Speakers 2024

Michael Krans is Head of Macy’s Media Network at Macy’s.

Charlene Charles is Dollar General’s head of operations, DG Media
Network.
She joined Dollar General in November of 2021 and brings more than 17
years of consumer-centric experience across brands, retailers and
vendors, from start-ups to mature organizations.
Throughout her career, Charlene has been responsible for leading teams
across multiple disciplines with experience in ad tech, sales, product,
marketing, consulting, commercialization, strategic planning, shopper marketing, PNL management,
measurement, reporting, insights, talent recruitment and people development.
Charlene most recently served as director of commercial operations at Roundel where she established
the commercialization discipline for Target’s retail media network. Prior to that role she held roles of
increasing responsibility with tech start-up Yieldbot before launching her own consulting practice.
Charlene’s career began with various roles over a ten-year period with CPGs, including General Mills and
Kraft Heinz.
She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas.

Amy Vollet serves as the Executive Vice President of Omnichannel Planning and Activation at Omnicom Commerce, with over 25 years of experience in media strategy and implementation. As a leader in connected commerce media, Amy’s team drives cutting-edge strategies in retail experiences.

Amy’s expertise lies in leveraging data-driven insights to optimize omnichannel strategies, ensuring brands achieve seamless integration across the commerce landscape. Her innovative approach to retail media and omnichannel activation enables brands to enhance consumer engagement and maximize media efficiency.

Prior to her role at Omnicom Commerce, Amy held leadership positions at The Integer Group and Tracy-Locke, where she developed groundbreaking strategies to merge online and offline channels throughout the consumer journey. With a passion for retail media and a focus on media optimization, she consistently delivers impactful results for top brands like Philips, Welch’s, ExxonMobil, and Clorox.

Amy holds a degree from Texas Tech University and remains committed to fostering collaboration and continuous learning within her teams.

Richard Nunn is the Chief Executive Officer for United MileagePlus and brings more than two decades of digital media and data expertise, building and scaling businesses globally whilst working at leading media technology groups at Comcast and Tremor, major advertising agencies spanning the world, as well as having been a media and technology investment banker in London.

Michelle Weiskittel is the Head of Media, Creative and Operations at Albertsons Media Collective, where she and her team build media and content solutions by utilizing insights and targeting tied to business objectives.

A passion for performance-based media and omni-channel purchase behaviors, Michelle brings deep expertise in influencing basket and product level sales for brands through her agency and Albertsons Companies marketing experience. Over the last two years, she has used this knowledge to prioritize foundational capabilities for Albertsons Media Collective.

Prior to her time at Albertsons Media Collective, Michelle was a Digital Marketing Director for Albertsons and Safeway. With 20+ years of experience in media and a proven history in advancing digital media strategy through consumer insights, targeting, content, ad product innovation, and measurement, Michelle is an industry veteran. She is a 2015 recipient of Brand Innovators Top 40 under 40 award.

Michelle holds a bachelor’s degree in Managerial Economics from the University of California Davis.

As TikTok’s U.S. Head of Retail, Global Business Solutions, Matt is focused on leading a world-class sales team to help brands activate at scale on TikTok and meaningfully engage with the community. He joined the company in 2020, as Head of Central region, where he was responsible for establishing the platform’s midwest operations and leading the strategy and execution of agency and brand direct partnerships.

Prior to TikTok, Matt spent 12 years creating global media solutions and partnerships for both startups and Fortune 500 companies, such as Nextdoor, Twitter, Apple and Disney.

Matt attended The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and currently resides in Chicago.

Megan Cameron is the EVP, Retail Media Solution Lead for New Stream Media at dentsu. In this role, she partners with retailers to help build, scale and evolve their retail and commerce media businesses. She’s specifically focused on identifying and bringing to life the retail media business strategy that leads with innovation, generates profitable revenue and enhances the consumer experience. She’s spent the majority of her career in the retail and CPG space, most recently leading media network teams at Fortune 100 retailers, including Target, CVS, Nordstrom and Albertsons. She has deep subject matter expertise in retail media, programmatic buying, addressable advertising and cross-functional informatics. She’s also a 2022 honoree of Ad Age’s 40 under 40 and a 2023 member of The List, from Ad Age in partnership with Meta.

Jeffrey Bustos is a visionary leader at the forefront of the digital advertising industry. As the VP of Measurement, Addressability & Data Center at the IAB, he is responsible for developing groundbreaking industry standards and guides that enable revenue
growth, efficiency, and scale.

Jeffrey is a pioneer in the realm of Retail Media and Commerce, having hosted the highly acclaimed Connected Commerce event for two consecutive years. His passion for innovation extends far beyond this domain, as he spearheads critical initiatives such as the
Retail Media Buyers Guide, Retail Media Measurement Standards, Data Bias and Modeling, and Data Clean Rooms.

Notably, Jeffrey is dedicated to minimizing data bias in AI through his leadership on the Minimizing Data Bias in AI (Part II) Framework. This forward-thinking initiative aims to establish robust guidelines and best practices to ensure AI systems operate with
fairness, transparency, and accountability. Additionally, he is a driving force behind the development of the Generative AI Framework White Paper, which explores the immense potential of automation and personalization in AI machine learning and large language
models (LLMs) for measurement best practices.

As a true thought-leader, Jeffrey’s unwavering commitment to innovation and industry advancement is evident in every aspect of his work. His insights and expertise are invaluable in shaping the future of digital advertising, ensuring that it remains a powerful
and sustainable force in the 21st century.

Ashan is Uber’s Head of Agency Partnerships and is responsible for establishing strategic relationships with key holding companies in service to our mutual advertisers. Ashan’s affinity for agencies traces back to his roots where he spent the first 12 years of his professional career within Publicis and GroupM operating companies, respectively. For the past 10 years he’s focused on establishing and managing agency partnerships at both Apple and Meta, prior to joining Uber.

Ashan is a graduate of Baruch College, City University of New York, where he still guest lectures. Ashan resides in New York, where he and his wife are busy raising three creative, curious and strong-minded daughters.

Steven Suthiana is a leader in the Mar-Tech, Ad-Tech, Data and Retail Media (Commerce) Network space, where he is currently leading Global Marketing Technology and Innovation at Western Union, responsible for Agency relations in all regions, Data Strategy and Monetization, Ad Product, Marketing Solutions, Platforms and Partnerships. Previously, he was the Head of Strategic Ad & Data Partnerships at Gap, Strategic Growth Office (SGO), GPS Media, where he was responsible for data/audience advertising business and strategy. Steven helped rebuild Newsweek Publishing as the EVP of Strategic Partnerships through its shift of ownership. Prior to, Steven led digital operations and international growth for nine years as the Global Head, Digital Media and Operations at Mansueto Ventures, publisher of Inc. Media and Fast Company. Steven spent some years in ad-tech and broadcast space at NeuLion, where Steven oversaw the digital advertising ecosystem including sales development, account services, and the management of 150+ Collegiate Sports and Entertainment websites. Steven is an active member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), served in the Board of Digital Content Next (DCN), and served in the Global Advisory Board of the Wharton Future of Advertising Program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Steven studied Biological Sciences at The State University of New York at Buffalo and Psychology of Human Sexuality at City University of New York, The Graduate Center where he was a recipient of Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship.

Ryan Webber is the VP of Sales & Client Success at Loblaw Advance, the retail media network of Loblaws Companies Limited. He is a dynamic business leader with a remarkable track record of over 20 years in sales, marketing, media, and executive management roles. As a visionary and passionate professional, Ryan’s career spans across diverse industries, including media, technology and telecommunications. With a unique blend of strategic acumen, emotional intelligence, and an unwavering commitment to fostering a culture of empathy and inclusivity, he has consistently driven exceptional results throughout his career.

Michael Peroutka is Head of Brand & Agency Partnerships at Gopuff Ads. He has over 15 years experience in digital media focused on emerging trends – video, mobile, data driven communities and commerce media. Over the past decade, Michael has consistently driven revenue and product innovation across companies of various sizes and stages – Gopuff, Imgur, Maker Studios/Disney, AOL, Tremor Video – working as both an individual contributor and sales leader. He is passionate about the ever-changing landscape of consumer attention and how brands can win over consumers.

Kathryn Mazza is SVP of RedMedia at Hy-Vee.

Rachel Lawson is Director of Shopper Marketing at Mondelez International.

Katie Vogt is the Senior Director, Marketing Partnerships and Client Success for Walgreens Advertising Group (wag), where she leads a team of 50+ revenue-focused pros that develop and deploy custom, first-party data-driven omnichannel campaigns for Fortune 500 marketers. Katie’s expertise spans omnichannel audience and channel strategies, in-flight optimization and attributable measurement practices. Since the start of her career, Katie has worked with customer data to optimize merchandising and marketing activations in retail. Prior to Walgreens, she worked at dunnhumby, leading supplier engagements to harness the power of customer data to drive decisioning that leads to more efficient and effective campaigns.

Chris Ziemer is a Media & Entertainment Industry Specialist at AWS. Chris works with M&E business and technology leaders to accelerate cloud transformation initiatives, providing domain expertise for cloud adoption in broadcast, ad-tech transformation, live production, media supply chain, and streaming media workflows. Prior to AWS, Chris held senior sales, business development, solutions engineering, and alliance partner management positions at Imagine Communications and Harris Broadcast. Chris has led some of the industry’s most transformative technology projects with global media companies and broadcasting groups.

Nicholas Ward is President & Co-Founder at Koddi

Brittany Mohr (she/her) is the Senior Director of Enterprise Ad Sales at DoorDash, where she leads both the CPG and restaurant ad sales teams. Brittany has a proven track record of building successful growth partnerships and building sales teams from her time at Pinterest and Meta. Brittany is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Pennsylvania with her fiance, Tommy, and their dog, Mack.

As Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at Fluent, Matt Conlin oversees sales, marketing, and business development strategies for the industry-leading performance marketing company. Matt co-founded Fluent in 2010 and has led the organization through its 2015 acquisition, transition into a stand-alone public company, and ongoing expansion into international markets over the past decade. Serving as an advisor and board member to multiple tech companies, Matt is also recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.

Evan Herman is Head of Programmatic at Volta Media, a Shell Brand.

Jay Chen is the Head of Ads Global Partner Development at eBay, where he spearheads Product and Go-To-Market Partnerships. In his role, Jay’s team facilitates the advancement of Promoted Listings by orchestrating Marketing API integration with exclusive strategic partners on a global scale. With over 11 years of experience in advertising and ad-tech, Jay Chen remains humbled by the opportunity to contribute to this dynamic industry. He is genuinely passionate about cultivating customer-centric experiences and takes great joy in collaborating with partners to create exceptional advertising platforms. Together, they strive to empower mutual sellers on eBay to scale their businesses and thrive.

Miikka Makio is the GM of North America at leading AR & AI beautytech company Revieve. Miikka has a few decades of experience in consumer-facing digital experiences – with a focus over the last 10 years in digital beauty experiences within the AR & AI world. At Revieve, he has been working with some of the leading brands and retailers such as CVS, JCPenney, Boots, AS Watson Group, Unilever, Kiko Milano, No7, and many more – helping them to curate digital brand experiences for various use cases with beautytech (such as virtual try-on, skin diagnostics, product finders, and GenAI -driven beauty experiences). He has also worked with various Retail Media teams, curating beautytech-driven Interactive Retail Media offerings & programs with retailers and deploying campaigns with beauty brands.

Benjamin Weisel is the Director of DICK’S Media at DICK’S Sporting Goods.

Leading Commerce Media, Greenwald is responsible for defining, recommending and implementing strategic solutions for Night Market clients. As a thoughtful leader with deep industry experience, Mara leads a multidisciplinary team driving commerce expansion, volumetric, and outcome-based planning.

Mara also leads the Commerce Analytics team to ensure planning outputs create a competitive advantage for clients and build models that are predictive versus reactive, driving results. She is passionate about driving incremental business results for clients with the rapidly growing retail media space.

Mara joins Night Market from Mindshare where she was most recently Managing Director, Commerce & Biddable Media. While there, she built new strategic approaches to retail media planning, increasing sales year-over-year at the Big 5 retailers. Prior to Mindshare, she held various roles in eCommerce, performance media, retail, DTC and shopper investment including across GroupM, Publicis and Omnicom.

Justin Sparks is the VP of Business Development for the North America region – focused on new retailer and Ad/Mar tech partnerships for Threefold’s white-labeled, embedded services offering and retailer operations & planning platform, PlanApps.

He has spent the last 15 years building and scaling teams in the performance media space, and the last 10 in Retail Media on the agency and ad tech sides. He has built and managed Account, Sales, Strategy and Partnerships teams over the years focused on enterprise clients.

Before joining Threefold, he built & led the East Coast Commerce teams at Mediavest (now Spark) and was also a board member for Hooklogic and Criteo’s first US hire after their acquisition. Most recently he led the InMobi Americas Strategic Sales org prior to joining Threefold. He is based in New York and spends his free time with his family, traveling, watching the Premier League and cycling.

Drew is a commerce executive with a background in fundraising, building, commercializing and scaling intrapreneurial ventures within the world’s largest retailers.

He was an original architect of and former executive at Walmart Connect in the U.S. and Canada, helping to scale the business to $2BN and beyond. This included insourcing the business, establishing the brand and sales enablement practices, leading internal change management, and developing the in-store advertising strategy. In addition, he was a founding member of Walmart’s eCommerce and digital marketing platforms and the CMO of a SoftBank-backed Live Shopping platform called Firework. Drew is currently the Co-Founder and Managing Director of a new retail innovation platform called Adaptive Retail Group.

Outside of work, Drew is a startup advisor, angel investor in scalable tech and education platforms, and a father of two amazing kids. He received awards for both Top 30 Under 30 in Marketing and Top 40 Under 40 in Retail Innovation. Drew is a public speaker, thought leader, writer, aspiring actor (one can still dream), and shared keynote addresses at events including Shoptalk, GroceryShop, The Lead Innovation Summit, Smart Retail Tech.

A former Amazon, McKinsey, Commerce Hub, WPP and Omnicom C-Level executive, Frank Kochenash is an E-Commerce and Retail Media expert based in Seattle, WA.

As the lead of the Retail, CPG and QSR Vertical at Merkle, Janine works with the world’s leading brands, retailers and technology partners to help them realize their business transformation goals.

With experience in Retail Media Networks, Shopper Marketing and Personalization, Janine has always focused on the importance of putting shoppers and consumers at the heart of every program.

Prior to taking on this role, Janine led New Stream Media and the eretail practice at Merkle, partnering with talented digital marketers from Media, Analytics, Audience/CRM, Technology, Media Sales and Creative who all worked together to develop forward-looking strategies for their Retail, CPG and Brand clients that are based on where the RMN industry is heading.

Janine started her career in Canada working on store concepts and new brand launches for Loblaw Companies Limited, Sleeman Brewery, and Sobey’s; she then led a shopper marketing agency working with brands such as Coca-Cola and Kraft. After moving to the US and joining Merkle she led digital transformation projects for Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, Sherwin Williams and Kimberly-Clark, to name a few. The thread that connects all of this experience is a love for retail and shopping and the innovation that comes from such a dynamic industry.

Ash Khan serves as the Client Management Lead for Marriott Media Network (MMN). Since joining Marriott in September 2022, Ash has leveraged his extensive background in brand management, innovation and operations from leading companies such as Bayer, Reckitt, Merck, Church & Dwight and Tata Consumer. In his role at MMN, Ash is responsible for developing and executing strategic media initiatives that engage Marriott’s guests throughout their travel journey. He collaborates with both internal and external stakeholders to identify and cultivate brand partnerships, optimizing the monetization potential of MMN.

An Upper West Side resident of New York since 2017, Ash has also lived in Dhaka, Chicago, Bangkok, Toronto, and Copenhagen, bringing a global perspective to his work. Fun fact: he’s never had the urge to watch any of the Star Wars or Marvel movies.

Mark Schwartz is the Head of Sales for Retail Ads at Mirakl, bringing a wealth of expertise in retail media and performance advertising. He was also one of the originators of NY KnowGO, the first conference dedicated to the subject of Retail Media Networks.

Prior to Mirakl, Mark served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Humankind, helping retailers elevate e-commerce through personalized shopping experiences. With a background as Chief Revenue Officer at Crealytics, Mark has a deep understanding of retail media, measurement, digital transformation, and retail advertising strategy. He has also held leadership roles at Steak Digital and Reprise Media, leading both to their acquisition by major advertising networks.

Edna Pinzon is Global Head of Ad Network & Partnerships at Topsort.