Marlene De la Cruz, ’83, MBA ’90, brings more to Adelphi than a unique set of professional skills. She’s also worked toward achieving a more inclusive workplace.

By Matthew De George

By the time she returned to La Salle University to pursue an MBA, Marlene De la Cruz, ’83, MBA ’90, had already seen plenty of the corporate world.

She had taken her language degree with a business minor and gone into international banking. She had worked in marketing and, eventually, would segue into pharmaceutical sales.

Her MBA from La Salle helped her land a dream position in marketing at GE Capital, a behemoth in the financial services industry at that time. Beyond a door-opening name on a resume, the experience De la Cruz gained at GE opened new avenues of the business world for her to explore.

“If it had not been for my La Salle MBA, I would have never been hired at GE. The Finance curriculum was exceptional and helped me to succeed at a company that was primarily run by finance,” De la Cruz said. “Both my undergraduate and graduate La Salle education were instrumental in instilling a deep curiosity, and this has been very helpful throughout my career.”

After four-and-a-half years at GE, De la Cruz joined a consultancy that was acquired by Adelphi Group (a division of Omnicom), where she has spent the last 24 years and risen to become global president of the healthcare market research franchise. During her time at Adelphi, she worked her way up through several client-facing roles learning and growing along that journey.

At every turn, De la Cruz gleaned valuable experience that has led her to her current position. She used her varied roles to hone her skills. That has led her to the leadership of Adelphi’s market research division, which she sees as a convergence of the many strands of her early career.

Her time in banking and at GE provided an understanding of global markets. A stint in pharmaceutical sales in the 1990s offered an understanding of the pharmaceutical industry. After time in marketing management —and countless hours consuming market research to devise brand strategies—she jumped at the chance to join Adelphi in 1997 and work on the other side. De la Cruz views her various corporate stops as offering a holistic view, refining what she calls a “business sense.”

The nuts and bolts of market research, what De la Cruz calls the “insight that informs marketing,” drew her in. Upon joining Adelphi, she had an understanding of what marketers sought from market research.

“I just fell in love with it,” she said. “It utilized a lot of the skills that I had from the marketing side and the work I had done on the pharma sales side as well as the product management side, and I ended up doing something different. I fell in love with market research and I’ve been doing it for 24 years.”

Adelphi offered a pathway to career advancement, De la Cruz said. She started as a mid-level researcher before taking on senior director positions. In 2004, she was promoted to vice president, then a year later became the president of Adelphi Research US, based in Doylestown, Pa. She added oversight of the company’s United Kingdom branch several years later and, in 2018, she was named the global president of Adelphi Research Franchise. She currently oversees Adelphi Research US and UK and The Planning Shop, a market research consultancy acquired by Adelphi Group a few years ago.

At each step, she’s been given different aspects of the company’s core work to keep her on her toes.

“That consistent growth has given me challenges and I’ve learned a great deal as I’ve gone along,” she said. “It’s not like I was propelled into one job. I had time to learn, grow, and develop and take on the next challenge.”

Adelphi’s people are the driving force for De la Cruz, she said. “The greatest joy in my career is to see people develop and grow. I have been very fortunate to work with the best at Adelphi and, hopefully, help them to become better leaders.” She spends a great deal of time focused on people issues and ensuring Adelphi has a positive and growth-oriented culture. Despite her long managerial history, she’s reticent to take any credit for crafting the culture, insisting that it comes from the company hiring and developing excellent managers who care about the team and are committed to maintaining a positive culture.

One of De la Cruz’s proudest additions is a program to hire people on the autism spectrum. De la Cruz has long been an advocate for children with autism, inspired by her son, Alex. Ten years ago, seeing the underemployment of people diagnosed with autism and the unique skills that neurodiverse people can bring to the workplace, De la Cruz pushed to hire a young man with autism for an office assistant position at Adelphi. He remains employed there today; three years ago, Alex also was hired. De la Cruz sits on the board of the Autism Cares Foundation Board and formerly the Bucks County Autism Support Coalition.

The embrace of new ideas, like what a neurodiverse person can offer a company, is the kind of openness to new ideas that has characterized De la Cruz’s corporate journey.

“I always think you’re learning, if you have an open mind,” she said. “You need a growth mindset. Whether you’re in a good situation or a not-so-good situation, there’s always something to learn from it.”