Guest Profile  · Now CMO at RPI · Formerly Trustpilot · Season 2

Trust Is Measurable

Dana Kalfas Bodine led B2B and B2C marketing across the US for Trustpilot, a platform where the brand value is the product. She came from the mean streets of early digital media, through fintech, financial inclusion at Mastercard, and early-stage startup marketing. Her conviction is that trust is not a brand platform or a value statement. It is a measurable business driver with hard ROI attached.

Read the interview Listen to the episode
The Business of Marketing Season 2 ·  Episode 29  · 37 min

“We removed 3.3 million fake reviews last year alone. Trust is a business metric, not just a brand value.”

About

Dana Kalfas Bodine served as Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the US at Trustpilot, the open review platform with 300 million reviews across 1.1 million domains. She joined in June 2022 and led all B2B and B2C marketing, PR, and communications, growing market penetration in the high-CLV industries of fintech, insurance, and mortgage where Trustpilot’s impact is most measurable. She moved to CMO at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in December 2025.

Dana built her career at the intersection of digital media and data. She started at DC Comics and The New York Times before moving into digital marketing roles at NBCUniversal and Apple’s iAd. She then held VP roles at Time Inc. before spending four years at Mastercard, where she led global marketing for Mastercard Labs and the company’s B2B strategic growth unit. Her work at Mastercard on financial inclusion and access to credit directly shaped her approach to Trustpilot’s US strategy, which focused on the industries where consumer trust decisions have the highest personal stakes: mortgages, loans, and investment products.

At Trustpilot, she ran the first holistic B2B marketing campaign in the US market, commissioned the Forrester Total Economic Impact study (demonstrating 400% ROI on Trustpilot’s premium features), and oversaw the platform’s response to the FTC’s August 2024 fake review ban. Trustpilot’s AI-powered fraud detection removed 3.3 million fake reviews in a single year. Her broader argument, developed across a career that has been as much about purpose as performance, is that doing the right thing for consumers and doing the right thing for the business are not competing priorities.

Career 20 years
2025–Now
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · Chief Marketing Officer
2022–2025
Trustpilot · VP Marketing and Communications, US
Led all B2B and B2C marketing, PR, and communications. First holistic B2B campaign in the US market. Grew bookings 23% YoY.
2021–2022
Pagaya · VP Marketing and Communications
Led marketing through the FinTech’s 9 billion SPAC deal to go public.
2019–2021
Mastercard · VP Global B2B Marketing, Strategic Growth
Led B2B marketing for Mastercard’s financial inclusion and global growth initiatives.
2017–2019
Mastercard · VP Global Marketing, Mastercard Labs
Led marketing for the company’s innovation and startup engagement platform.
2015–2017
Time Inc. · VP Corporate Marketing and Brand Development
2014–2015
Apple · Strategic Marketing, iAd
Brought brand and digital storytelling expertise to Apple’s advertising platform.
2010–2014
NBCUniversal · Director and Manager, Digital Marketing, NBC News
Led digital marketing for one of America’s largest news brands.
2007–2010
The New York Times · Associate Manager and Coordinator, digital sales and advertising promotions
2006–2007
Warner Bros. (DC Comics) · Coordinator, Licensing and Brand Management
300M Reviews on the Trustpilot Platform
400% ROI on Trustpilot Premium Features (Forrester)
3.3M Fake Reviews Removed in a Single Year

“Increasing a trust score by one point drives an 8X increase in purchase conversion.”

How Dana thinks 03 convictions
01 Trust is a measurable business driver with hard ROI

We have an 8X click-through rate when we use Trustpilot branding. This matters.

Dana spent years making the case for trust as a marketing principle and watching eyes roll in rooms full of people who wanted performance metrics. At Trustpilot, the argument changed: she had the data. The Forrester study, the London Research work, the fraud detection numbers, and the booking growth figures turned a values discussion into an ROI conversation. Her position now is that any marketer still treating trust as a soft brand attribute has not done the measurement work, and that doing so is both a strategic and a financial mistake.

02 Every negative review is an opportunity, not a threat

Every negative review is an open opportunity. We know the return on responding comes back tenfold.

The most common objection Dana heard from prospective Trustpilot customers was a low trust score. Her response was consistent: that is the opportunity. A brand with a 2.5 that engages thoroughly with its reviewers, responds to every complaint, and demonstrates publicly that it takes feedback seriously will outperform a brand with a 4.5 that treats its reviews as a box to tick. The data on this is not ambiguous. Responding to negative reviews drives score improvement, score improvement drives conversion, and conversion drives revenue.

03 Purpose and profit are mutually reinforcing, not in tension

Doing the right thing for consumers can be great for business. Purpose and profit are not opposites.

Dana’s career has run through financial inclusion at Mastercard, consumer protection at Trustpilot, and early digital media at the NYT, and the thread that connects all of it is a consistent refusal to treat commercial success and social benefit as trade-offs. At Trustpilot, she worked with the FTC on fake review regulation, saw the regulation as a market opportunity rather than a compliance burden, and built a campaign strategy around it. The result was not just good PR. It was good business.

Hear Dana on
The Business of Marketing
Season 2 Episode 29 37 min
Apple Podcasts→ Spotify→ Dana on LinkedIn→