2024 Women of Excellence, Technology
Melissa Hamilton
Senior Vice President, Director, Integrated Production & Creative Technology, St. Louis
Momentum Worldwide
Melissa Hamilton has been driving business improvements at Momen-tum for nearly 14 years. In her current role, she leads integration with its technology partner, The Famous Group, for award-winning, cutting-edge technologies in the marketplace.
Hamilton works in partnership with Momentum’s global chief technology officer, Jason Snyder, on projects like physical computing for the American Express Glow Tennis experience, a metaverse integration for Verizon’s Fortnite experience, and AI for the award-winning Coke Studio experience.
The latter was the first-ever AI-driven traveling music studio of its kind where Coca-Cola turned music lovers into music creators. Available at a variety of festivals, fans responded to simple prompts and recorded a quick performance with integrated AI, allowing them to generate a customized band name, a debut single, a debut music video and visuals. The experience has generated a reach of more than 178 million and counting, and it has the beverage giant continuing to explore generative AI within marketing.
Hamilton was also instrumental in creating Momentum’s AI Brand Ambassadors, who are equipped with full experiential awareness, navigation, human-like motion, emotion and personality. They are trained for 24/7 customer engagement and discovery inside dynamic brand experiences.
She has also been fundamental in bringing machine learning for experiential marketing. Most recently, she helped the agency secure three experiential AI patents.
Yenifer Hernandez
Director, Software Engineering
Kroger Precision Marketing
Yen Hernandez has been instrumental in delivering retail media software at Kroger Precision Marketing. She joined the company in June 2022 and has spearheaded critical initiatives that have significantly enhanced the delivery, operation and support of the company’s media platform. She sets high standards for herself and her team, emphasizing process improvement and outcome optimization. She also fosters a culture of continuous improvement and learning, treating each member as an individual and focusing on developing their skill sets.
Her customer-focused mindset extends beyond her immediate responsibilities. She consistently collaborates across teams, striving to achieve optimal outcomes for KPM stakeholders. This cross-functional approach highlights her dedication to delivering value and maintaining high customer satisfaction.
Hernandez has led the creation of several innovative components, including bid management, third-party API integration and creative management capabilities. She has guided teams to conceptualize and deliver new customer experiences across various product lines, such as onsite, offsite and managed products. She has also developed and refined the incident and release management processes, enhancing the quality of deliverables and improving operational issue resolution. As a champion and early adopter of DevOps and deployment tools, she has modernized the development, deployment, monitoring and observation of mission-critical systems and infrastructure.
Prior to joining KPM, she spent five years at Capital One leading software engineering efforts.
Margit Kittridge
Advertising Technology Lead, AD Retail Media
Ahold Delhaize USA
Margit Kittridge has been a driving force behind Ahold Delhaize USA’s revolutionary Connected Store Commerce Initiative, which has transformed the retail landscape through cutting-edge advertising technology integrations. Under her leadership, the retailer has successfully implemented groundbreaking in-store digital signage integrations and ad tech strategy that leverages digital screens to enhance shopper engagement, drive incremental revenue and overall retail experience.
The initiative marks the first time in-store digital signage has been incorporated into the list of channels utilized to reach the connected customer when and where it matters most. Through strategically leveraging digital screens throughout its stores, the retailer has seamlessly blended the physical and digital realms to create an immersive experience for shoppers, while providing advertisers the opportunity to reach customers across the full path to purchase. By harnessing the power of advertising technology, Kittridge has helped Ahold Delhaize revolutionize how consumers interact with products, access information and make purchasing decisions in store.
Kittridge’s efforts have created an initiative that has not only elevated shopper engagement but has also driven notable improvements in the retailer’s overall in-store digital signage operational efficiency and ad tech integrations. With dynamic content tailored to real-time promotions, it is now able to deliver more relevant experiences that resonate with shoppers on a deeper level, leading to increased loyalty, category sales and customer satisfaction. The Connected Store Initiative has paved the way for data-driven insights and analytics.
Virginia Lewis
Vice President, Digital Growth and Development
Miller Zell
When Virginia Lewis joined the Miller Zell team in 2022, she identified opportunities within the digital realm to craft strategies centered on digital consulting and solutions architecture. Her foresight led to the company seeing five times the number of proposals containing digital work, and its digital client projects tripled within just one year.
Lewis devised a seamless integration of cutting-edge digital technologies that catered to dynamic client needs. Her small team of four introduced innovations such as custom LED walls, digital pricing systems and bespoke content templates. The team also developed an award-winning inventory management application coupled with a QR code platform, which enhanced compliance and data collection across the board.
She spearheaded the digital elements of the NYC Marathon Expo activation for longstanding client Citizens Bank, integrating LED floor and wall technology that not only captivated attendees but also significantly boosted Miller Zell’s revenue by contributing incremental revenue of $1 million. The success of this activation was measurable; post-event brand studies showed that sponsor recall among marathon participants doubled.
Lewis also introduced augmented reality technology at a New York Giants sponsorship event, allowing fans to transform into virtual bobbleheads via their mobile devices. It was supported by robust, battery-powered digital display kiosks, designed to withstand the diverse weather conditions at MetLife Stadium.
Lewis and her team have been recognized for their technological impact through multiple awards, highlighting the quality and innovative nature of their digital projects.
Roli Saxena
CEO
NextRoll
Roli Saxena has more than 20 years of experience driving the rapid growth of software as a service (SaaS), e-commerce and marketing enterprises. She is passionate about leading business transformations, operational effectiveness, and strategy for early-to-late-stage startups and established publicly-traded companies.
Saxena’s AdRoll team, a B2C ad tech subsidiary of NextRoll, created an industry-first automation builder, which allows digital marketers to effortlessly launch and manage social ads (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest), display ads and email campaigns through a single platform, saving time and money while improving campaign efficiency.
Her leadership also led to AdRoll partnering with WooCommerce, the open-source e-commerce platform for WordPress. The collaboration assisted retailers with increasing revenue and conversions from online customers through improved tracking and targeting abilities across channels, and eliminated the need for developer support for marketers creating individualized campaigns. The integration simplified the setup of AdRoll’s marketing automation templates, offering a guided experience to handle crucial marketing objectives for businesses, including re-engaging customers or converting cart abandoners.
Saxena is dedicated to the privacy-forward future of advertising. Under her leadership, NextRoll’s team that develops alternative solutions to third-party cookie-based targeting became a market testing grantee for Google’s Privacy Sandbox Initiative.
Prior to joining NextRoll in 2021, Saxena contributed to the customer experience and growth strategies at various industry-leading technology companies, including LinkedIn, Clever, Brex Inc., Lightspeed Venture Partners and Culture Amp.
Lori Schafer
CEO
Digital Wave Technology
As a software executive and entrepreneur with more than three decades of experience in technology, analytics, e-commerce and retail mer-chandising, Lori Schafer sits at the helm of Digital Wave Technology. The AI solutions company she co-founded in 2019 uses cutting-edge AI and machine-learning innovations for the retail and CPG industry.
Schafer’s team of former retailers and current technology innovators in retail, brand building, data science and low-code/no-code analytical architecture, developed the only AI-native rapid development platform with master data management at its core. It offers enterprise content management and marketing solutions (product information management, product experience management, generative AI capabilities) alongside merchandising solutions (merchandise planning, assortment, lifecycle pricing).
Schafer’s leadership has contributed to heightened conversion rates, accelerated speed-to-market, improved efficiency and reduced shopper returns while delivering an exceptional end-user experience. Each brand resides on a single, unified product platform, developed by Digital Wave Technology, helping to improve executive leadership visibility and decision making.
The company’s technology recently enabled a leading fashion and sporting goods retailer to increase the number of drop ship SKUs by 50% in a few months, capitalizing on new market opportunities. Enriched product content also contributed to a 25% increase in conversions and a 25% reduction in cart abandonment.
Schafer was named to RIS News’ “Influentials: Top Movers and Shakers in Retail” list in November 2023, and RETHINK Retail honored her with its 2024 Top Retail Experts award.
Jackie Shannon
Director, Customer Success
Eversight by Instacart
As the director of customer success, Jackie Shannon manages the CPG arm of the Eversight by Instacart business, encompassing more than 30 accounts and a large percentage of the company’s SaaS revenue. Under her guidance, the team successfully onboarded nine new customers in 2023, and strategic collaborations with the Commercial Team led to expansion strategies for other major clients.
Shannon has also been pivotal in driving technological innovation at Eversight. She was instrumental in the development and successful launch of the Eversight Access Solution for SMB (small- and medium-sized business) CPGs. This innovative technology approach facilitates companies in harnessing advanced AI-driven insights to improve promotion decision making without the need for extensive in-house resources. The solution includes predictive analytics, shopper behavior insights and an automated recommendations engine. She managed efforts across various functional teams, helping to define the go-to-market strategy and directly contributing to the solution’s strategic framework.
Shannon also guided the architecture of the Consumer Insights Portal, providing a true voice of the customer for Eversight’s Product teams. This new capability is instrumental for its customers in gaining deeper insights into consumer behavior specifically related to price and promotion. The platform leverages big data analytics to enable customers to drive actionable insights through detailed data reporting, predictive models and data visualizations. The portal has significantly enhanced Eversight’s value proposition, enabling CPGs to understand longitudinal pricing and promotion decisions around trial, incrementality, take rate and more.
