2022 Women of Excellence, Mentorship
Abby Beaston
Director of Shopper Marketing
Phoenix Creative Co.
Abby Beaston has mastered the art of mentoring, both internally at Phoenix Creative as well as externally with clients. She joined the agency in late 2014, and just less than two years later was promoted to account manager focusing on Mondelez International. It was then that she began to coach and mentor new account hires, sharing with them the shopper marketing insights she gained during her first years at the agency.
She leads her team with tools to understand retailers’ core shoppers and showcases how to best translate client requests into creative direction that the agency’s designers, writers and art producers can work with. Through her mentoring, two of her direct reports earned promotions, further accelerating their individual careers while shoring up the strength of the agency.
Through her understanding of client roles, Beaston has also mentored new clients, helping them to understand the intricacies of their positions by leading them through retailer and vendor internal processes and broader team dynamics. She helped one midsize company launch its first national shopper marketing campaign. While a marketing success, the effort boosted the client’s success and garnered her internal recognition.
Beaston now serves as the director of shopper marketing and has helped the agency expand from 22 to 52 employees while nurturing the success and, by extension, careers of several clients.
Margaux Logan
Senior Vice President, Head of Omnichannel and Emerging Marketplaces - Americas
Publicis Commerce
Margaux Logan has extensive client-side experience in B2C brand marketing, product development and communications. In her current post, she leads all Publicis Commerce agencies in helping their clients navigate the world of commerce marketplaces.
A veteran of Amazon, she was in analytics and media management before managing product marketing for Amazon Web Services and leading the charge in building the AI/ML and IOT businesses. Her career has also included eight years at Unilever working across food and beauty, and prior to that five years at AT&T, where she helped launch AT&T Worldnet Service (the answer to AOL).
At Amazon and now Publicis, Logan has helped build new and emerging teams from their infancy. She has watched them grow into successful commerce entities driving their respective businesses. She has also been instrumental in developing teams and cultivating the next generation of talent. Logan is an invaluable mentor and champion of female leadership, and she’s taken an active role in spearheading all commerce education across the Publicis network.
She is also the co-creator of the Amazon eCommerce Acceleration Program (EAP) at the agency, an education initiative designed in partnership with Amazon that provides training for more than 150 commerce practitioners and delivers key insights and learnings on how best to utilize the Amazon platform for retail and media brand opportunities.
Anne Louise Marquis
National Portfolio Brand Ambassador
Campari America
In her role at Campari America, Anne Louise Marquis acts as a mentor for its growing brand ambassador team, supporting members in their professional growth. She has also done extensive community-building and mentorship work outside the company, particularly with female bartenders.
For the past five years, she has been the face and voice of Campari America to the hospitality industry. She manages a personal network of thousands of industry members of the Campari Community through a variety of channels, including a monthly email newsletter, Instagram and Facebook, personalized mailers to influential individuals, and hosting live and virtual education events.
Marquis leverages these initiatives to recruit the trade to Campari America’s education and engagement programs, with the goal of driving advocacy by creating passionate fans of its brands. She was named “best brand ambassador” at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards in 2018, the year she started the Campari Community Day of Service, a nationwide volunteer day for bartenders that takes place in more than 50 cities and engages more than 500 people.
She hosts seminars on career development and public speaking for bartenders, and has served as a teacher and mentor for numerous industry groups and events. She is an active member of “Women of the Vine and Spirits,” providing resources to other women in the industry.
Jennifer Mason
Director, Shopper Marketing, Growth Channels
Mondelez International
A five-year veteran of Mondelez, Jennifer Mason has served as a lead mentor the past three years in the company’s M2A Multi-Gen Alliance program, which is working to bridge the gap between generations to inspire opportunity and inclusivity. Mason is also an active member of the Mondelez Women’s Sales Council. This year, she collaborated to create and institute the Mondelez Women’s Sales Leadership Network for the DXC (Demand Acceleration Center). The goal of the network is to provide programs to support women, both personally and professionally, with a focus on two key areas: connection and education. She helps lead the connection focus area with its two components; networking with its “snack chat” program and 1:1 mentoring.
Also, beyond her role as director of shopper marketing for growth channels, Mason was selected to be part of the E-Commerce Champions Group. She was also charged with educating the marketing organization at Mondelez’s annual marketing retreat on keys to developing great omni-programming and how to better integrate with its brand and retail partners and, more recently, was a “buddy” for a new hire on the Kroger business.
Outside of Mondelez, Mason has worn numerous hats at the NEXT UP (formerly the Network of Executive Women) Twin Cities chapter.
Bev Sampson
Vice President, Client Services
Niven Marketing Group
Bev Sampson has spent nearly her entire career at Niven Marketing Group. In her current role, she helps manage clients’ complex merchandising programs from concept to completion.
Sampson has conducted 1:1 coaching and mentoring of her direct reports for many years, soliciting feedback from employees outside of her department that recognizes their accomplishments and suggests ways to improve. She leads her employees in various team-building activities and encourages them to read relevant books and articles related to the industry or professional growth.
Sampson has also been a member of a Vistage Key Executive peer group, where she listens to her peers’ issues and opportunities, asking relevant and probing questions, and offering insightful and compassionate advice. There have been numerous times her cross-industry peers have commented on her helpfulness in gaining clarity on their issues and providing suggestions for potential actions.
Her leadership within her own group has inspired Sampson’s peer managers at Niven to do similar mentorship and development, including company-wide learning and sharing about personality styles that help all employees communicate better with their fellow employees, their clients and vendors, and their families.
Laura Wallace
Director of Marketing
Chicory
As part of Chicory’s B2B marketing strategy, Laura Wallace leads marketers who specialize in key areas of the marketing funnel, including product and customer marketing, content, public relations, digital and operations. She mentors each marketer and continually encourages their development through iterative learning and innovative projects. Together the team has propelled the company forward, contributing to an overall revenue growth of more than 35% in 2021.
Under her guidance, the team has developed paid, earned and owned marketing plans that contributed to a 28% increase in demand and more than doubled organic leads. She has also led the team’s production of 11 consumer surveys that tackled topics such as omnichannel shopping, inflation and cooking at home, with content featured in several industry publications. The team’s work earned 454 total media mentions in 2021, an increase of 17.5% year over year. The team also refined position-ing to connect with industry evolution, and successfully re-vamped the website, sales materials, branded content and more.
In addition to growing her group’s professional experiences, Wallace is focused on creating a positive team dynamic that emanates the company principles. This includes creating a culture of feedback through mutual team values and building connections on both the project and a personal level.