B2B social media is no longer a supporting act. Across every sector of the global economy, the practitioners who do it well are shaping how organizations build trust, thought leadership, and pipeline. The B2B Social’s Rising 30 Class of 2026 was created to find them, recognize them, and put their work in front of the audience it deserves.
From hundreds of eligible nominees submitted by the B2B social community, 30 standout social media leaders were selected who are raising the bar for what B2B social media can look like. They work across diverse industries, from investment banking and industrial manufacturing to companies ranging from high-growth startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. What connects them isn’t the size of their following or the scale of their budget. It’s the quality of their thinking, their creativity, the consistency of their work, and the genuine communities they’ve built around it.
B2B social has a recognition problem. It’s one of the most undervalued functions in modern marketing, and the people doing it best are rarely credited by the wider business community that benefits most from their work. The Rising 30 is a deliberate attempt to change that. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s not a customer list. It’s a nomination-driven effort to surface the practitioners, thinkers, and builders doing the most purposeful, credible work in the field, wherever they work, in whatever sector, at whatever scale.
Every person on this list earned their place. Here they are, in alphabetical order, the B2B Social’s Rising 30 Class of 2026.
What we noticed from this year’s nominations
Our nominees told us more about the state of B2B social media than we can fit into a single list. Here is what the Rising 30 Class of 2026 nominations revealed. These were the patterns that shaped the Rising 30 Class of 2026 selection.
Financial services is showing up in the Rising 30 Class of 2026. For years, the B2B social conversation was dominated by SaaS and tech. This year’s nominations told a different story. Marketers from global investment banks, fintech companies, and professional services firms made a compelling case that operating inside a regulated environment is not a reason to produce less interesting social content. If anything, working within those constraints has produced some of the most creative approaches we saw.
Employee advocacy is becoming a discipline, not a feature. Several nominees were recognized specifically for their work building employee advocacy programs, not just their personal content. The nominations described practitioners who had stood up programs from scratch, activated hundreds or thousands of employees, and measured the results with the same rigor you would expect from a demand generation team. That tells us the conversation around employee advocacy has matured significantly.
Traditional industries are catching up fast. Energy, industrial manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare technology were all represented in the nominations, and the quality of the work was competitive with anything we saw from the tech sector. Marketing professionals in those environments face real constraints around brand standards and communications governance, and the ones nominated for the Rising 30 have found ways to build authority and community within them. That is a harder brief than it looks.
B2B social has gone global. The practitioners who made this year’s list work in Sweden, France, Israel, Australia, the UK, and across the United States. What stands out is how much the work varies by market. Different regulatory environments and content cultures are producing genuinely different approaches to B2B social, and that variety shows up in the Rising 30 Class of 2026.
Experience is accumulating. Some of the most compelling nominations described practitioners who have been doing this work for a decade or more, quietly building programs, audiences, and organizational capability that didn’t exist when they started. A profession that once struggled to explain its value is now producing people who can prove it. The Rising 30 Class of 2026 is the clearest evidence of that shift we’ve seen.
Meet the B2B Social’s Rising 30 2026
The Rising 30 Class of 2026 spans 14 industries and four continents. Every person here was nominated by the B2B social community and selected on the quality of their work alone.
Alex Noble recently joined IFS from Finastra and brings with him a clear playbook for enterprise software social, educational, consistent, and built for the platform rather than adapted from other channels. His approach has earned him the kind of LinkedIn following that other B2B practitioners actively reference, which is a different signal than just growing a number. At IFS, he’s applying that playbook to one of the most established names in enterprise ERP.
Connect with Alex on LinkedIn (3,651 LinkedIn followers)
Alexandra Wittmann is a senior marketing voice at Celonis, one of the enterprise software market’s most prominent companies, and she has built a personal brand that stands out in a category that rarely produces memorable social content. Her approach combines real strategic thinking with an authenticity that resonates, making process intelligence feel relevant and worth following, which is a harder content problem than it looks in a category where most LinkedIn accounts default to feature announcements and product news.
Connect with Alexandra on LinkedIn
Anna Laura McGranahan is known in the community as “Social Media Manager Barbie.” She brings an energy and strategic instinct that most practitioners spend years developing. She joined Aptean in July 2025 and within her first month had launched a brand new employee advocacy program that activated over 700 employees and delivered $250K in earned media value. The speed and quality of that execution is remarkable, and it is not a one-off. Her personal brand in the B2B social community reflects the same combination of strategic thinking and fast execution that defines her work.
Brandon Linn has been building something real at HiBob, a LinkedIn presence at HiBob that punches above the company’s brand recognition. Over 5,000 followers track his takes on HR tech and people operations, not because HiBob told them to, but because Brandon has a voice that’s worth following independently of the brand he represents. In a space where personal and company accounts often feel interchangeable, that distinction matters.
Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn (5,302 LinkedIn followers)
Brian Giesen has built an authentic personal brand inside Macquarie Group, one of the world’s largest investment banks, and done it without making the content feel like it passed through four compliance layers first. With over 4,300 followers and engagement that holds, he’s found the voice that works: credible enough to reflect the institution, human enough to make people want to follow it. In a sector where most practitioners don’t try, that combination is worth recognizing.
Connect with Brian on LinkedIn (4,309 LinkedIn followers)
Brianna Young is the Social Media Lead for EY Americas Consulting, which means she is doing one of the harder jobs in B2B social, making enterprise thought leadership feel real and worth engaging with at scale. She’s developed an approach to executive content that’s platform-native and genuinely readable, which puts EY’s social in a different tier from most Big Four accounts. Making enterprise thought leadership feel earned takes a specific kind of editorial instinct, and she has it.
Connect with Brianna on LinkedIn
Caleb Tolin has built a LinkedIn presence in the cybersecurity marketing space that other practitioners reference and pay attention to. His content cuts through a category that specializes in noise, he writes about cybersecurity marketing in a way that other practitioners in the space actively follow and reference, which is a different standard than just building a following. With over 4,500 followers at Rubrik, one of the high-growth names in security, his audience is there because the content takes positions that are worth engaging with.
Connect with Caleb on LinkedIn (4,578 LinkedIn followers)
Christina Noel built MEDITECH’s social media presence from the ground up nearly 15 years ago, and has stayed at its helm ever since. What she has built reflects the kind of long-game thinking that is rare in the field, over 65,000 LinkedIn followers, a 38% click rate and 41% engagement rate on her best-performing content, and a 2024 Swaay Health Award for Best Use of Social Media that makes it official. She’s not just a social media manager; she is a practitioner who educates, leads, and sets the benchmark for what healthcare technology social can look like.
Connect with Christina on LinkedIn
Dave Marsh holds a title you rarely see in social media: Head of Social Media Insights and Governance at HSBC. It’s a role that sits at the intersection of strategy, measurement, and institutional risk. He’s built a personal following of over 5,000 engaged people while navigating it, and done so with content that feels human rather than compliance-processed. In a bank where every post gets reviewed, finding the voice that works takes a different kind of craft.
Connect with Dave on LinkedIn (5,137 LinkedIn followers)
Elior Doani has spent close to a decade at the crossroads of social media and cybersecurity, specifically, protecting brands from the threats that live on the platforms practitioners use every day. At Spikerz, that perspective gives him a lens almost no one else in the B2B social community has: he covers the risks and realities of social at a platform level. With over 6,000 followers and content that draws on that expertise directly, he covers territory others don’t know to cover.
Connect with Elior on LinkedIn (6,059 LinkedIn followers)
Erica Noonan has built something rare in healthcare technology, a social presence in healthcare technology that feels nothing like the rest of the category. Healthcare SaaS tends to produce content that’s safe, clinical, and forgettable. Erica’s doesn’t. She writes with specificity and warmth about work that matters, and the engagement reflects a community that trusts her judgement. She’s one of the clearest examples of what the healthcare technology space looks like when someone decides to actually try.
Connect with Erica on LinkedIn
Fran Riley is bringing modern social media thinking to an industry that has been slower to embrace it. At Baker Hughes, one of the world’s largest energy companies, she leads global employee and executive advocacy programs that are changing what B2B social looks like in traditional industrial sectors. Her work is a blueprint that other practitioners in similar environments want to follow.
Connect with Fran on LinkedIn (5,242 LinkedIn followers)
Francis McCarthy has built a precise and purposeful B2B marketing voice at SafetyCulture, a company working on something that genuinely matters, making workplaces safer. He made a deliberate move from a premium brand to SafetyCulture and used the transition to build something more distinctly his own. His personal brand reflects the company’s mission, that workplaces can be safer and better, without feeling like brand copy. With nearly 4,700 followers and a content cadence built for the long game, he’s established SafetyCulture as a voice worth following in a space that doesn’t produce many.
Connect with Francis on LinkedIn (4,687 LinkedIn followers)
Gil Ben-Porat was the most-nominated person in the entire nomination pool, and when you look at what he has built at AU10TIX, the reason is obvious. He takes complex topics in the identity and security space, fraud prevention, deepfakes, the real mechanics of digital identity, and makes them feel human, accessible, and worth engaging with. His community is active because he creates two-way conversations, not broadcasts. He was nominated by practitioners from across the B2B social community, which is the most meaningful signal on any list like this.
Connect with Gil on LinkedIn (10,761 LinkedIn followers)
Jamil Zakaria brings a depth of experience that is genuinely rare in the B2B social space. He’s spent over 15 years building social media strategy inside global professional services, the kind of environment where “long-term thinking” isn’t a phrase people use lightly. Now at Oliver Wyman, one of the world’s most respected management consultancies, his content reflects what social looks like when the institution behind it has real intellectual authority and the practitioner knows how to use it. Close to 5,000 followers have found that worth following.
Connect with Jamil on LinkedIn (4,978 LinkedIn followers)
Jelena Burcer has one of the strongest follower counts on the B2B Social’s Rising 30 2026 list, over 20,000 LinkedIn followers, and earns engagement to match. More importantly, she’s done something that most B2B social practitioners aspire to but rarely achieve: she turned Semrush’s social presence from a broadcast channel into a real community. That takes a fundamentally different approach to content, engagement, and audience thinking, and she has mastered it.
Connect with Jelena on LinkedIn (20,091 LinkedIn followers)
Johannah Cantwell is building something worth following at Klaxoon, a French company reshaping how teams collaborate and work. Her content earns engagement because she understands what her community wants before they know they want it, a clarity of purpose that’s harder to develop than it looks. She’s proof that some of the most interesting B2B social thinking in the collaboration software space is happening in Europe.
Connect with Johannah on LinkedIn (4,716 LinkedIn followers)
Jon Stona has built nearly 11,000 LinkedIn followers at Airwallex, one of the world’s fastest-growing fintech unicorns. What’s notable isn’t just the number, it’s what he does with the platform. His content takes on the real complexity of global payments and cross-border fintech without losing the audience, which is a writing problem most practitioners in that space haven’t solved. His community is engaged because the thinking behind the content is ahead of where the conversation usually is.
Connect with Jon on LinkedIn (10,987 LinkedIn followers)
Karl Reynolds is tackling a brief that most B2B social practitioners never face: how do you build social media and employee advocacy programs inside a global industrial manufacturer where the communications culture was built for trade shows, not timelines? At BEUMER Group, he’s doing it, and doing it in a way that other practitioners in traditional manufacturing are starting to pay attention to. That’s a different kind of proof of concept.
Connect with Karl on LinkedIn (4,341 LinkedIn followers)
Lisa Vecchio has built over 7,000 LinkedIn followers on the strength of a voice that stands out in B2B social: straight-talking, honest, and practically useful. Her content cuts through because it does not repeat what everyone else is already saying. At VEED, she represents a video creation product that has built its own strong brand, and her personal presence reflects the same clarity and confidence. Her audience grows because what she shares is worth coming back for.
Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn (7,165 LinkedIn followers)
Milena Farber is building a brand from the ground up at Guardz, an SMB cybersecurity startup, and doing it with a social-first approach that is honest about the realities of that journey. She documents the real work of building a company’s social presence rather than presenting a polished finished product, and that honesty is what’s driven her to over 11,000 LinkedIn followers. In a category full of security vendors trying to look bigger than they are, a practitioner who shows the work builds more trust than one who hides it.
Connect with Milena on LinkedIn (11,852 LinkedIn followers)
Natalie Stenge has cracked one of the hardest problems in B2B social: she makes people laugh. The list of people who have actually pulled it off in B2B is short. Her voice is distinctive, her humor is intentional and earns genuine engagement, and it is always paired with real expertise. In a space that takes itself far too seriously, the combination of smart and funny turns out to be a remarkably effective formula. Her 5,000-plus followers are there because she earned every one of them.
Connect with Natalie on LinkedIn (5,315 LinkedIn followers)
Nathan Allebach is one of the most recognized names in B2B social media. From the Steak-Umm account to Ramp, he’s consistently proven that B2B brands can have a real, distinctive voice, and he’s been doing it long enough that his work has become a reference point for the industry. With over 15,000 followers and a body of work that practitioners worldwide study and reference, his place on this list reflects the genuine impact he has had on the profession.
Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn (15,241 LinkedIn followers)
Phoebe Hayles does not just talk about authentic B2B social content, she builds the infrastructure that makes it happen. At 3 Sided Cube, she runs the Employee Generated Content program after first building her own strong personal brand. Her approach works because she built her own personal brand first, she’s running the EGC program as someone who understands from the inside why people do and don’t post. That practitioner’s credibility is what separates her program from the ones that launch with fanfare and struggle to sustain participation.
Connect with Phoebe on LinkedIn
Roy Sexton is the CMO at Vedder Price, a law firm, and he’s doing things with B2B social that consumer brands would look at with genuine respect. His LinkedIn presence is bold, consistent, and human. He’s a SocialMedia.org board member, a recognized voice in the profession, and a practitioner who has spent years proving that professional services does not have to be invisible or boring on social. He’s a pioneer in the truest sense, and the B2B social community knows it.
Samuel Bibby is making social media work inside Latham and Watkins, one of the world’s largest law firms by revenue, and not a natural home for social-first thinking. He’s built a consistent personal brand in an institution where most practitioners don’t get started at all. That he’s doing it with a voice that stands apart from the firm’s formal register makes it more impressive than the follower count suggests.
Connect with Samuel on LinkedIn
Sanchi Aneja has built over 7,600 LinkedIn followers inside HPE, a Fortune 500 technology company, and that audience is there because what she shares is consistently worth their time. Building personal equity inside a large enterprise takes conviction and a clarity of voice that most practitioners inside big brands struggle to maintain. Her community keeps growing because the content reflects real expertise in cloud, AI infrastructure, and the go-to-market realities of enterprise technology, not just because it’s well packaged.
Connect with Sanchi on LinkedIn (7,663 LinkedIn followers)
Sarah Hankins has done something that most people in professional services have not figured out how to do: she has made CBIZ compelling on LinkedIn. She’s built an engaged following by committing to a genuine point of view, writing with the kind of specificity that makes readers feel like they’re getting something real, not a brand update. In a category where most accounts blend together, hers doesn’t.
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
Solveig Rundquist is making document technology feel interesting and worth following, a challenge most people would not even attempt. At Enigio, a Swedish company operating in a niche corner of trade finance, she’s built a voice that stands out because the category doesn’t produce many like it. With over 4,400 LinkedIn followers and an approach that makes complex trade finance concepts feel worth understanding, she’s proof that some of the most creative B2B social thinking is happening in markets that rarely get mentioned in the conversation.
Connect with Solveig on LinkedIn (4,427 LinkedIn followers)
Stef Garraffa produces content at Cisco that feels human, which is harder than it sounds when you’re working inside one of the world’s most scrutinized enterprise brands. At that scale, most social content gets smoothed into something technically correct but editorially neutral. Stef’s doesn’t. Her community of nearly 4,600 followers has grown because she’s found a way to keep the creative edge that large brands usually remove.
Connect with Stef on LinkedIn (4,599 LinkedIn followers)
What the B2B Social’s Rising 30 Class of 2026 tells us about B2B social
Taken together, the B2B Social’s Rising 30 Class of 2026 says something meaningful about where B2B social is heading. A few themes emerged clearly.
Social is becoming a strategic function. The marketers on this list aren’t managing channels. They’re building organizational capabilities, seated in strategy conversations, advising executives, and measuring impact in ways that connect directly to business outcomes. That shift, from social media manager to social business strategist, is visible across almost every profile on this list.
Employee advocacy is going mainstream. Several winners have built programs that activate hundreds or thousands of employees and measure outcomes in earned media value and pipeline influence. What was once a technology company experiment is now spreading into financial services, energy, manufacturing, and professional services, from LinkedIn thought leadership to full-scale multi-channel programs, and several of the most compelling programs on this list were built with nothing more than a clear brief and organizational buy-in.
Credibility is the only currency that compounds. The professionals who built the most engaged, loyal communities on this list did it the same way: sharing genuine expertise, consistently, over time. Not by optimizing for the algorithm. Not by chasing reach. The result is an audience that trusts them, and trust is the only asset in social that compounds rather than decays.
The best B2B social thinking is global. The Class of 2026 includes practitioners on four continents, working in markets with fundamentally different communication cultures and regulatory environments. They figured it out anyway. The approaches that work in financial services in the UK look different from what works in industrial manufacturing in Germany or fintech in Australia, and understanding those differences is part of what makes this list more interesting than a US-first one.
Traditional industries are producing the next generation of leaders. Marketing professionals working in financial services, law, manufacturing, energy, and healthcare face some of the hardest briefs in B2B social, and several of the most impressive nominations came from exactly those environments. As those sectors continue to modernize, the practitioners who have already solved the problem will be the people everyone else looks to. Several of them are in the Class of 2026.
Congratulations to the B2B Social’s Rising 30 Class of 2026
To every winner: you were selected by name, not by algorithm. The B2B social community nominated you, and our judging team reviewed hundreds of eligible candidates. What you’ve built is worth recognizing, and we’re proud to do it publicly.
To everyone who submitted a nomination: thank you. The quality of the nominations made our decisions harder, which is exactly as it should be. We’ll do this again in 2027. Keep building, keep posting, and keep raising the bar.
The B2B Social’s Rising 30 is produced by Oktopost, the B2B social media management platform built for enterprise marketing teams. Oktopost helps teams run employee advocacy programs at scale, manage social across channels, and connect every post to pipeline. Explore the platform.
