Malisa Arnold on curiosity, impact, and making data matter
Malisa Arnold didn’t begin her career in marketing analytics. Her early work was in psychology and research, focused on children and later on military programs addressing PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. It was meaningful work, but it moved slowly.
“Government research takes time,” she says. “Projects can sit for years before they ever reach the experimental phase.” Over time, she realized she was looking for something with more immediacy. “I wanted to see the impact of my work sooner.”
What stood out early in Malisa’s career wasn’t just her comfort with data, but her ability to explain it. “There were dense statistical models that were hard to explain,” Malisa says. “I realized that I could bridge the gap between complex statistical outputs and actionable insights for the program managers.”
That skill became her bridge into marketing analytics. She entered the field at a moment when it was still taking shape, before many platforms had fully monetized and before best practices were clearly defined. An agency took a chance on her as its first analytics hire, and she built the practice from the ground up. “There was no blueprint,” she says. “But I loved that. You could test, learn, and see results quickly.”
The value of immediacy and evolution
That immediacy has kept Malisa in marketing analytics ever since. “What you did six months ago might not work today,” she says. “The space is constantly evolving, and that’s what makes it exciting.”
She’s especially energized by how new tools are changing the work. “AI is incredibly efficient for things like debugging code or cleaning messy data,” Malisa explains. “It can read thousands of lines of code and debug issues in seconds. That gives you time back to focus on the actual work.”
She also sees potential in how AI is fundamentally changing the consumer journey. “It’s becoming a key step as more people use AI to learn about brands and their options,” she says. “Understanding how people are using AI to make decisions — and how to optimize our marketing engines for AI — will unlock a world of insight.”
Learning from women along the way
Malisa’s approach to her career has been shaped by women who helped her navigate growth and uncertainty. That started with her mother, an immigrant who pushed her daughters to pursue education and careers. “She was very clear that we needed to build something for ourselves,” Malisa says.
Later, in male-dominated environments like working for the military, female mentors and peers played a critical role. “Having a group of women you can be vulnerable with is so important,” she says. “We have so much wisdom to share, and just as much to learn from one another.”
At ChimeⓇ, that support took the form of advocacy, coaching, and transparency. Malisa credits her first manager for offering real-time feedback and partnership. “She consistently identified ways to help me grow in my career and coached me, all while being transparent about her own ongoing efforts to improve,” she says. “Seeing people at all levels actively working on how they show up reinforced the idea that growth never really stops.”
What marketing analytics makes possible at Chime
Today, Malisa is on marketing analytics at Chime with a focus on helping marketers drive long term growth for the business. “Marketers often optimize for the most efficient acquisition costs,” she says. “Our role is to understand how and why those efforts drive long-term growth and revenue.”
That work goes beyond last-touch attribution. “We help quantify the incrementality of each marketing channel, provide insights into why certain creatives or tactics are or aren’t working, and ensure data is democratized across both marketers and ad platforms,” Malisa explains. “Marketing analytics is as much an art as it is a science, given that we have limited control and visibility into customer journeys happening outside of Chime’s ecosystem. We can't always run your typical A/B experiment and oftentimes have to get creative with matched market tests or adhoc regression models.”
Curiosity as a career advantage
The best career advice Malisa has received is simple: be curious. “As analysts, we get a lot of ad hoc requests,” she says. “You can answer exactly what you’re asked, or you can look for the question behind the question and provide something more impactful.”
That mindset has helped her dig deep into the business, become an expert in complex datasets, and build trust with stakeholders.
Choosing purpose alongside growth
One moment from Malisa’s consulting career still stands out to her. While working on an innovative measurement approach for Taco Bell, she found herself part of high-level conversations she wouldn’t normally have access to. The work was exciting and pushed her technically — but it also led to a realization.
“It made me think about what I wanted to be part of,” she says. “In marketing, it’s easy to focus only on growth and lose sight of the bigger picture.”
That moment became a turning point. Malisa decided to focus her career on companies whose missions aligned with her own values. That decision ultimately led her to Chime, where she continues to bring clarity to complex systems and help ensure the numbers guiding the business support long-term, meaningful impact.
In the end, it wasn’t just Malisa’s ability to work with data that shaped her path — it’s her drive to make it matter. From research labs to marketing analytics, she’s followed impact over inertia, putting some of her favorite career advice into practice: growth isn’t a destination, it’s a practice.
