Rod Yabut is a digital strategy and marketing operations executive with 20-plus years building and scaling web, content, CRM and brand communications systems across higher education, agency and consumer brand environments.
He holds a master’s degree from USC Marshall School of Business and a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fullerton.
Rod has long drawn inspiration from advertising’s power to tell a compelling story. After realizing he wasn’t going to be the next David Ogilvy (and some other humbling realizations), he built a career in digital marketing and strategy instead.
He’s been practicing digital strategy and marketing operations for more than 20 years. His experience ranges from direct marketing, CRM and lifecycle marketing, to brand and content strategy, to SEO and AI search visibility, to crisis communications and organizational design.
Most recently, he was director of digital strategy at the University of Southern California (USC), where he led enterprise digital operations across social media (marketing, community engagement), inbound marketing (web strategy, SEO/AEO discoverability) and outbound marketing (CRM, email marketing). At USC, he also led several digital initiatives during his tenure, including the digital launch of a billion-dollar university initiative, co-led the redesign of the university’s flagship website usc.edu, and built an AI search visibility framework to help usher the university into the AI era.
Prior to USC, Rod worked agency-side on a roster of national brands, including Toyota, Toyota Financial Services, Lexus, 7-Eleven, Honda, Farmers Insurance, Nextel, Zurich Insurance and SuccessFactors, running CRM strategy, campaign analytics and integrated marketing programs.
He has long made a habit of anticipating digital shifts. Just a couple of years into his USC tenure, he was written about using audience sentiment to shape editorial decisions, testing stories on social media and multiplying high-performing content across video, social and print, years before listening-informed workflows became standard practice in higher education. He also personally built USC’s central communications group’s first podcast platform out of a $20-a-month hosting plan and a handshake deal for repurposed audio content.
In his spare time, when Aikido, traveling and an opinionated dog allow for it, he is usually building content systems or optimizing marketing campaigns before others realize they need it.
