Tricia Olson on Building Partner Relationships, Listening First, and Advocating for Yourself in Marketing

Partnerships don’t scale without trust—and trust doesn’t happen without listening. In this episode, Rick sits down with Tricia Olson, Senior Partner Marketing Manager at Posit, to talk about the art (and grind) of building meaningful alliances with cloud and data partners like AWS, Snowflake, and beyond.Tricia shares why partner marketing is never “just marketing,” how showing up in the right meetings can change everything, and why being curious often beats being programmatic. They dive into relationship-building tips, executive alignment lessons, and what it takes to be bold early in a new role without losing sight of company culture.From fitness-community partnerships in Denver to leading strategic alliances in tech, Tricia’s journey proves that great marketing starts with great partnerships—and that sometimes the best strategy is to speak up, listen harder, and take the risk anyway.