Retail Media StrategyMay 5-8, 2025 at Cornell Tech

in NYC

Peter V.S. Bond works as Partnership Acceleration Lead at Flywheel, a division of Omnicom. Prior to Flywheel, Mr. Bond was the Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy and Business Development at Fetch Rewards, a mobile loyalty platform. He has also held leadership roles at PowerReviews, CVS Health, dunnhumby, IRi, and Priceline.com. Mr. Bond holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an MBA from The Stern School of Business at New York University, and Executive Education certificates from the business schools at Columbia University and Cornell University.

Lutz Finger is an esteemed technologist with a diverse background in building innovative technology platforms for companies including Google, LinkedIn, and Snap Inc.. He is the founder of R2Decide, a platform for generative AI tools.

Finger is a regular contributor to Forbes, where he writes about AI and deep learning. His book Ask, Measure, Learn was published in 2014 and serves as a non-technical guide on how to extract significant business value from big data. Finger serves as an advisor, venture partner, and angel investor at several data-centric corporations in Europe and the United States. He has an MBA from INSEAD and an M.S. in quantum physics from TU Berlin.

Finger, who resides in the San Francisco Bay area, aims to bring over 20 years of diversified experience in data science and product management to his students at Cornell.

As VP, Sales Growth & Capabilities, Clare Galvao is responsible for the strategic planning process and driving synergies across the Sales Center. She sits on the US Sales Leadership Team and leads the Category Management, Trade Strategy & Sales Planning, E2E Commercial Operations, Commercial Capabilities, Portfolio Strategy, and Business Reporting & Analytics teams at Kellanova.

Clare has been with the company since March 2020.

Prior to this role, Clare led Channel & Customer Strategy for Kellanova, and Sales Continuous Improvement for Kellogg, which included establishing two separate sales organizations as a result of spinning off the cereal business. Prior to joining Kellogg North America, Clare was on the Global Growth Team leading Global Channel Strategy & Capabilities.

Prior to joining Kellogg, Clare spent 11 years at Coca-Cola in various sales and marketing assignments across four countries and three continents – including Sales roles in USA, Brand Management in Central Europe (Czech/Slovak); Venue Operations & Licensing at Expo 2015 in Italy; Channel & Customer Development in Thailand; and she led Commercial Strategy & Planning for a top US bottler.

Clare is the mother of one daughter; she and her husband reside in Glencoe, IL. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota – Carlson School of Management and her MBA from the Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch (Switzerland) and University of New York in Prague.

With 20 years of experience in data analytics and insights, including nearly a decade specializing in retail media advertising, Abhi has built and led transformative teams across the industry. Over the past 4.5 years at Instacart, he established and scaled the Media Analytics function, encompassing Measurement Science, which focuses on proving value through experimentation and strategic brand partnership, and the Scaled Insights team, which drives automation, standardization, and AI-driven innovation at scale.

Prior to Instacart, he held leadership roles at Criteo, Hooklogic (acquired by Criteo), dunnhumby, and Ogilvy, where he developed deep expertise in leveraging data for strategic growth.

Andrew Lipsman is an independent analyst and consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce. His industry coverage specializes in retail media—which he is known for anointing as “digital advertising’s third big wave”—and other areas of the digital media, advertising, and commerce ecosystem. He is also a founding advisor and strategist at retail media consultancy, Colosseum Strategy. 

Previously, Andrew was a VP & Principal Analyst at eMarketer, where he covered retail & ecommerce and led the retail media practice. Before that, he was SVP of Marketing & Insights at comScore overseeing the company’s global marketing insights and thought leadership initiatives. 

He has published more than a half dozen articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, Advertising Age, and Advertising Week.

Dan Hooker is a global retail and consumer packaged goods executive with broad experience across diverse business environments and formats, leading traditional food retail operations and merchandising, as well as product development, consumer and category analytics, sourcing and procurement, global trading, national sales, and e-commerce. An outstanding strategist and general manager, he has led the successful startup of multiple diverse businesses. Known for and recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on retailers’ proprietary brands, Mr. Hooker has shaped clients’ programs across four continents and eight classes of trade. His passion is in helping companies recognize their unique DNA and positioning then creating actionable marketing and sales strategies essential for their success.

Kristi Argyilan is an accomplished advertising executive currently leading Uber’s advertising division. With extensive experience in retail media and brand innovation, she previously served as SVP of retail media at Albertsons, where she led strategic initiatives to enhance the company’s advertising capabilities. Before Albertsons, she served as SVP of brand innovation at Bed Bath & Beyond, focusing on developing innovative retail solutions. Argyilan is perhaps best known for her role as president of Roundel, Target’s retail media business, which she helped launch and establish as a significant player in the retail media landscape. Her expertise spans digital advertising, brand development, and retail technology integration across major retail and technology organizations.

Karan Girotra, Professor of Operations, Technology and Information Management (OTIM), is the recipient of the Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management chair, for a 5-year term. This chair was given by Rob Dyson, MBA ’74 to support a founding faculty position for Johnson instruction at Cornell Tech, in honor of his father, the founder of the Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corporation.

Karan Girotra is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University. Karan collaborates with companies building new business models in the areas of urban living, smart transportation and e-commerce, helping them build rigorous research based solutions.

Karan’s research team has been recognized by multiple awards including the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Award and multiple best paper awards. He has also won teaching awards for his teaching on entrepreneurship and new business models and was featured in the Poets and Quant’s Best 40 under 40 business professors lists.

In addition to his academic work, Karan was one of the founders of Terrapass Inc., which the New York Times identified as one of the most noteworthy ideas of 2005. Since then, TerraPass has helped businesses and individuals reduce over hundred million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Karan holds PhD and AM degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

With over twenty years in advertising and online marketing, Austin Leonard is known for pioneering efforts in the retail media sector via collaboration, transparency & keeping the customer at the center of the conversation. As the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Epsilon, he spearheads efforts to enhance retail media network platforms by integrating top-tier identity data with AI-driven ad server technologies.

His prior roles include Head of Sales at Sam’s Club MAP, Head of Food at Walmart Connect and Program Manager for the eBay Audience Platform, where he significantly increased revenue and advertiser engagement through innovative digital and in-store marketing strategies. Austin is a proud graduate of the University of Florida (Go Gators!) and holds an MBA from Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Claudia Johnson has helped lead the transformation of Flywheel since it integrated 11 different companies to provide solutions for specific segments of the digital commerce value chain, in part by replacing Flywheel’s engagement model with her Partnership Acceleration model. In late 2022, she established a global cross-division engagement model for Flywheel to elevate its business interactions within an identified client group. 

To expand the model beyond this initial test, Johnson sourced external leaders with deep knowledge about the omnichannel digital consumer goods world and expertise in retail media and the digital shelf. This led to the creation of Flywheel’s Partnership Acceleration team, including outside professionals from companies such as Procter & Gamble, Haleon, Dunnhumby, CVS Health, Instacart and others. To expand client stakeholder awareness of Flywheel’s strategic partnership impact, she also instituted Annual Impact Reports, providing a high-level overview of the Flywheel solutions actively being used by each client and the client stakeholders, which in turn helped broaden the awareness of the company’s solutions. 

Since launching the Partnership Acceleration model just over a year ago, the portfolio has grown from nine to 14 enterprise clients, representing more than 30% share of Flywheel’s revenue. With the acquisition of Flywheel by Omnicom in January 2024, Johnson and the Partnership Acceleration team are leaders in shaping how Flywheel plays a pivotal role in the commerce capabilities of Omnicom.

Young-Hoon Park is Sung-Whan Suh Professor of Management and a professor of marketing at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. His expertise centers around the analysis of behavioral data to understand and forecast customer shopping and purchasing activities, and to conduct customer relationship management. His research has been published in various leading academic journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A. He was a finalist for the 2008 John D.C. Little Award for the best marketing paper published in Marketing Science or Management Science for his research on internet auctions.

Liz Buchanan leads the North American business for NielsenIQ, a global information services firm serving the consumer goods and retail industries. In this role, she is accountable for the U.S. and Canadian markets, across all NIQ business lines and customer segments.

During her 17 years at NIQ, Liz has held various leadership roles in customer success, sales, product development and technology deployment. Most recently, she oversaw NIQ’s customer facing analytics and servicing teams around the world and led the successful rollout of the NIQ self-serve analytics platform, NIQ Discover, across 85 countries.

She has worked extensively across the U.S. and global markets. She has specific expertise in data governance and stewardship, data management processes, technologies and analytics. She regularly consults with customers to help them achieve their transformation goals in this rapidly evolving space.

Liz currently serves as an Executive Sponsor for the Women in NielsenIQ (WIN) employee resource group. She sits on the Board of Directors for the Chicago chapter of Cradles to Crayons, a non-profit organization focused on providing essentials to children facing clothing insecurity. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Chicago Humanities (formerly the Chicago Humanities Festival) and World Business Chicago.

Liz is an active champion for civic causes, regularly dedicating her time advocating for diverse political representation through fundraising, organizing and policy work at the local and national level. Liz is a Class of 2022 Leadership Greater Chicago (LGC) Signature Fellow and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago.

30+ years of grocery retail experience working in various functions from retail operations, category management, merchandising planning, sourcing, eCommerce merchandising, and retail media. Responsible for driving sales growth through meaningful customer engagements across all of our media channels and the digital shelf. Ensure ADUSA’s capabilities deliver on our connected customer ambition and create stronger partnerships with our CPG and agency partners.

Manish Sharma is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience in digital retail, global marketing, and P&L management. He excels at transforming challenges into opportunities and inspiring change through strategic thinking. Mr. Sharma is the co-founder and CMO of Think Blue, a consulting firm that transforms businesses by melding digital innovations with traditional expertise. He has held various leadership positions across different continents, including leading the marketing function for Asia Pacific, serving as the global lead for the Kellogg Masterbrand, and most recently as the Vice President and General Manager of Omni-commerce at Kellogg USA.

A builder at heart, Mr. Sharma is deeply passionate about building businesses and brands as well as mentoring talent. His areas of expertise encompass marketing, e-commerce, breakthrough innovation, and integrated communication planning. In his free time, Mr. Sharma enjoys spending time with his dogs, traveling, and trying new foods.

Accomplished Omni Channel Sales and Brand Building VP armed with continuous advancement and expertise in fostering sales strategies, brand development, multi-functional team leadership, go-to-market initiative management, operations, corporate org transformations, and executive presence. Sophisticated in building engaged teams and customer relationships through strong communication, empathy, collaboration, humor, and exemplary leadership to drive business forward while maximizing human capacity.

Parag Shah is co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Think Blue, a consulting firm that helps transform businesses by melding digital innovations with traditional expertise.

Formerly, at The GIANT Company, Mr. Shah led the Center Store and Omnichannel Merchandising initiatives, guiding a dedicated team to blend traditional retail excellence with digital innovation, significantly enhancing both customer experience and business performance. Mr. Shah’s tenure at Wakefern Food Corporation saw him ascend through various pivotal roles, culminating in a vice-presidential position where he spearheaded initiatives that transformed merchandising practices and nurtured collaborative success across the cooperative.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Mr. Shah is passionately committed to mentorship and advocacy, particularly focusing on educational empowerment for underprivileged communities and fostering diversity within the industry. His goal is to inspire and uplift, sharing the knowledge and insights he’s gained to nurture the next generation of industry leaders.

Lauren is the Head of Sales and Partnerships of Chase Media Solutions, a dual-sided media platform that connects brands to Chase’s 82 million customers with the goal of helping consumers discover great value from merchants that matter to them while also driving sales for brands and merchant partners.

Lauren has over 15 years of media, advertising, technology and executive experience with some of the world’s leading platforms, including ROKT, Facebook (Meta), Roblox, VEVO and Viacom. In her role at Chase, she oversees Chase Media Solutions’ sales teams and partners with cross-functional teams like marketing, product and sales operations to align sales strategy with overarching company goals.

Ashan is the Head of Global Agency Partnerships at Uber, where he leads the development and growth of strategic relationships with major holding companies to better serve shared advertising clients. His deep affinity for the agency world stems from the first 12 years of his career, which he spent at Publicis and GroupM operating companies.

Over the past decade, Ashan has focused on building and managing impactful agency partnerships at some of the world’s most influential tech companies, including Apple and Meta, before bringing his expertise to Uber.

Ashan is a proud graduate of Baruch College, City University of New York, where he remains actively engaged as a guest lecturer. He currently resides in New York City with his wife and their three creative, curious, and strong-minded daughters.

David Peterson is the General Manager, Global Head of Retail Media – Epsilon Retail Media, where he is responsible for unifying Epsilon’s global retail media assets and teams to accelerate retailer and brand adoption of the company’s unified retail media platform around the world.