Liya Sharif

Former VP of Marketing at Qualcomm

Fusion Expert Network Member

With 20+ years of experience in transformative marketing, communications and brand strategies across tech sectors, startups, and fortune 500 companies, Liya is a growth leader and an expert at market positioning. She has a deep understanding of the ways to bring products to market, build brand equity and maximize returns.

At Qualcomm for 12 years, as a VP of marketing and brand, she led global teams across markets and disciplines. She worked with the three consecutive CEOs, led the company’s product brand to achieving #1 status in a premium product category and navigated company’s crises through marketing and communications with strategic precision. Liya drove the largest rebrand in the company’s history and developed award-winning positioning programs and campaigns, branded content, and advertising programs in support of the company’s B2B and consumer products, leading to evident increase in sales.

In 2021, Liya co-founded an AI and data technology company, Cercle, to advance healthcare for women, where she focused on all aspects of business growth, marketing, product positioning, and fundraising. There she partnered with founders to advance the first and largest biomedical graph to increase success rates in healthcare outcomes.

She is currently on the Cercle’s board of directors, focusing on governance, and supporting the company through the next phase of growth.

The combined expertise and working across different types and size companies has shaped Liya’s approach with one goal in mind - creating strategies that help solve business problems.

Liya’s philosophy is about unlocking the power of market positioning, brand, and communications to add more value to companies and her expertise is in crystalizing the purpose of a company for action-oriented value outcomes.

Deep creativity, innovating for growth, and designing new ways to approach complex problems are Liya’s strengths. She has a unique talent to drive alignment, bring people of divergent views to embrace important ideas, and generate a positive, constructive dialogue.

Liya holds a BA in psychology from University of California, San Diego; She is currently completing her MA in the interior architecture and design from the Academy of Arts, San Francisco. She is originally from the former Soviet Union, in Azerbaijan, city Baku. With the extensive international experience, she is trilingual and has deep knowledge of the challenges modern companies face in the global economy.