2023 Women of Excellence, Industry Impact
Kristi Argyilan
Senior Vice President, Retail Media
Albertsons Media Collective
In 2022, Kristi Argyilan led the launch of Albertsons Cos.’ retail media network, Albertsons Media Collective, helping to grow marketing partners’ businesses through data-informed insights and transparent measurement methodologies that leverage the retailer’s 34 million weekly customer base and first-party data.
Understanding that standardization will enable the industry to manage campaigns across platforms and drive outcomes with greater efficiency, Argyilan and her team launched a formal coalition of advertisers, agencies and retail media networks to address the critical pain points advertisers face and develop mutually agreed-upon standardization guidelines.
Under her direction, Albertsons Media Collective developed a standardization proposal encompassing four priority areas — product specifications, performance measurement, third-party verification and capabilities — that are intended to reset the current guidelines implemented by retail media stakeholders.
In just more than a year, Argyilan formed strategic partnerships to advance Albertsons Media Collective’s targeting, engagement and measurement capabilities. Working with industry partners like Omnicom Media Group, she’s also driving first-to-market solutions to reach shoppers with tailored CTV messaging. And with Pinterest and LiveRamp, she’s making strides toward creating a privacy-conscious third-party space for brands to better connect the dots between their first-party data and customer engagement through a clean room prototype.
Argyilan has held her current post as senior vice president of retail media since July 2021.
Melissa Gonzalez
Principal
MG2/The Lionesque Group
Retail strategist Melissa Gonzalez is a principal at global architecture and design firm MG2 and founder of strategy and design studio The Lionesque Group. She is a former Wall Street executive and a seasoned entrepreneur, having worked with CPG brands and retailers to leverage forward-thinking consumer insights with innovative strategy from concept through implementation.
Gonzalez continually pushes the boundaries of experiential retail and has pioneered the integration of physical environments and cutting-edge technologies, helping established brands such as Nordstrom and Victoria’s Secret, and digital-first natives such as Burrow and Kizik.
She is the author of “Pop-up Paradigm: How Brands Build Human Connections in a Digital Age,” and was named one of “10 New York Executives to Watch in 2023” by New York Business Journal. Last year, Women’s Wear Daily called her one of “25 Most Influential Women Leaders of 2022.”
Gonzalez has presented at Shoptalk, Shoptalk Europe, Future Forward, World Retail Congress, NRF’s Retail’s Big Show, Retail Innovation Conference and Expo, and Vogue Business Summit. She is a moderator for brand panels or one-on-one conversations and a regular commentator for Cheddar News, where she recently recorded a feature on the future of retail. She is also the creator and host of the podcast “Retail Refined,” which explores the future of retail and in-store technology.
Elizabeth Johnson
CEO
Pathformance
Elizabeth Johnson is CEO of Pathformance, a position she has held since joining the company in May 2016. Under her leadership, the company is creating innovative solutions that leverage proprietary data and technology to provide effective and efficient marketing solutions for the industry. Her background spans time as a brand marketer to agency leader, and she uses her expertise to ensure her team makes an instrumental impact when working with brand and ad-tech clients.
Johnson’s impact extends beyond her role at Pathformance. She has been instrumental in changing the way brands and ad-techs think about every marketing campaign. She consistently challenges the status quo, leading to the creation of proprietary software, algorithms and tools that allow marketers to measure and analyze campaigns in a consistent way. She also played an integral part in the creation of PathX by Pathformance. PathX software includes unique ways to analyze digital shelf analytics, consumer and competitor trends, as well as manage inventory.
Johnson often participates in speaking engagements, share groups and industry conferences. She actively shares insights via social media with the CPG industry, and through her platform as a member of the Marketing Program Advisory Board for the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, she advises professors and college leadership on industry trends.
Under her leadership, Pathformance has been ranked in the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing companies the past two years.
Cristina Marinucci
Global Head of Shopper Excellence, Senior Director of Insights & Analytics
Mondelez International
Cristina Marinucci’s Path To World Class Shopper (#P2WCS) initiative is a strategic roadmap to transform Mondelez into a shopper-centric organization with three key components: process enhancement, tools development and people empowerment. By redefining existing biorhythms, deploying new omni-tools and implementing customized capability development programs, she has created an ecosystem that revolves around shoppers and consumers, focused on joint value creation for the company and its customers.
Marinucci has been at Mondelez since early 2021 after nearly six years at Johnson & Johnson and, before that, at GlaxoSmithKline, Analytic Partners, Reckitt Benckiser, Mars, Pernod Ricard and IRI. Her omnichannel thinking and passion for building new capabilities in digital commerce have led to a number of successful initiatives, including targeted trainings both internally and externally, as well as thought leadership distinction on various projects, including emerging fulfillment types (click-and-collect and self-checkout), eCDT pilots (online category decision tree), 5S Digital Sales Conversion Framework (sales purchase funnel from “see” to “select”), and a Global ePPA playbook and virtual testing of e-packs.
Her work also focuses on raising the bar on how to define and measure elevated shopping experiences to grow categories through incremental snacking occasions, delight shoppers and drive loyalty to retail partners through innovative omni-experiences. She has evolved all existing shopper methodologies and frameworks to be inclusive of the holistic shopper journey, including trip missions, hot-zone optimization and path to purchase.
Jill Smith
Vice President of Sales
Kroger Precision Marketing/84.51
Jill Smith joined Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) in late 2018 as director of agency partnerships with more than 14 years of account management experience, most notably at NBCUniversal Media and News America Marketing. Charged with building KPM’s agency team and influencing external partnerships, she was instrumental in the development of its agency go-to-market strategy and maturity of selling practices.
Smith designed, executed and delivered a plan to bring a non-endemic product offering to life — a first of its kind for KPM that elevated senior relationships across all agency holding companies to create unique commercial models and business offerings. She has created the right autonomy with her leaders to enable each to run their business and utilize her on priority initiatives.
Smith has been invited to speak at national industry events with agency and brand partners. She shares insights about how grocery data is helping brands and agencies unlock attributable sales, adjusting tactics and introducing new touchpoints to help shoppers navigate the new shopping landscape, and streaming TV as the next frontier of commerce.
In 2022, Smith was selected by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber to participate in WE Lead, a 10-month executive leadership development experience for high-potential, goal-oriented women who are actively preparing for the next level of their career.
Rachel Tipograph
Founder and CEO
MikMak
Following her three-year tenure as Gap’s youngest-ever global director of digital and social media, Rachel Tipograph traveled the world for 100 days before launching her company MikMak in September 2014. Her vision for MikMak was to help product manufacturers and CPG companies understand their consumers’ online behavior, determine the best use of marketing dollars and drive online sales.
MikMak has grown into a leading e-commerce acceleration platform for multichannel brands. In February 2023, it acquired its first company, Swaven, a global e-commerce enablement and analytics software company. Their combined strength and capabilities led to the release of MikMak 3.0 in June.
Tipograph is both a leader and mentor in the industry. Through the Exceptional Women in E-Commerce Mentorship Program, she elevates women in e-commerce and democratizes career development for women everywhere. She also participates in Adweek’s Executive Mentor Program through which mid- to senior-level marketers are paired with some of the world’s top CMOs and C-suite members for 1:1 mentorship to accelerate their career goals.
Tipograph also created and is an active member of the MikMak Mental Health + DEI Coalition. The coalition was formed to reduce stigma and increase open conversations around mental health, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and racial inequality in the U.S.
She has been named to Forbes “30 under 30 Who Are Changing The World,” Fast Company’s “The Most Creative People in Business,” Adweek’s “The Young Influentials Shaping Business and Culture,” Entrepreneur’s “50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs” and “100 Women of Impact” and Inc.’s “Female Founders 100.” She was also inducted into the “Advertising Hall of Achievement” by the American Advertising Federation.
Katie Williams
U.S. Chief Marketing Officer
Haleon
Katie Williams was also named the Path to Purchase Institute's 2023 Women of Excellence Executive of the Year. Read her profile here.
