Mark Greatrex

Mark Greatrex was recently named president of Cox Communications, succeeding Pat Esser who led the company for 15 years. Mark’s background includes more than 30 years of experience building brands and businesses, driving profitable growth and innovating to reshape markets. He has led marketing, sales, operations and cross-functional teams as a business leader and general manager.  Mark has elevated world-class brands in competitive marketplaces.  

Mark has become the co-chair of the Cox National Diversity Council, standing by his personal commitment to be a vocal ally and his determination to bring lasting change and equal opportunity for all. Mark also has a passion for environmental sustainability that was sparked while leading global businesses at The Coca-Cola Company, and today he leads the charge for Cox Communications’ efforts to achieve our enterprise-wide goals of zero waste to landfill by 2024 and carbon and water neutral by 2034. At his former company while serving as the global category leader for still beverages, Mark saw first-hand the importance of ensuring clean water for communities worldwide and the critical role of water steward such as the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper (CRK), where is currently serves as a board member.

Since joining Cox Communications in 2011, Mark has made an indelible impact on both the company and the industry by quickly seizing the opportunity for change. Under his leadership as Chief Marketing & Sales Officer, Mark transformed the function to create a more competitive and higher performing team. Cox immediately built out entire new departments dedicated to consumer insights, marketing analytics, base management, retention strategy and segmentation – to better understand consumer expectations and more efficiently meet them.  This paid dividends as Cox experienced robust growth in its customer base and improved market share trends in every product category.  Mark also implemented rigorous marketing and sales return on investment (ROI) management to ensure smarter decision-making and greater effectiveness of marketing and sales investments.

Mark has earned the respect and trust of his peers across the industry by quickly demonstrating a keen understanding of their shared challenges and opportunities along with an ability to address them through unified marketing initiatives, such as CTAM’s TV everywhere^SM and Cable Mover® efforts. He received the Vanguard award for Marketing in 2015 and served as Chair of CTAM from 2015-2016, then again from 2020-2021. As an executive committee member of CTAM, he continues to partner across cable companies and programming partners to help shape the future of cable and pay TV. 

Prior to joining Cox, he served as senior vice president of Global Still Beverages at The Coca-Cola Company where he was responsible for a $7 billion global portfolio of beverages.  Prior to The Coca-Cola Company, Mark was executive vice president of Brand Marketing at America Online (AOL) where he was responsible for marketing AOL’s broadband and dial-up internet access services across a portfolio of brands, comprised of more than 30 million subscribers.

Before joining AOL, Mark was a part owner and company officer who led marketing and sales operations for Eagle Family Foods, Inc. He began his marketing career at Unilever PLC in 1984 and held general management and marketing roles of increasing responsibility during his 16-year career with the company culminating with his promotion to vice president and general manager of Lipton Tea’s US operations.

Mark holds a bachelor’s degree sum cum laude in economics from the London School of Economics and an MBA with distinction from New York University’s Leonard Stern Business School.  Mark is a long-time resident of Atlanta, where he lives with his wife, Caroline, who teaches yoga at several studios across the city. He has three adult children (Sean, Julia and Cami), all of whom share their parents’ love for nature and the great outdoors.