2024 Women of Excellence, Industry Impact
Jill Cruz
Executive Vice President, Commerce Strategy
Publicis Commerce
With more than 25 years of industry experience, Jill Cruz has played a key role in developing retail media network practices for three of the top four holding companies, enabling many of her clients to strategically enter the e-commerce and retail media space. She currently leads Publicis Commerce, where she is responsible for enhancing its commerce media capabilities. Her tasks include developing strategic retail media partnerships, championing integration with digital shelf provider Profitero, and providing thought leadership, commerce training and enablement services to all Publicis agencies to build best-in-class retail media network practices.
Cruz represents Publicis on the IAB’s Retail Media Committee and has contributed to the 2023 Retail Media Buyer’s Guide and the Digital OOH & In-Store Retail Media Playbook. She also has co-chaired the RMN Measurement and Standards Committee.
Previously, she held a dual role within WPP, where she was part of the senior leadership team at Wunderman Thompson Commerce. During her tenure, she helped grow commerce revenues by 2.5 times, leading three key clients to become some of the organization’s most successful in 2021. She also led Mediacom in building its retail media network practice and developing dedicated teams to serve senior clients. Throughout her career, she has won numerous retail awards and led dozens of Fortune 500 clients across various sectors.
Cruz was a pioneer in the industry at the early retail media network MyWebGrocer. Her leadership significantly impacted how various retailers connected with consumers.
Christine Foster
Vice President, Product Strategy and Media Operations
Kroger Precision Marketing
Christine Foster leads a team of more than 100, spanning product strategy, media activation, account management and campaign operations. As KPM’s leader of media sustainability initiatives, she is driving systemic change and redefining industry standards.
She is a pivotal figure in advancing sustainability practices within the digital advertising industry and has been instrumental in influencing the industry’s progression by sharing insights and doing pioneering research. Her participation in Ad Net Zero, the advertising industry’s initiative to achieve real net zero carbon impact, and her leadership in KPM’s collaboration with Scope3 show her commitment to tangible action and guiding KPM to pledge to measure and reduce carbon emissions, setting a benchmark for the industry.
Foster emphasizes the critical role of media companies in addressing the carbon footprint of digital advertising. By highlighting the environmental consequences of data centers powering digital ads and advocating for energy-efficient practices, she is pushing the industry to recognize and mitigate its environmental impact.
Under her guidance, KPM is leveraging retail data to enhance ad efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Her work with Scope3 enables KPM to measure and minimize wasted ad impressions, contributing to a more sustainable advertising ecosystem. Initial benchmarks of this collaboration have demonstrated the efficacy of using retail data to reduce carbon emissions.
Foster has been with KPM for three years and, prior to that, spent nearly eight years at Goodway Group.
Melissa Gallo
Head of Operations
CVS Media Exchange (CMX)
Melissa Gallo joined CVS Health in May 2023 and became a part of the CVS Media Exchange leadership team shortly thereafter. She is responsible for leading advertising performance, business and ad technology operations as well as managing the company’s ads policy, business systems and activation efforts. During her first year, she also spearheaded the formation of the organization’s Operations team, growing its headcount from three to 17.
Gallo played a pivotal role in the creation of five divisions within the company, including Optimization & Performance, Ads Policy, Sales Operations, Ad Technology and Support Operations, and Yield Management. She also contributes to outlining and defining the company’s internal processes, working to identify and adopt emerging technologies that give its team a competitive edge.
Outside of her work building CMX in retail media and ad technology, Gallo has been a leading voice in the industry, using her knowledge and experience to drive conversations about retail media’s future. She has helped champion transparency within the market, most notably by contributing to the development of IAB’s recently released guidelines for retail media measurement.
Gallo spent two years as Yieldmo’s senior vice president of global exchange operations. Prior to that, she held leadership roles at companies such as Walmart Connect, Index Exchange, IAB Tech Lab, VivaKi and Spongecell. She has attended and/or participated in more than 20 thought leadership summits and contributed to multiple industry publications since 2015.
Sally Tobin
Managing Director, APAC
Mars United Commerce
As part of a restructuring in May, Sally Tobin was named to her current post, reflecting her efforts building the agency’s business in Australia and New Zealand since Mars United acquired her agency, the former XPO Brands, two years ago. She works to define and expand commerce marketing in the region by elevating the emerging practices of retail media and marketing analytics. Under her leadership, Mars United is now recognized as a leader in both disciplines.
A longtime leader in Australia’s marketing community, she served as chair of the Shop! organization’s regional chapter from 2019-2022, spearheading the development of industry benchmarks for marketing measurement that optimized processes and spending practices. She then shared the framework with the world at the EuroShop conference in Germany in 2023.
Tobin was 23 when she developed her first software platform and sold her first agency business. She founded XPO Brands in 2011 and built the company into a multimillion-dollar agency delivering first-class shopper, customer and experiential marketing services to Australia and New Zealand’s leading brands. It became the most-awarded local commerce agency for three years running before being acquired in 2022.
Tobin then stepped into an agency-wide leadership role, driving client success globally and expanding its capabilities locally into retail media, e-commerce and marketing analytics. Earlier this year, she helped guide the acquisition of New Zealand’s The In Group. She has also created multiple tech platforms that drive operational efficiency for the company and its clients, speaks regularly at a leading university and sits on mentor program boards for several startups.
Alex Trott
Director, Insights
84.51°
Alex Trott is a key thought leader and spokesperson for 84.51°, charged with communicating about Kroger shoppers, customer trends and the overall data and insights industry. For three years, she and her team have supported the agency’s CPG clients to ensure they are getting the most value and insights out of its data and products. She also works to provide holistic knowledge and expertise across data and connecting CPG clients’ strategies with retailer strategy.
She joined 84.51° in 2015 as a Kroger merchandising lead consultant, where she created and led the multi-disciplinary, customer-focused strategy for the natural foods department at Kroger, prior to it being in-house. In this role, she spearheaded the creation of the Natural Foods Summit, an innovation event that promoted discussion about natural food trends and allowed emerging brands to showcase their products directly to Kroger. The initiative has helped Kroger become a leader in the natural and organic space.
Trott speaks at industry events/conferences and held supplier forums at Natural Products Expo West for five years with more than 500 supplier attendees to facilitate discussions about how CPGs can successfully work with Kroger and incorporate data into their businesses — and she became an expert voice on the natural food shopper. She has also been featured in industry publications, including Fortune, Food Navigator, Grocery Dive, Food Business News and The Food Institute podcast.
