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What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Angela Vega, Director, Capabilities and Operations at Expedia Group.

Summary: Angela built her ADHD tech stack as a way to survive the noise in her own head, turning distraction into design. Her workflow (Offload, Shape, Prototype, Loop, and Anchor) channels restless thought into motion through AI tools like Whisper and GPT. After her second pregnancy and a diagnosis that reframed her chaos, Angela stopped fighting her wiring and built systems that worked with it. Her fast, pattern-driven brain now thrives in marketing operations, where complexity rewards connection. She reads emotion like data, earning trust through clarity and transparency, and reminds leaders that execution, not strategy decks, moves companies forward. These days she measures success in energy and her mantra is “It’s just marketing, we’re not in the ER”.

In this Episode…

• Building an ADHD Techstack
• Why ADHD Shapes Better Decision-Making in Marketing Operations
• Why ADHD Helps Marketers Build Better Systems
• Building a Bridge Between Strategy and Execution in Marketing Ops
• Execution Defines Whether Ideas Live or Die
• Why Recent Execution Experience Builds Better Marketing Leaders
• How to Build Discernment in Martech Leadership
• Energy Economics for Marketing Ops Leaders

About Angela

Angela Vega has spent over 13 years in FinTech, health, and travel, she has unified global martech stacks, accelerated execution ninefold, and led CRM for Expedia, Vrbo, and Hotels.com, supporting over a billion monthly customer interactions.

Her leadership grows both teams and ideas. She blends creative intuition with operational rigor, translating insight into systems that last. As a late-diagnosed ADHD professional, she experiments with AI to help neurodivergent leaders thrive, proving that marketing can be both human and scalable.

Building an ADHD Techstack

Angela built her ADHD Tech Stack to make her brain an ally instead of a hurdle. The system blends ADHD science with AI practicality, turning common executive function challenges into structured momentum. Each part of her workflow (Offload, Shape, Prototype, Loop, and Anchor) acts as a circuit for channeling mental noise into clarity. It is both a workflow and a survival strategy for people who juggle too many tabs at once, whether they are digital or mental.

Her starting point came from frustration. Lists, sticky notes, and phone alarms worked for a while but always hit a ceiling. The real struggle was never remembering to do things but figuring out where to start. Executive function is about getting from idea to action, and for ADHD professionals, that gap can feel massive. Angela found her bridge in AI tools that could listen, capture, and organize her thinking in real time. Whisper transcribes her thoughts. GPT shapes them into frameworks. Gemini helps her plan and communicate with clarity.

“I talk out loud all the time. Instead of saying things into the abyss, I say them into AI,” Angela said. “One system holds my to-dos, another handles updates for my boss, and another helps me break big goals into smaller steps.”

Her stack follows five steps that anyone can adapt:

1. Offload: Speak or type ideas into AI to clear mental clutter.
2. Shape: Ask AI to sort and group ideas into logical categories.
3. Prototype: Turn thoughts into quick drafts or mockups to trigger dopamine and action.
4. Loop: Use AI for feedback, reflection, and gentle nudges that replace self-criticism.
5. Anchor: Set reminders, templates, and adaptive systems that help you return to projects smoothly.

Angela’s framework works because it aligns tools with real human behavior instead of forcing people into rigid systems. The design rewards momentum over perfection. It gives permission to think out loud, change direction, and experiment without shame. Every ADHD brain operates differently, so every system should too. AI’s flexibility makes that possible by turning scattered thoughts into structured workflows without losing the spark that drives creativity.

Key takeaway: Treat productivity as a design challenge, not a discipline test. Use AI to capture ideas before they vanish, shape them into usable form, and build adaptive anchors that forgive interruptions. That way you can create a personal martech system that channels ADHD energy into consistent output, steady progress, and fewer moments of paralysis.

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Why ADHD Shapes Better Decision-Making in Marketing Operations

ADHD rewires how people handle complexity, and marketing operations thrive on complexity. Angela discovered that her diagnosis reframed everything about her work and leadership. Years of restless multitasking, late-night thought spirals, and endless side projects suddenly made sense. Her mind was not unfocused. It was constantly building new connections, scanning for patterns, and searching for stimulation that most work environments suppress.

Her diagnosis arrived during a storm of personal and professional change. After her second pregnancy, her coping systems stopped working. Therapy no longer grounded her, medication clashed with her body, and grief from losing her father-in-law blurred her focus. Meanwhile, the pressure at work continued to grow. Leadership demanded stability while her world spun faster each week. Reaching for help was not an act of surrender. It was a recalibration of survival.

“I have a lot of thoughts in my head. It’s sometimes super hard to fall asleep. I think of the twenty things that might go wrong and the hundred hobbies I have,” Angela said.

When testing confirmed ADHD combined type, disbelief gave way to validation. The diagnosis gave shape to her chaos. She stopped labeling her quirks as flaws and started understanding them as traits with purpose. Her curiosity was a strength, not a distraction. Her brain thrived in dynamic systems where rules shifted and creativity met precision. That explained her pull toward marketing operations, where nothing stays still and every campaign or data sync has moving parts that need decoding.

Angela began building systems that complemented her wiring instead of fighting against it. She used visual workflows to clear mental clutter, broke large tasks into tight sprints, and surrounded herself with teammates who balanced her energy with structure. ADHD did not make her less capable. It made her more adaptive. In a field that rewards fast problem-solving and parallel thinking, her mind became her greatest operational advantage.

Key takeaway: ADHD changes how leaders process and prioritize information, and awareness turns that difference into strategy. Identify where your energy peaks and build workflows around those cycles. Use external systems to store what your brain refuses to hold. Protect deep-focus windows instead of forcing consistency. The goal is not to tame your wiring but to design with it, that way you can turn what once felt chaotic into sustainable momentum.

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How to Turn ADHD Patterns Into Martech Leadership Strengths

ADHD often gets framed as distraction, but in martech leadership, it can function as accelerated pattern recognition. Angela’s brain fires fast. She sees connections before most people finish explaining the problem.

“I can jump from one topic to another pretty quickly because in my mind I’ve already created the five connections,” she said. That speed used to confuse people who could not follow her leaps.

Now she slows her delivery without dulling her pace. She reverse-engineers her thought process into smaller, digestible steps. That way her team can follow her reasoning while she preserves her creative velocity.

Her communication style carries its own story of adaptation. Early in her career, she learned that interrupting was often the only way to speak in male-dominated rooms. Over time, that defense turned into habit. She now writes thoughts down during meetings to avoid blurting them out, giving her brain a parking lot for ideas that feel urgent. This small change shifted her meetings from reactive to inclusive. Her team knows she will still contribute, but they also know she is listening. That awareness builds credibility faster than any presentation ever could.

Angela also describes the constant hum of emotional overprocessing. A raised eyebrow on Zoom or a casual “Hey, how are you?” in Slack can spiral into hours of overthinking. “If you’re in a really bad mood, you’ll read that message differently,” she said. She checks herself by asking if her reaction is data or emotion. That moment of pause resets her mental framing and prevents small interactions from turning into imagined conflicts. The discipline of questioning perception is one of her strongest leadership tools.

Energy remains her biggest advantage. She brings volume and humor into rooms that have gone flat. During a testing protocol presentation at the end of a long day, she shifted the entire mood of the group by leaning into her natural energy.

“People laughed and then volunteered to help,” she said. “You can make boring things interesting if you bring enough energy and humanity to it.”

The comment speaks to her leadership philosophy. Engagement is rarely about the topic itself. It comes from how you make people feel while working on it.

Key takeaway: ADHD leadership works when you channel intensity into clarity. Use your fast brain to connect ideas quickly, then slow down enough to show the map. Capture impulsive thoughts before they interrupt someone else. Audit your reactions before they shape your tone. Bring energy on purpose when the room drags. That way you can turn rapid thinking and emotional sensitivity into tools for stronger communication, better meetings, and deeper trust.

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Why ADHD Helps Marketers Build Better Systems

Angela sees ADHD as a kind of system architecture problem. The brain moves fast, demands novelty, and builds connections that others might miss. In martech, where structure meets chaos daily, that wiring can be a hidden advantage. She describes it like managing a complex data flow.

“I can connect dots pretty quickly,” she says. “That’s useful when there’s a long chain of operational issues leading to one visible result.”

Her brain works like an automation graph, jumping between nodes until the cause is clear. The same trait that gets her in trouble in meetings for “over-explaining context” becomes gold when diagnosing a campaign failure across 15 tools and four data sources.

Angela believes ADHD traits behave like APIs. They’re neutral until context defines their value. Assertiveness can feel abrasive in a quiet room but becomes essential in a project standstill. Anxiety can spiral when there’s no outlet but can sharpen focus in a high-stakes launch. She laughs recalling being called “bitchy” at work. “That word stuck with me,” she says, “but in moments where clarity and decisiveness are needed, that same energy helps move things forward.” The lesson: every trait can be an instrument if you know when to play it.

“All traits and behaviors are neutral. It’s about knowing when they’re the right tool for the job.”

For Angela, ADHD brings a second edge, emotional pattern recognition. She’s spent years adjusting her tone and pacing to match whoever’s in the room. That hyper-awareness, born from fear of being misunderstood, evolved into a career skill. She can sense when a VP is disengaged, when a data engineer is checked out, and when a marketer is bluffing confidence. That lets her adapt messaging instantly, turning stakeholder meetings into real alignment sessions. Anyone in martech knows how rare that is. Systems fail not because of tech gaps but because of human ones. People like Angela fill that gap instinctively.

She also questions the hollow call for everyone to “bring their full self to work.” To her, authenticity doesn’t mean unfiltered sameness. It means smart calibration. You wouldn’t use the same workflow for a customer migration that you use for campaign QA, so why would you communicate the same way in every room? The skill lies in toggling traits with intention—deciding when to be bold, when to be detail-obsessed, and when to let curiosity take the lead. ADHD just gives you a faster dashboard for those switches.

Key takeaway: Treat your brain like your martech stack. Every trait, like every tool, has a purpose. Audit your own operating system to see where traits such as impulsivity, intensity, or sensitivity give you leverage. Channel hyperfocus into diagnosing complex problems. Let restlessness fuel creative experimentation. Turn people-pleasing into audience awareness that drives better collaboration. By viewing traits as configurable strengths, you build self-awareness like you build automation logic; one intentional connection at a time.

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Building a Bridge Between Strategy and Execution in Marketing Ops

Middle managers in martech live in the tension between execution and vision. They are close enough to the work to see what breaks but far enough removed that leadership expects concise answers, not messy context. Angela describes that space as a balancing act that depends on how well you frame tradeoffs. You cannot just push for your preferred path; you have to map the full range of choices and let leaders see what each one costs.

Angela’s process begins with radical transparency. She lists all options, even the extreme ones, to show she has considered the full picture.

“Sometimes I’ll even include the really bad option,” she says. “It shows that I’ve thought through everything, even the extremes.”

When she presents an initiative (like a new campaign automation or a tech stack overhaul) she includes three elements:

• Every option, from reasonable to unrealistic
• A clear recommendation for which path to take
• The time and resources required to make it work

That structure builds credibility. It keeps the conversation about tradeoffs rather than approval. Executives appreciate seeing where the boundaries sit, and it helps them choose speed, scope, or scalability with intent.

Angela also reframes what “details” mean, because the word means different things to different audiences. Operators think in levers and dependencies: data fields, triggers, and connections. Leadership thinks in outcomes: deadlines, stability, and market readiness. She often starts a meeting with a short calibration question like, “How much do you already know about this topic, and what context would be most useful for this discussion?” That question prevents misfires, wasted explanations, and incorrect assumptions about shared understanding.

When it comes to pacing, Angela avoids confrontation. She knows leaders always want progress faster, so she turns urgency into a structured choice. She outlines what it takes to build a scalable foundation versus a fast deliverable. Then she asks which one should take priority. It shifts the burden of decision-making upward without defensiveness. You keep control of execution while giving leadership the agency they expect.

Key takeaway: Tradeoff framing is a practical communication skill for martech leaders. Show every path, clarify the costs, and guide executives toward informed choices. Ask how deep they want to go before you start, and define “fast” and “right” as two sides of the same decision. That way you can protect your team’s focus while earning long-term trust.

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Execution Defines Whether Ideas Live or Die

Execution defines whether ideas live or die. Angela argues that strategy has become a comfort zone in marketing ops. Teams spend weeks perfecting decks that never turn into anything tangible. She calls it the “PowerPoint graveyard,” a place where promising ideas disappear because no one could get them across the finish line. Every operator has contributed a few headstones there. The reason has less to do with bad thinking and more to do with what happens after the brainstorm; convincing people, unblocking tools, and keeping momentum alive.

“We all have really good ideas,” Angela said. “But how many of those live and die in a PowerPoint file that you spent three weeks on? Execution is what gets them out into the world.”

Angela defines execution as the muscle that moves strategy into motion. It is not just pushing buttons or setting up automations. It is getting buy-in from people who do not report to you. It is persuading data teams to prioritize your schema cleanup or getting CRM admins to reroute an integration that no one wants to touch. It is political, emotional, and messy. The operators who thrive understand how to turn influence into progress.

Real execution also requires adaptability. Angela recalls times when a strong marketing plan stalled because the tools could not handle the load. The solution was not to rewrite the plan but to improve the infrastructure and convince leadership to invest in better systems. That flexibility separated projects that shipped from those that stayed hypothetical. Strategy created the blueprint, but execution built the house.

Execution earns trust faster than vision statements ever will. People remember who made their work easier, who fixed a broken process, or who got the campaign live when everyone else moved on. Angela believes that real leadership comes from doing the unglamorous work that turns ideas into impact. Execution transforms collaboration into credibility and credibility into momentum.

Key takeaway: Execution turns strategy into measurable progress. Build your influence by getting others to act, improving the systems that block progress, and seeing ideas through to completion. Each project you push across the finish line strengthens your leadership reputation and proves that in marketing ops, doing the work is what truly moves the organization forward.

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Why Recent Execution Experience Builds Better Marketing Leaders

Most leadership teams talk about strategy as if it exists in a vacuum. Decks get prettier, buzzwords multiply, and meetings drift further away from the work that actually moves the business. Angela argues that this happens when companies promote too many thinkers and not enough builders. Operators who understand how to make ideas real bring a different kind of intelligence to the table, one that connects ambition with action.

“The best leaders take that understanding with them as they grow,” Angela says. “They remember what it’s like to be in the weeds and bring that awareness into every decision.”

She points out that many CMOs come from agency or brand backgrounds, which creates an echo chamber of creative thinking but often lacks people who understand technical execution. A marketing organization benefits when at least some of its leaders know how data flows through systems, what causes operational bottlenecks, and how customer research shapes measurable outcomes. Those details might seem tactical, but they are the difference between strategy that sounds good and strategy that actually ships.

Angela believes the fix is structural. Teams need formal touchpoints that connect executional context to strategic discussions. She describes programs where individual contributors sit in on leadership meetings, first as observers and later as contributors. Over time, they bring operational friction into the conversation, helping leaders make better decisions about scope, dependencies, and resourcing. That way you can stop discovering those problems six months too late.

Operators stepping into these rooms also need to adjust how they communicate. Angela recommends a rhythm that makes complexity digestible:

• Start with alignment on the business goal.
• Identify what is blocking progress.
• Explain how the limitation affects outcomes and timelines.

This method keeps the conversation focused on impact rather than technical jargon. Leaders respond to outcomes and trade-offs, not step-by-step workflows.

“When leaders understand the ‘why’ behind a limitation,” she says, “they stop seeing execution as resistance and start seeing it as expertise.”

Key takeaway: Promote leaders who carry their operator instincts with them and build systems where execution informs strategy. Create structured forums for IC voices to shape leadership discussions. Encourage technical contributors to frame their expertise in business terms. That way you can close the gap between people who plan the work and people who make it real.

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How to Build Discernment in Martech Leadership

Discernment shapes whether a leader earns trust or burns out. In martech, where creative instincts collide with system logic, passion can easily become chaos. Angela describes discernment as a skill that develops through repetition. Each meeting, argument, and missed opportunity adds another layer of perspective. “It’s like flexing a muscle,” she says. “You never get it perfect. You just get better at refining what matters.”

“Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”

That question stays with her. It forces a moment of pause before jumping into debate. Most days she stands between two worlds: the fluid, emotional side of marketing strategy and the rigid, rule-bound world of technology. Campaigns demand creativity. Systems demand structure. When those two collide, the room fills with strong opinions. Friction can be healthy when it sharpens clarity, but it turns toxic when ego drives the conversation.

Angela built her own filter to decide which battles to fight. She asks four questions that act as a circuit breaker:

1. Does this block or enable momentum? Speak up when the issue slows the team’s progress, stay quiet when it doesn’t.
2. Why does this bother me? Check if it challenges a value or pokes at pride.
3. Is this a real problem or just noise? Many conflicts fade once frustration subsides.
4. Do I have the energy? Energy matters more than time, and some fights cost more than they’re worth.

“You don’t have to say something to be important.”

That idea changed how she leads. Some conversations only drain energy that could be spent creating progress or enjoying life outside of work. Angela protects her bandwidth the same way she protects her team’s focus. She keeps her energy for real blockers, real values, and the people who rely on her presence. Discernment, for her, is the difference between reacting in the moment and leading over the long term.

Key takeaway: Before stepping into conflict, stop and ask four questions: will speaking up move the project forward, what emotion is driving your reaction, is the issue real or temporary, and do you have the energy to engage? Practicing this habit builds leadership maturity that keeps both teams and leaders sustainable. That way you can stay passionate without burning out.

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Energy Economics for Marketing Ops Leaders

Energy management determines whether marketing operations professionals last in the role or quietly burn out. The people who thrive long term share one skill: discernment. They know when to engage, when to push, and when to walk away. Angela treats discernment as a discipline, not a soft skill. It is a daily judgment call about what deserves energy, attention, and emotion.

Angela describes how emotional attachment can drain even the sharpest operators. The longer you wrestle with a problem, the harder it becomes to stay objective. She believes AI can help break that cycle by shortening the time investment in tasks, which makes it easier to detach from outcomes.

“When I spend less time on a thing but still produce strong work, I care about it differently,” she said. “I can judge whether it’s worth defending without letting my ego lead the conversation.”

That distance protects both energy and perspective.

“Discernment is about doing the things that move the needle and knowing which ones deserve your energy.”

Corporate environments make this harder. Passionate people often get tagged as defensive when they simply care too much. Angela’s countermeasure is transparency. She writes an operating manual for her team that outlines her quirks, priorities, and communication habits. She tells them directly, “When I say this, it never means that.” The point is to eliminate unnecessary emotional guessing games so her team can focus on meaningful work instead of decoding tone or intent.

Angela brings that same practicality to prioritization. She reminds her team constantly, “It’s just marketing, we’re not in the ER.” Urgency exists, but panic does not have to. She refuses to believe in busy work and pushes her team to build a hierarchy of priorities instead. When something feels draining, she asks them three questions:

1. What does this enable?
2. Why does it feel tense?
3. How important is it compared to everything else?

If a task matters deeply to someone else and takes little effort to complete, she tells them to do it. If it takes too much and moves nothing forward, she encourages a conversation about whether it belongs on their plate at all. And when a project truly deserves a fight, she stands beside her team and commits fully.

Key takeaway: Discernment is energy economics. Protect your mental battery by judging which work drives outcomes, detaching from ego-driven battles, and refusing to confuse activity with progress. That way you can stay sharp, lead with focus, and spend your energy where it earns a return.

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How to Build a Personal Growth Formula in Marketing Leadership

Happiness in leadership rarely looks like what people imagine. For years, Angela measured it by output: more projects, more wins, more motion. Every new skill was proof of worth, every setback a reason to push harder. That rhythm worked until she realized it never ended. Parenthood interrupted that cycle, forcing her to slow down long enough to see that fulfillment isn’t something you chase. It’s something you build deliberately, piece by piece.

“I think of happiness now as a formula,” Angela says. “And just like in any formula, you have all these factors that exist in different emotional states.”

Her version of happiness combines curiosity, patience, and emotional range. It includes frustration, boredom, and the occasional failure, but it also includes joy, creativity, and calm. She views those emotions as data points that help her understand where her values are being honored and where they’re being ignored. Instead of searching for balance, she calibrates her formula daily, adjusting it around what matters most: people, purpose, and chosen challenges.

Growth plays a central role in her philosophy, but not in the corporate way most leaders define it. Angela describes growth as the ability to choose which problems to solve. Growth doesn’t always mean climbing; sometimes it means exploring. You build muscle by lifting heavy things, but only if you also give yourself time to recover. In marketing operations, that recovery can look like stepping back from constant optimization to think, recalibrate, or experiment for its own sake.

Rest, to Angela, isn’t a reward for productivity. It’s an active part of progress. She describes it as “giving yourself grace and space to not climb a ladder, but to explore a landscape.” That mindset is rare in martech, where everyone is conditioned to move fast and measure everything. Yet the ability to pause, reflect, and find joy in effort itself often separates burned-out operators from sustainable ones.

Key takeaway: Build your happiness like a growth model. Define the variables that actually matter; your values, relationships, and the challenges you choose. Give rest the same weight as momentum. That way you can sustain both impact and satisfaction over time, without losing yourself to the noise of constant achievement.

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Episode Recap

Angela Vega built her productivity system out of necessity, not ambition. Her brain runs loud and fast, full of ideas that vanish before she can act on them. Lists and reminders failed. What worked was talking to AI. Whisper captures her thoughts, GPT organizes them, Gemini helps her plan. Together, they form a five-step rhythm: Offload, Shape, Prototype, Loop, and Anchor. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s movement.

Her ADHD diagnosis arrived after her second pregnancy, when her coping systems collapsed. The label didn’t fix things, but it gave her clarity. Her brain wasn’t scattered; it was scanning. She stopped fighting her wiring and started designing around it. That shift turned impulsivity into insight. Her curiosity and speed became assets in marketing operations, a field built on chaos and logic colliding daily.

Angela sees ADHD like a network map. Her mind jumps between nodes until the pattern becomes clear. What once looked like distraction now solves problems others can’t trace. “Every trait is neutral until context gives it value,” she says. Intensity, restlessness, sensitivity, they all have purpose when pointed at the right problem.

Her leadership mirrors that wiring. She reads emotion like data, catching signals others miss. A short pause on Zoom tells her more than words. When presenting, she shows every option, even bad ones, so leaders see the tradeoffs. She opens meetings with, “How much do you already know, and what context would be most useful?” That single line prevents confusion and earns trust.

Angela believes execution decides whether ideas live or die. PowerPoint decks don’t change companies; people who finish projects do. She pushes for visible progress over perfect plans. Strategy sets direction, but operators build momentum. The best leaders, she says, still remember what it feels like to fix a broken workflow.

Now she measures success in energy, not output. Every conflict, meeting, and task has a cost. Before reacting, she asks herself four questions: Does this block progress? Why does it bother me? Is it real? Do I have the energy to care? That pause protects her focus and her team’s sanity. “It’s just marketing,” she reminds them. “We’re not in the ER.”

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Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created with Midjourney (check out how)

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