who come after."

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