If this year in the retail industry has felt challenging, glean some inspiration from the RIS retail influencers of 2022.
These 10 Top Movers and Shakers in Retail have met daily challenges with innovation and grace. They’ve pioneered new technologies, shared decades of knowledge with their teams, and worked tirelessly to build the new future of retail. Their dedication to the industry and its innovation should offer encouragement for everyone working in retail.
RIS’ sixth annual “Influentials: Top Movers and Shakers in Retail” highlights retail executives, analysts, and solution providers who are reshaping retail, and developing and deploying cutting-edge technology, despite any obstacles in their paths. The esteemed executives featured below were chosen for their contribution to the retail industry and their respective companies.
Influential Advice
Simplify and amplify, says Gaskins. “Simplicity is truly the ultimate sophistication, and when distilling complex problems down to their most basic form, you can create amazing breakthrough success. Simplify and amplify has become a hallmark for every brand, team, or organization I’ve been a part of.”
Influencing a Team
Gaskins has a threefold approach to influence. Firstly, you must “establish a culture of honesty, integrity, and appreciation.” Secondly, setting a standard of excellence. “I believe in the spirit of Kaizen or continuous improvement.” Lastly, Gaskin’s is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and establishes a true meritocracy to build his team. “My personal and professional mantra is #StriveForExcellence, and I also believe in the mantra #WinWithWinners which simply acknowledges that winning teams are comprised of individuals performing their roles at a high standard,” he shares.
One Thing People Don’t Know About You?
Gaskins is a huge Prince fan. “[I] have a collection of literally thousands of his songs and hundreds of his full-length albums. I draw inspiration and creativity from his music artistry.”
With over 20 years of experience building loyalty and engagement in the retail pharmacy industry, Michele Driscoll is an authority on delivering customer satisfaction in one of the most important aspects of all: their health. Before taking up the role of vice president of customer engagement, loyalty, and promotions, Driscoll led the merchandising integration of CVS’ Longs Drugs acquisition in 2009 and also worked as a divisional merchandise manager on the Front Store team.
“I’m proud to lead teams that deliver value to our customers and implement successful omni-growth initiatives, especially with an unprecedented public health crisis and tremendous evolution in how consumers shop and interact with retailers,” says Driscoll.
CVS Health is in the process of enhancing their digital capabilities across the board, providing services like intuitive digital COVID-19 testing and vaccine scheduling, enabling virtual care and omnichannel pharmacy.
So, what emerging tech does Driscoll see as important? Investing in capabilities that allow for a seamless, personalized customer experience. “These include digital receipt choice where consumers can now opt for digital receipts and coupons in lieu of paper ones — or no receipt at all. Additionally, we are giving shoppers the option to buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), as well as continually adding new features to our digital Health Dashboard. The added functionality — available at CVS.com and in the CVS Pharmacy app — makes it easier for consumers and patients to personalize their shopping and pharmacy care experience to best meet their individual needs.”
Vice President of Customer Engagement, Loyalty & Promotions
CVS Health
Influential Tech
Driscoll highlights the importance of merging both digital and physical customer experiences. “[Customers] also expect a simple experience both online and offline,” Driscoll says. “This past year, many customers tried our digital tools for the first time as they looked for ways to make their shopping more efficient and affordable.”
Influencing a Team
“Customer-centricity drives my team’s innovation agenda, particularly in personalizing our shopping and loyalty experiences as customers increasingly shift into digital and mobile. Looking ahead, my hope is to continue to inspire and lead my teams to drive growth within our front store business and frankly, across our industry.”
Fulfilling a Purpose
Tailoring services to fit customers’ unique health needs. “We understand that everyone is on their own health care journey, and the term ‘healthy’ means different things to different people. Because of that, we can offer personalization and flexibility to deliver value based on a customer’s needs, goals or lifestyle.”
Influencing a Team
“I encourage my team to think outside the box, going so far as to question even questions themselves, along with the problems, too,” says Jaszczyk. “By not asking important questions, they’re limited in their ability to come up with new answers.”
Influential Advice
A saying that stuck: “It was something like…if your job is a janitor, be the best one there is. Martin Luther King Jr. also said something similar: ‘Whatever your life’s work is, do it well.’ I’ve carried these pieces of advice with me throughout my career. Regardless of my job or the task I’m faced with, I must work hard and try to do the best I can.”
Influential Tech
Scanless stores. “Different technologies like camera vision, tap-and-go, shelf labels and LIDAR have reached a level where it’s possible to deploy scanless stores at scale. I predict we will see a wide variety of retail formats adopt this technology, including convenience stores. I also expect to see partial areas of large retail stores using scanless options to minimize checkout lines during rush hours.”
Read on to discover what makes each leader a retail technology influencer and one of RIS’ Top Movers and Shakers.
Derek Gaskins is a pioneering game changer in the world of retail technology. Currently chief marketing officer at Yesway, Gaskins previously held the roles of chief customer officer at Rutters and SVP of marketing and merchandising for MACs, the nation’s largest Exxon Mobil branded wholesaler.
Gaskins is actively involved with both RIS and Consumer Goods Technology (CGT) as a member of the League of Leaders and in the role of a new co-chair this year of RIS and CGT’s Executive Council.
Gaskins lists his biggest retail tech accomplishment as the original launch of Fuelperks and the patent to roll back fuel prices attached to a loyalty wallet. “This has endured for decades and is now widely used across retail landscapes,” Gaskins explains. “Yesway today has an innovative loyalty program that uses similar applications of the fuel rewards technology to deliver ‘Stack & Save’ value to consumers in partnership with supplier partners.”
Looking ahead, Gaskins taps true rewards personalization through predictive and prescriptive analytics as the “holy grail for most retailers, and something we are laser-focused on achieving.” Gaskins also knows that the only constant is change, with the big transformations accelerated by the pandemic continuing to shape the retail industry as we know it. “Consumers will always drive the retail industry to evolve to meet their needs. As our society continues to advance through technology, consumers will demand more from their retail experiences. Simply put, consumers want it all.”
Chief Marketing Officer
Yesway
DEREK GASKINS
Chief Strategy Officer
commercetools
KELLY GOETSCH
Today, Kelly Goetsch is known as a celebrated four-time author, chief strategy officer at commercetools and co-founder and chairman of the MACH Alliance. Goetsch started out, however, as a 19-year-old hourly summer employee helping rebuild the frontend of Footlocker.com.
“Right place, right time, right mentor,” Goetsch says. “That started my career, and I’ve loved retail ever since.” And it’s been a remarkable career so far. In his role at commercetools, Goetsch is the voice of the brand, globally responsible for the company’s portfolio and product strategy along with overseeing key partnerships and rapid growth. Goetsh joined when the company was just 75 employees and didn’t have product or market fit. “We’re now at 700 people and have been recognized as the most visionary leader for three consecutive years and counting,” Goetsch says.
Prior to joining commercetools, Goetsch was responsible for Oracle’s microservices initiatives and some of its other nascent cloud offerings. Before that he was chief ATG architect for Walmart and a senior solutions architect at ATG. He is also co-founder and chairman of the MACH Alliance, a consortium of nearly 70 independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) focused on making Microservices, APIs, Cloud and Headless the default in enterprise digital experience. The MACH Alliance counts AWS, Deloitte, Netlify and, of course, commercetools as its members.
In terms of tech, Goetsch wants to draw the focus back to people problems such as friction in the checkout process, returns and exchanges, BOPIS and product search. “I see all of these retailers out there blabbing about the metaverse, and all I can think is ‘stop emailing me a discount for a product that I’ve already purchased.’ Get the basics right first and then start talking about futuristic stuff that may or may not materialize,” Goetsch says. “Customers don’t have patience for retailers who are missing the fundamentals.”
Influencing a Team
“Something I always say to people starting out in their careers is always do the right thing. While it may not always be clear how or when at the time, doing the right thing always pays off in the long run. I also always encourage my staff to default to being open—go out of your way to meet new people, and always take the meetings to learn more about someone or the project they’re working on—and be an eternal learner,” Goetsch shares.
Influential Tech
Goetsch lists commerce platforms that boost loyalty and drive revenue as the top influential tech, “whether they partner with a digital commerce provider or undergo tech transformations on their own without outside help.”
Biggest Influencer
Always moving forwards. “Many careers die slowly as people calcify their routines, relationships, and skills. This calcification happens in our personal lives, as well. As my father-in-law is fond of saying, ‘TV has killed more people than any disease ever has.’ I’m always out there, trying new things, talking to new people and traveling to new places.”
Michael Jaszczyk has been a part of GK Americas for more than 12 years, previously serving as CTO. As CEO, he maintains and enhances the company’s global reputation, drawing on extensive experience in software development for the retail sector and as a manager at international IT companies, including MCRL AG, Pironet AG, and SA2 Retail AG.
He names his biggest achievement designing and developing GK’s CLOUD4RETAIL platform, which supports services for unified commerce, from mobile customer loyalty to mobile store merchandize management, to AI-enabled personalization and more. “When developing the platform, I quickly realized that the architecture of the future must be built with a different approach than existed previously,” says Jaszczyk. “At the time, retailers were still talking about cross-channel and multi-channel – the term omnichannel wasn’t widely used. Regardless of a physical or online retail experience, it was clear that we needed a solution that could support retailers across channels. This shift in mindset empowered the GK team to create flexible deployment models very early on.”
Looking into his crystal ball, Jaszczyk predicts retail is going to change dramatically and the changes we see today are just the tip of the iceberg. He notes GK is working on solutions that include features like hyper-personalization, mobile pay, and scanless checkout. “This year, we’re focused on updating our solutions to support the highest level of convenience for all types of purchases. Retailers must meet the needs of every type of shopper, whether someone is running a quick errand or embarking on a social shopping trip among friends.”
Chief Executive Officer
GK Americas
MICHAEL JASZCZYK
Stephan Schambach is a serial entrepreneur with a track record that spans several decades. Since the 1990s, he’s been trailblazing in the areas of e-commerce, establishing industry standards such as the online shopping cart with his first venture, Intershop. Schambach then moved to start Demandware in 2004, building the first cloud-based e-commerce service, now known as Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It currently services thousands of retail brands globally. Now as founder and CEO of NewStore, Schambach has “set out to change the industry once again. This time by helping brands navigate the challenges of becoming omnichannel retailers.”
Though his greatest accomplishment remains his early frontier in the world of cloud e-commerce technology, Schambach is looking to take advantage of the next major inflection point as the future of retail shifts to mobile, focusing on NewStore: the first (and only) modular, mobile-first, omnichannel cloud platform for retail brands worldwide. The company serves major brands such as Burton Snowboards, Vince, and UNTUCKit. “Throughout my career, I have created enormous value by capitalizing on the major turning points in retail.”
Looking toward the future, Schambach wants to elevate and empower store associates. “I never bought into the idea that brick-and-mortar retail would go away, even before the pandemic. And we are seeing the exact opposite play out right now as consumers return to in-person shopping.” As a result, long-term, physical retail needs to change, he says. “It has to be experiential, personalized, and digitally enabled. Store associates are the front line workers responsible for making this shift happen, and they need the right tools to do it successfully.”
Founder & CEO
NewStore
STEPHAN SCHAMBACH
Influencing a Team
“There are two ways I look at influencing others. Creating a long-term vision for the company and inspiring my team to think five to 10 years out.” He also strives to create a culture of shared success – both internally and externally. “When our employees win, the company wins. And when our customers win, so do we.”
Influential Tech
Omnichannel-as-a-service is something NewStore is using to transform brick-and-mortar shopping from an analog business model into an app-powered, digitally connected retail experience. “Additionally, our vision has always been to allow brands to run their stores solely on iPhone, eliminating the need for traditional POS technology.”
Disruption in Retail
The entire retail industry is ripe for disruption, says Schambach. “More often than not, retail brands look to improve their futures by doubling down on what worked in the past.” The challenge with this, however, is their strategies are derived from legacy software that was never intended to be mobile-first, cloud-based, or omnichannel. “It is not sustainable long-term.”
Mike Proulx joined Forrester in 2020 as VP, research director of the company’s B2C CMO Practice. Throughout his 25-year career, Proulx has led through many shifts in the media landscape and has worked in various marketing, media, and tech leadership roles at companies that include Hill Holliday and Keane Inc. His Forrester thought leadership is frequently cited in the press including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
In Proulx’s eyes, the metaverse has the potential to significantly advance customer experience. For now, however, he feels its hype far outpaces consumers’ readiness to fully embrace the virtual realm. “I’m closely following what innovation will come from brands’ experimentation on immersive platforms as ‘metaverse’ technology matures. What future use cases will be created that we’re not yet able to even conceive? That’s the stuff that excites me because it will change consumer behavior and CMOs’ digital strategies.”
Proulx and the Forrester team are particularly focused on digital fluidity and the way consumers move seamlessly between digital and physical experiences. “This fundamentally affects the retail consumer lifecycle by placing an increased emphasis on hybrid experiences. While more and more consumers are now adept at transacting online, they still crave IRL experiences too,” Proulx explains, “And (believe it or not) this is also true for Gen Z. Retailers should scrutinize their customer journeys now in order to prepare for the duality of consumer expectations that digital fluidity brings to the market.”
VP, Research Director, CMO Practice
Forrester
Mike Proulx
Influencing a Team
Recognizing that growing as a leader is a journey, not a destination. “I do my best to set a direction for my team, to be clear on expected outcomes, and then I get out of their way — unless they want or need my help, coaching, or collaboration. I’m fortunate to have a team of seasoned analysts whose work advances the top priorities of Forrester’s B2C CMO clients and challenges the status quo within the marketing industry.”
Influential Work
Proulx is particularly proud of Forrester’s metaverse coverage, which cuts to chase and challenges the hype with bold research-backed points of view. “We now have over eight reports (and growing) about the metaverse that runs the gamut from brand opportunities and experience design best practices to consumer readiness and enterprise use cases.”
Influential Advice
Proulx’s marketing mantra is to elevate the customer experience every step of the way. "Consumers have a lot more power of choice today. Brands that can empathetically manage consumer expectations have 'the best chance of winning the loyalty game.'"
One Thing People Don’t Know About You?
Proulx is quickly becoming an avid pickleball player. “Doubles anyone?”
PRESENTED BY
Top Movers and Shakers in Retail 2022
Influentials
The Editors of RIS
Influentials
Top Movers and Shakers in Retail 2022
Inspiring influential Dave Schoengart has been with Shoe Sensation for 38 years, the span of his entire career. He started working as a part-time sales associate in 1984 while in college and was quickly promoted to store manager. After college, he joined the company full time and worked his way up the ranks through a series of promotions: director of store operations, director of operations, VP of operations, VP of stores, and SVP of Stores. In August 2017, he was promoted to chief executive officer.
As CEO of the footwear retailer, he emphasizes a customer-first approach, ensuring that the right retail technology is in place to be on the cutting edge of store operations and provide customers with the best experience possible. This approach made it easier for Shoe Sensation to pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic, where Schoengart led the charge to expedite BOPIS, curbside pickup, and fulfillment shopping options.
Throughout his long-standing career, he names the selection, implementation, and adoption of Zebra Reflexis task and workforce management technology as his biggest accomplishment. Schoengart has transformed the store operations at Shoe Sensation, providing major improvements to employee productivity and engagement, task and project completion, and customer satisfaction. During the implementation and rollout, Shoe Sensation saw 13% growth in store count along with a 15% increase in store level conversion, an 8% increase in transaction total and an 18% increase in multiple pairs sold per transaction. Looking ahead, the retailer is exploring electronic shelf tags and RFID technologies.
Chief Executive Officer
Shoe Sensation
Dave SCHOENGART
Influencing a Team
Schoengart says he influences his team by letting them explore and test new and emerging technologies.
Influential Advice
“Action is better than no action,” is the most influential advice he has received throughout his career. “Test, fail fast if necessary, and drive performance.”
Influential Tech
Schoengart names RFID as a technology that will help retailers prepare for the future, for the tech’s ability to take, track, and ensure accurate inventories.
Future Influence
“Brick and mortar is not dead but SERVICE and relationships with your customers is paramount,” he says.
Biggest Influencer
Mike Bernard, founder of Shoe Sensation
Fulfilling a Purpose
Giving back to the community is very important to Schoengart. Happy Feet, Clark County Youth Shelter and the City of Jeffersonville enjoy charitable support from Shoe Sensation.
One Thing People Don’t Know?
Schoengart attended Eastern Kentucky University, where he studied Fire Engineering and Emergency Medicine.
Sandra Stanley pioneered the use of data science in the retail space and continues to leverage her 20-plus years of experience in analytics to drive continued progress in the field. Leading a global team of over 400 data scientists, Stanley has overseen dunnhumby’s overarching data science strategy, playing an integral role in developing and deploying data science-backed solutions to hundreds of grocery retailers and CPG companies.
“My biggest accomplishment is how the data science developed by my team is used to personalize the entire retail experience from curating the right range to optimizing the price of products through personalized product and promotion recommendations for 70-plus grocery retail clients and over 1,000 CPGs.” Stanley’s role oversees data for over 700 million customers that is used to improve processes and results across the full business cycle. Her work has been critical as retailers and brands increasingly look to implement AI into their CX processes and to engage consumers amidst ever-changing needs. “Not every consumer will have the same need at the same time and therefore it will be up to the retail industry to understand each consumer and provide a personalized experience.”
Though a veteran in the space of data science, Stanley’s passion for retail has never wavered. “I’ve been in the retail technology industry since I graduated. I was hugely inspired with the idea that I could use my mathematics background to put customers at the heart of decisions being made by big businesses. I was attracted by the opportunity to help people with a very basic need: to feed themselves and their families."
Chief Data Science Officer
dunnhumby
Sandra Stanley
Influencing a Team
“People are the most important asset of any business and I believe it is critical to empower and trust in their ability to deliver.” Stanley’s team focuses on achieving outcomes that will grow the value delivered to clients and “grow the business and grow our people.” The key to a high performing team is focusing on achieving these three things.
Influential Tech
Quantum computing. Stanley is working with the physics department of Durham University to explore how this emerging tech can be applied to the retail industry. “Optimization problems come up everywhere in grocery retail, including routing delivery vehicles, choosing promotional strategies, store arrangement, and the allocation of shelf space. Quantum Computing could prove to be game changing in this space.”
One Thing People Don’t Know?
During COVID lockdowns, Stanley got in the habit of taking a walk every evening and listening to a podcast or audio book. “It’s a great way to broaden my horizons, learn something new, or spark an idea.”
With more than 20 years of experience in technology innovation, technology management, and retail technology, Ram Venkataraman has also held a number of leadership roles at Red Hat, Spectrum K12 School Solutions, Altisource, and Promethean.
For the last four and a half years, Venkataraman has led the charge on building modern commerce technology that enables omnichannel experiences. Even pre-pandemic, Venkataraman and the Kibo team could see the need for seamless, connected customer experiences. “At the time, retailers had very few options when choosing an order management platform that could support omnichannel experiences,” said Venkataraman. To address this need, Kibo developed one of the earliest cloud-native and microservices-based OMS platforms, allowing retailers to adapt to evolving business needs and market demands with flexibility and scale.
As CEO, Venkataraman has his finger on the pulse of numerous emerging retail technologies. The one he’s particularly intrigued by? Computer vision. A cause of disruption in many industries, computer vision has many applications in retail, “including frictionless checkout, robotics in store, and warehouse automation,” Venkataraman shares. “We are seeing a large adoption in automation scenarios while it is still nascent when applied to checkout experiences. As the economies of scale improve and consumers develop trust in the technology, the current model of checkout will be disrupted in the not-too-distant future.”
CEO
Kibo Commerce
Ram Venkataraman
Influencing a Team
Venkataraman influences his team through “Radical Candor,” or demonstrating genuine care for each team member and supporting their professional and personal well-being. “When I combine caring personally with a culture where feedback is shared bi-directionally without repercussions, it allows me to have a high level of influence with my team.”
Fulfilling a Purpose
Kibo has years of experience delivering industry-leading products that personalize omnichannel experiences by leveraging cutting edge machine learning (ML) techniques. “We are taking our learnings in those areas and continuing to expand them to other areas of the value chain for retailers.” The company is also adding ML-based approaches to demand forecasting and order routing.
Future Influence
Venkataraman says the number one driver of poor customer service experience is having inconsistent or broken cross-channel flows. Looking ahead to a post-pandemic world, Venkataraman says consumer loyalty will increasingly be tied to the consumer experience. Delivering consistent and personalized experiences will form a huge part of this goal.
Biggest Influencer
Venkataraman credits his mother as a huge inspiration. “I attribute my abilities to be open-minded and inclusive entirely to her,” he shares.
Approximately 75% of the U.S. population is currently within five miles of a Dollar General store. As the brand’s EVP and CIO, Carman Wenkoff has a second-to-none sense of what makes the modern American consumer tick. Wenkoff leverages this perspective into his work and is always looking ahead to get an idea of the next big thing in customer needs.
Prior to joining Dollar General, Wenkoff was chief information officer and chief digital officer for Subway Worldwide Headquarters. For his final two years with Subway, Wenkoff went “all-in,” becoming a store franchisee and operating a restaurant. Wenkoff also previously served as vice president, operations/finance and general counsel for Ontain Corporation.
In terms of tech, Dollar General continues to evolve under Wenkoff’s guidance. Over the last few years, the team has significantly modernized in-store technology, including point of sale and self-checkout solutions, giving customers a choice for their checkout experience. This also frees up employees for more value-added tasks and serving customers throughout the store. “Our team is committed to ensuring that Dollar General has the opportunity to take advantage of technology at the right time while serving customers who depend on us,” Wenkoff says.
Despite this investment in digital retail services, it’s the brick-and-mortar stores where Wenkoff predicts we’ll see the next wave of disruption. These in-person locations, Wenkoff says, “are now being equipped with technical advantages that level the playing field from an analytics perspective and will allow new ways to serve customers who still need and enjoy the physical shopping experience.”
Executive Vice President &
Chief Information Officer
Dollar General
Carman Wenkoff
Influential Tech
Wenkoff and the Dollar General team focus on customer-facing technologies that make life easier for shoppers. “Deal Finder” is one of Dollar General’s recently-released digital services. As customers build a shopping list, Dollar General tech does the work of finding and surfacing the best deals for the customer. If the customer is in the store, Dollar General has developed a Cart Calculator that allows customers to scan items, calculate discounts, factors in taxes and lists alternative product options for added savings. This saves time and keeps customers on budget.
Influencing a Team
Authenticity is the foundation of influence. “When team members know that my pursuits are in their best interest and nothing else, everything becomes workable. We put into place processes for teamwork, being intentional with our processes from end to end,” says Wenkoff.
Fulfilling a Purpose
Serving Others is central to Dollar General’s mission. The company also has a demonstrated history of commitment to education, both externally through the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, and internally through workforce training and advancement opportunities. “We truly care about our teams’ careers and growing them with the company,” Wenkoff shares.
Michele Driscoll
