Bhawna Sharma

Global Partner Marketing Leader
PayPal

Bhawna Sharma is a Global Marketing Leader at PayPal, where she drives B2B marketing strategies across PayPal, Venmo, and Braintree on a global scale. With more than 20 years in B2B and ecosystem marketing, she has built and scaled programs at some of tech’s most influential companies including Stripe, Oracle, and NetApp consistently turning partnerships into measurable revenue growth.

Today, Bhawna is focused on how AI is reshaping discovery and brand positioning from generative engine optimization (GEO) to the shift from search to AI-driven recommendations. She is a frequent speaker and panelist on partner marketing and the evolving marketing landscape, and a passionate advocate for elevating the strategic role of marketing within global organizations.

Beyond her work at PayPal, Bhawna is a council board member of California State University, a Silicon Valley philanthropist and investor, and a widely published marketing expert featured in top-tier media interviews. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bhawna Sharma’s Session

8:00 a.m.–8:45 a.m. PT — Wednesday, November 18, 2026

Panel: From Search to Suggestions: Repositioning Your Brand for the AI-Native Customer

For two decades, the search bar was the great equalizer—the one place a customer arrived neutral, ready to be won. That moment is disappearing. AI assistants now intercept discovery long before the click, returning a single synthesized answer with preferences and recommendations already baked in. Your customers aren’t searching for you anymore; they’re asking about you, and a model that never requested your permission is summarizing your brand narrative on your behalf. For senior marketers, this is more than a channel shift—it’s a fundamental rethink of what brand presence, share of voice, and “ranking” even mean when the homepage may never get a visit.

This keynote panel brings together SEO, partnership, and product marketing leaders to unpack how brands earn the recommendation, not just the ranking, in an AI-mediated funnel. Expect a candid, practitioner-level conversation on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the credibility and entity signals that get a brand cited, and how to protect voice, accuracy, and attribution when AI sits between you and the customer. The throughline: vague positioning gets averaged out, while specific, defensible narratives get surfaced—making the AI-native era a forcing function for sharper marketing.

Key Takeaways: Rethink visibility for a “zero-click” world where winning the AI recommendation matters more than winning the ranking. Unpack Generative Engine Optimization—the structured, authoritative content and consistent entity signals that get your brand cited inside the answer. Reposition brand and content to be machine-readable and recommendation-ready for a journey that may never touch your homepage. Leverage first-party data and strong partner ecosystems as a competitive moat once AI intermediates discovery. Measure brand influence directionally and repeatedly, tied to real prompts, so you can prove impact in an AI-mediated funnel. Sharpen your point of view into a specific, defensible narrative—because averaged-out positioning gets ignored while clear ones get surfaced.