Celia Fleischaker, CMO, Conga

As chief marketing officer of document automation and contract management firm Conga, Celia Fleischaker has spent her career at the intersection of technology, business and innovation.

A self-confessed tech enthusiast since childhood — when she taught herself to code on her father’s Apple IIe — she’s now leading Conga’s global marketing strategy as the company deepens its investment in AI and digital transformation.

Speaking with TechInformed at Conga Connect in Paris, the firm’s first in-person EMEA conference since 2019, Celia discusses her passion for technology, how customers are adapting to an uncertain business climate and why sometimes the best way to think is over a jigsaw puzzle.

What was your career like before joining Conga?
This is actually my fifth CMO role for a tech company. I spent about 20 years at one organization where I learned the ropes before moving through a few different companies.

Conga, for me, feels like everything coming together. I’ve worked in the CPQ (configure-price-quote) industry before, and Conga has such a great culture and customer base. Coming here gave me the chance to bring a lot of my previous experience together in one place, and it’s been a really exciting opportunity.

Have you always been interested in technology?
Yes, absolutely. I was a coder as a kid. My dad brought home an Apple IIe and told me I could play as many games as I wanted, as long as I coded them myself.

So that’s what I did. I took coding classes all through high school. When I went to college, I told the business school that I wanted to work in a software company, and that’s what I’ve done ever since. Tech has always been my passion.

People sometimes ask if I’d ever do something different, but honestly, I get a lot of joy out of it.

We’re here today at Conga Connect in Paris — the first in-person EMEA conference since 2019. What makes this event special?
We’re so excited. The EMEA region is really important to Conga — we have a significant percentage of our customer base here and do a lot of business in the region. It’s been years since we’ve been able to gather in person, so this event was planned long before I joined, but it’s been wonderful to help bring it to life. Getting customers together again has been phenomenal. Last night we had networking sessions, and today we’ve had a full agenda of discussions about our solutions, partnerships and how customers are using our products to drive value. I love that at least half of the sessions feature customers directly sharing their real-world experiences.

The world has changed quite a bit since 2019. What are the biggest challenges your customers are facing right now?
It’s definitely a tough environment. There’s a lot of uncertainty, whether it’s political, economic or trade-related, and that’s affecting companies everywhere.

On top of that, AI is transforming business life in huge ways. We recently ran a survey of 1,500 decision-makers in revenue operations and contract operations about the EU AI Act — how ready they are and what they think about it. I was pleasantly surprised that around 80% said they felt prepared.

But when you dig into the numbers, it’s more nuanced: larger organisations are quite confident, while smaller ones have more questions. There were also national differences: the UK was about 90% confident, Germany 82% and France around 70%. So it’s definitely a mixed picture.

Many companies are accelerating with AI while still figuring out the rules — it’s like building the plane while flying it. How are Conga’s customers managing that balance?
Yes. AI has the potential to transform so much, but you still have to keep the business running. I think the biggest challenge is training — you can adopt the tools, but if people don’t know how to use them effectively, they don’t deliver the full value.

How much do you personally use AI in your daily work?
Daily. Internally, our IT team built a GPT tool called Kongaroo — filled with company information and all the right security safeguards which we use a lot just to gather information.

In marketing, we’re exploring AI across a few areas: content generation, research and even synthetic persona research to better understand our audiences and improve how our business development teams approach prospects. It ties directly into what Conga does: helping organizations improve their sales and operations through smarter technology.

Outside of work, how do you switch off?
A couple of ways. My husband is a phenomenal cook, so I happily sit back and enjoy that. And I love jigsaw puzzles. They let me completely switch off from tech and focus on something tactile — and, oddly, that’s when my best thinking happens. It’s very grounding.

And finally — how do you take your coffee?
I drink a lot of coffee! Always with milk and a packet of sweetener.