Agenda

Complimentary transportation from Miami International Airport to the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa!

Welcome to the Women in Retail Leadership Summit!

This gathering is designed exclusively for first-time participants, providing a relaxed and friendly environment to connect and start building relationships right away. Enjoy a selection of delicious snacks and a complimentary cocktail as you get to know fellow newcomers. This event is the perfect way to break the ice, share insights, and prepare for a memorable experience as part of this vibrant community of women leaders. We’re excited to welcome you and help you kick off your journey with us!

Start your day with a delicious breakfast and energizing conversations! This is the perfect opportunity to connect with peers, exchange ideas, and set the tone for a productive day ahead. Grab a coffee, find a seat, and enjoy networking with fellow attendees before the sessions begin.

Join us for a warm welcome from Women in Retail Leadership Circle’s President and Co-Founder Jennifer DiPasquale!

In the age of AI shopping agents, the moment of decision is moving — often happening before a customer ever reaches your site or store. Carol and Anne will discuss what agentic commerce really looks like through human moments retail is built on, like a teen shopping for prom shoes or an executive finding the right outfit for a networking event.

You’ll hear what it means to “show up” when an agent is surfacing products, and why trust, loyalty and payment flexibility are becoming decisive signals. You’ll leave with guidance for navigating new waves of innovation through curiosity, earning customer trust in new channels, and designing AI-powered retail experiences that feel personal in the moments that matter most.

In this keynote, Kelly Cook invites leaders to step back from day-to-day demands and reconsider the role leadership must play in shaping the future. Grounded in the values formed by her family and personal experiences, Kelly reflects on the beliefs that guide her leadership and the responsibility leaders carry in moments of transformation. As CEO of David’s Bridal, she shares how she is thinking about the future — reimagining culture, purpose, and long-term impact as the business enters its next chapter. This keynote isn’t about answers or tactics, it’s about perspective: challenging leaders to reimagine how they lead, what they prioritize, and the legacy they want to create.

We share a preview of what’s to come over the next two-and-a-half days as well as recognize our sponsor partners.

Retail leaders today face intense pressure to do more with less — to stay innovative, support their teams, and drive performance in a fast-moving, resource-constrained environment. This keynote gives leaders a practical playbook for leading under pressure: creating clarity before efficiency, protecting customer value during cost-cutting, and helping teams deliver meaningful value without burnout. You’ll also learn how to use AI to unlock creativity (not replace it) and strategies for navigating change, managing uncertainty, and driving sustainable growth.

Retail didn’t lose because of a lack of data. It stalled because data wasn’t changing decisions.

For years, brands optimized channels in isolation. Email here. Loyalty there. Media somewhere else. Now AI is accelerating everything … more signals, more speed, more pressure to act.

In this conversation, Mimi Ruiz, vice president of e-commerce at Columbia Sportswear, joins Pam Lord of Zeta Global to explore what changes when you move from managing channels to orchestrating customer decisions in an AI-driven environment.

This isn’t about more campaigns. It’s about smarter decisions, faster.

We’ll unpack what AI is actually revealing about customer behavior, where it’s driving real business impact, how it’s changing the decisions marketers make every day, and what had to shift internally to make it real.

Because the next era of retail won’t be defined by who has the most data or the most AI. It will be defined by who actually uses it to make better decisions.

Take a well-deserved break to recharge, grab refreshments, check out our pop-up shops, and connect with fellow attendees. Use this time to network, share ideas, or simply relax before the next session begins. It’s a great opportunity to build new relationships and continue the conversations sparked throughout the day.

Each year, Women in Retail Leadership Circle partners with a nonprofit that gives back to our community in a meaningful way. Join us as we welcome this year’s nonprofit, the American Heart Association — the nation’s oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke — for a discussion about women’s health and ways we can reach more women together.

In today’s retail landscape, marketing leaders face constant pressure to deliver immediate ROI while still building brands that inspire and endure. How do you balance both? Join Erin Bonsang, vice president of media and CRM at Lovesac, in conversation with LS Direct, for a fireside chat on designing smarter media mixes that drive both short-term performance and long-term brand equity. We’ll explore how Lovesac approaches channel strategy for high-consideration purchases, why physical in-home media still stands out in a digital world, and what leaders can learn about doubling down on channels that consistently deliver results.

Join Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy, for an inspiring and insightful Q&A on her remarkable journey from auditor to leading one of North America’s top consumer technology companies. Corie will share how she navigated diverse roles across finance, operations, and digital transformation, tackling complex challenges and seizing opportunities that propelled her to the C‑suite. She will offer practical insights on leadership, resilience and strategic growth, showing how to build cross-functional expertise, drive innovation, and make an impact at the highest levels of an organization.

Everything you know about customer engagement has changed.

For years, AI has existed within the martech stack as a feature. The next decade will belong to those who see above the stack, where AI becomes the operating layer for intelligent, adaptive, and autonomous customer engagement.

Decision ownership has shifted from humans to intelligent systems that think, decide, and act in real time. Marketing and customer engagement teams define the outcomes they want to achieve, and AI determines the optimal path to reach them.

End-to-end, autonomous customer engagement takes us beyond AI decisioning, where AI plans, creates, executes, operates, and optimizes engagement across every channel, moment, and interaction. This new reality removes the need for campaigns entirely.

In this conversation, Sharonda Weatherspoon of Michael Kors joins Insider One, CMO and Partner, Merve Nazli̇oglu, to explore what it takes to prepare for that future.

Retail is evolving rapidly — and so are the women who lead it. This panel explores how female retail professionals have navigated major career transitions, overcome challenges, and turned pivotal moments into powerful new opportunities. Through real-world stories of reinvention (e.g., launching new businesses, pivoting into new roles, stepping into leadership), attendees will gain practical strategies and actionable insights. This is an aspirational discussion, offering a guide to how these women became successful, pivoted after change, and the lessons that can inspire and inform others facing similar journeys.

Congratulations to this year’s Top Women in Retail and Women on the Rise! Join us as we celebrate their accomplishments, and don’t forget to grab a copy of the 2026 Top Women in Retail report.

• Building in Ambiguity: How Women Leaders Are Disrupting Logistics From Within (Sarah Newera, Nandini Subramanya)
• Leading Through Chaos and Uncertainty With Clarity and Courage (Chrissy Dunlap)

• The Disruption Tax: What Unauthorized Sellers Really Cost Your Brand (Jessica Cunning, Colleen Devanney, Antigone Peyton)
• Strategic Leadership in the Age of AI and Emerging Technologies (Courtney Seard)

• Inventory Truth: The Foundation Behind Modern In-Store Experience (Pareiya Gupta, Olivia Henriksson)
• Attracting, Developing, and Keeping Top Talent (Quendrida Whitmore)

• Discover Your Professional North Star — and Learn to Guide Your Team to Theirs (Sarah Cascone)
• Leading What Matters to Drive Focus, Influence, and Results (Jennifer DiMotta)

Take a well-deserved break to recharge, grab refreshments, check out our pop-up shops, and connect with fellow attendees. Use this time to network, share ideas, or simply relax before the next session begins. It’s a great opportunity to build new relationships and continue the conversations sparked throughout the day.

High-ticket purchases like jewelry are rarely impulsive. They’re thoughtful decisions, which makes the path to purchase just as important as the product itself. In this conversation, Pat and Lisa will discuss how retailers can convert shoppers by designing purchase journeys that build customer confidence across digital and in-store experiences. Drawing on their partnership across multiple Signet brands, they’ll share how thoughtful payment options, strong store engagement, and seamless checkout experiences can work together to remove friction and improve conversion.

This session takes a tactical look at how retailers are deploying AI across their businesses, from customer acquisition and personalized marketing to merchandising, demand forecasting, and inventory optimization. Learn how leading brands are using predictive analytics, generative AI, and automation to increase conversion, improve margins, reduce waste, and create smarter, faster decision-making. Attendees will walk away with real-world use cases, implementation insights, and a clear understanding of where AI is delivering the most immediate ROI.

Every great retail leader has a story about a move that made everyone in the room uncomfortable: the partnership nobody understood, the product bet that seemed too niche, or the channel nobody wanted to invest in.

Hear powerful, TED-style talks from three leaders about how they drove bold business transformations, navigated change, and reimagined what’s possible in today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape.

• Meenakshi Lala on Driving Business Transformation Through Team Empowerment
• Brie Olson on Putting Co-Created Purpose at the Center of Retail
• Kate Ridley on Reimagining a 110-Year-Old Brand for the Next Generation

Join attendees for a walk on the 3.1-mile Don Sofer Exercise Trail. The ADA-accessible path is landscaped with an abundance of shade trees complete with ground lighting, benches, chilled water fountains, trash receptacles and crosswalks. Please meet at the front entrance of the hotel for the walk.

Energize your body before breakfast! Join us for a morning yoga session on the Corsair Lawn. This yoga class is first-come, first-serve.

Start your day with a delicious breakfast and energizing conversations! This is the perfect opportunity to connect with peers, exchange ideas, and set the tone for a productive day ahead. Grab a coffee, find a seat, and enjoy networking with fellow attendees before the sessions begin.

Welcome to Day 2 of the Women in Retail Leadership Summit. We hope you’re ready for more!

In an age of rapid technological change, real progress requires more than adoption; it requires judgment. Drawing from career experiences leading through emerging technologies and pivotal leadership moments, Allegra will share her perspective on how trust, values and lived experiences shape better decisions. Allegra will explore the responsibility leaders have to balance innovation with intention, and why organizations that center people are best positioned for what’s next.

In this inspiring session, best-selling author Jen Hatmaker draws from her memoir “Awake” to explore how personal upheaval and professional transitions can become powerful opportunities for growth and leadership. Through candid storytelling, reflection and practical strategies, Jen guides participants on how to reimagine their path, reclaim their influence, and lead with authenticity and courage — even in the face of uncertainty. Attendees will leave empowered to turn life’s challenges into catalysts for personal and professional growth as well as lead with confidence, authenticity and renewed presence.

Beauty consumers no longer shop by geography — they discover globally, compare instantly, and expect brands to keep pace. In this session, ESW and Tarte Cosmetics unpack what today’s borderless shopper means for modern beauty brands as well as what it takes to win in an increasingly global landscape. Whether you’re already selling internationally or beginning to see demand, this session offers a practical framework for turning global momentum into sustained revenue.

Take a well-deserved break to recharge, grab refreshments, check out our pop-up shops, and connect with fellow attendees. Use this time to network, share ideas, or simply relax before the next session begins. It’s a great opportunity to build new relationships and continue the conversations sparked throughout the day.

Great leaders don’t just communicate, they connect. In this session, Cindy Solomon shares how authenticity, presence and storytelling can transform the way leaders show up and create impact in any room, whether on stage, in the boardroom, or in everyday conversations. Drawing from her experience as a trusted, highly regarded speaker and leader, Cindy explores what it really means to command a room. Through real stories and reflections, she highlights how being intentional, strategic and courageous allows leaders to build trust, inspire confidence, and be remembered long after the moment ends.

In a world where change is relentless and technology is transforming how people live and work, understanding human behavior has never been more critical for business leaders. ​Consumers and employees are rethinking what they value, who they trust, and what they expect from the organizations around them. Stability is becoming a premium. Authenticity matters more than polish. And increasingly, people want to feel like active protagonists in their own lives rather than passive participants in systems designed for them. This session unpacks Accenture’s latest Life Trends, bringing to life the human and cultural shifts underneath the headlines as well as what they mean for leaders trying to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving world.

In this panel discussion, noncompeting retail technology and solution providers will share their perspectives on where the industry is headed, including what retailers should be preparing for now. With a seasoned moderator guiding the conversation, panelists will explore technologies reshaping customer experiences, streamlining operations, and unlocking new levels of growth. Key themes to be addressed:

• Emerging technologies that will shape retail in the next three years to five years.
• The evolving role of AI in customer engagement and supply chain optimization.
• How to evaluate and adopt the right technologies at the right time.
• Real-world examples of innovation that deliver measurable results.

Hear powerful, TED-style talks from three women leaders who will share their unique approaches to leadership — how they inspire teams, navigate change, and reimagine what’s possible in today’s fast-moving retail landscape.

• Daria Burke on Leading From the Inside Out
• Reba Hatcher on Leading With a Coaching Mindset
• Marisa Thalberg on Leading With Creativity

Join Colleen Waters, vice president of e-commerce at Steve Madden, and Sandy Jeong, former CTO of Glossier and now field CTO at Shopify, for an inside look at how Steve Madden is reimagining the customer journey through agentic storefronts. As one of the first brands to enable agentic storefronts, Colleen will share what Steve Madden has learned from this new commerce frontier — from the decision to become an early adopter to the results they’re seeing. Sandy will draw on her experience building Glossier’s tech stack to explore how enterprise brands can prepare their teams and operations for AI-powered commerce. This session promises practical insights for leaders looking to move from AI experimentation to execution.

• Leading Through Chaos and Uncertainty With Clarity and Courage (Chrissy Dunlap)

• Bet on Yourself: Career Risks, Global Moves, and the Courage to Say Yes (Jennifer Goschke, Bridget Johns)
• Strategic Leadership in the Age of AI and Emerging Technologies (Courtney Seard)

• Attracting, Developing, and Keeping Top Talent

• Big Bets, Big Wins: Selling the Long-Term Value of Innovation (Heather LeMasters, Janna Navarro)
• Leading What Matters to Drive Focus, Influence, and Results (Jennifer DiMotta)

Take a well-deserved break to recharge, grab refreshments, check out our pop-up shops, and connect with fellow attendees. Use this time to network, share ideas, or simply relax before the next session begins. It’s a great opportunity to build new relationships and continue the conversations sparked throughout the day.

Explore how Pottery Barn brands are partnering with Movable Ink to bring AI-powered content decisioning to life within their email marketing using Da Vinci. This session will unpack how ”marketers and machines” work together to scale one-to-one experiences, driving stronger engagement, efficiency and measurable performance across campaigns.

Retail leaders shape the industry, yet often overlook their own consumer tendencies. This keynote invites attendees to hold up a gentle mirror and examine the emotional, cognitive and behavioral triggers behind their buying decisions. By introducing my unique framework of shopper archetypes, the session guides participants through a moment of self-reflection that reveals the forces driving their preferences, impulses and habits. Understanding their own patterns becomes a strategic advantage in understanding the people they serve.

Agentic commerce is reshaping how consumers discover and buy, and retail leaders are paying close attention. In this session, Anne Mezzenga, founder of Retail Field Report, and Amelia Van Camp, Mirakl’s head of agentic commerce, take an honest look at where things stand right now. They’ll explore what’s top of mind for retailers today and what the broader rise of AI agents means for the industry going forward. A candid conversation for leaders who want to understand this shift and what it could mean for their business.

Get ready for a dynamic, no-holds-barred conversation with some of retail’s most influential leaders. This is the real story behind leadership today — how to drive growth in a complex, fast-changing landscape; make high stakes decisions under pressure; and build teams that perform and stay. Expect candid insights on leading through change, balancing short-term results with long-term transformation, and what it takes to stay relevant in a world shaped by AI, shifting consumer behaviors, and evolving teams. You’ll walk away with practical strategies, honest advice, and a clearer perspective on how to lead and grow at the next level.

Let’s celebrate being together again! Stop by Synchrony’s reception for live music, hors d’oeuvres and cocktails!

Join attendees for a walk on the 3.1-mile Don Sofer Exercise Trail. The ADA-accessible path is landscaped with an abundance of shade trees complete with ground lighting, benches, chilled water fountains, trash receptacles and crosswalks. Please meet at the front entrance of the hotel for the walk.

Energize your body before breakfast! Join us for a morning yoga session on the Corsair Lawn. This yoga class is first-come, first-serve.

Start your day with a delicious breakfast and energizing conversations! This is the perfect opportunity to connect with peers, exchange ideas, and set the tone for a productive day ahead. Grab a coffee, find a seat, and enjoy networking with fellow attendees before the sessions begin.

Welcome to the last day of the Women in Retail Leadership Summit!

What’s it like to be a part of the Women in Retail Leadership Circle? Hear directly from a pair of members of this amazing community of women.

More content. More promotions. More AI. Yet customers feel more exhausted than engaged. This session challenges retail’s addiction to noise and makes the case for calm as a powerful, modern growth strategy.

Women are often told they must choose between being respected and being liked. Research shows that’s the wrong frame. In this high-impact keynote, Alison shares evidence-based strategies behind building both competence and warmth — the two traits that drive lasting influence at senior levels. The session explores how to strengthen credibility, expand visibility, and navigate power dynamics with intention, offering practical approaches to executive presence, reputation building, and strategic self-advocacy. The takeaway? Influence isn’t about personality, it’s about positioning. The most effective leaders embody both power and approachability.

This session highlights the next generation of retail leaders who are redefining what it means to lead. From driving innovation to cultivating collaborative, high-performing teams, these rising stars are shaping the future of retail. We’ll examine how reverse mentoring, fresh perspectives, and bold leadership approaches are creating more agile, connected, and growth-oriented organizations. Attendees will gain actionable strategies to empower rising talent — and learn how to be inspired by them along the way.

Thank you for joining us at our 12th annual Women in Retail Leadership Summit! Our co-founder and president, Jennifer DiPasquale, sends us off.