2026 Women of Excellence Profiles: Business Excellence

Katherine Bousson

Category Manager, Frozen Food
Giant Food

Katherine Bousson assumed her current post in 2022 and has since played a pivotal role in driving business development and growth across the frozen category by challenging legacy approaches and introducing a forward-thinking vision grounded in customer behavior, market trends and actionable insights. 

She led a comprehensive reimagination of the frozen department — redefining assortment strategies, optimizing space allocation and aligning product mix to evolving customer needs. Her work has directly contributed to sustained positive performance across key indicators, including sales, unit growth and overall volume. Most notably, her efforts have resulted in market share growth of 40 to 70 basis points across sales, units and volume, demonstrating clear, quantifiable impact on both category performance and overall company success.

Under her leadership, the frozen category has reinforced Giant Food’s leadership position in market share within the competitive grocery landscape. A hallmark of Bousson’s impact is her ability to translate insights into strategy with precision and clarity. She leverages a variety of data sources including shopper insights, syndicated data and vendor partnerships to identify opportunities for growth and unlock new value for both customers and the business.

Bousson has successfully introduced innovative merchandising strategies and collaborative vendor programs that enhance visibility and drive conversion along the shopper journey. She brings together cross-functional teams, aligns stakeholders and delivers initiatives that move from concept to implementation with speed and precision. She fosters collaboration, accountability and a shared commitment to results, and she leads with a strong coaching mindset.

Bousson has built strong partnerships both internally and externally, unlocking incremental investment and driving innovation that enhances the customer experience across both in-store and omnichannel touchpoints. Her ability to influence across the organization ensures that strategic initiatives are fully realized and embedded, creating lasting value beyond individual projects.

Andrea Furber

Head of Marketing
Back to Nature

During her tenure at the company, Andrea Furber has led the strategic transformation of the Back to Nature brand, including leveraging consumer insights to successfully reposition the brand, modernize its packaging, launch its first-ever brand campaign — which saw an increase of 132% in web traffic, 275% in social engagement, 50% follower growth on Instagram and 167% email subscriber growth — and attract a new generation of consumers.

Through a combination of consumer research, category analysis and strategic vision, she identified the opportunity to evolve the brand's identity around a more taste-forward proposition, resulting in significantly improved shelf standout, stronger consumer engagement, and category leading business performance. Furber’s organizational leadership directly influenced critical business decisions, including the introduction of a new brand positioning, redesigned packaging architecture, updated target consumer strategy, and an integrated marketing campaign.

As a result of the rebrand, the company has seen 27% sales growth, 21% velocity growth, 10% household penetration growth, a 22% increase in brand awareness and a 15% increase in purchase size, along with 275% growth in social engagement. Her work also helped the brand significantly outperform both the natural and organic snack category and key competitors.

Recent data showed the company has realized a 45% cookie sales growth versus -2% category growth, 22% cracker sales growth versus 4% category growth, and strong velocity gains including 29% cookie velocity growth and 16% cracker velocity growth under her leadership. In addition to driving strategic transformation, Furber ensured flawless execution across multiple cross-functional initiatives, including packaging development, consumer testing, retail activation, digital commerce, media, influencer partnerships and experiential marketing.

Anne Harrell

Senior Director, Strategic Projects
Pacvue

Anne Harrell joined the company in June 2020 and has since spearheaded its Joint Business Planning Initiative, a white-glove service model for enterprise clients. She also launched or actively manages more than 20 custom product deployments, including a landmark engagement with GroupM (now WPP Media), which achieved 100% adoption within its HOK (hands on keyboard) user base in just 60 days, delivering clients 40% ROAS lifts and 30% higher conversion rates, and saving more than 20 hours per week through automation. 

In May 2025, Harrell led Pacvue's expansion into social commerce via a TikTok Shop integration, establishing the industry's first scalable social-to-retail pipeline. She also founded the company’s product evangelism and enablement team from the ground up, creating the connective tissue between product vision, go-to-market execution and customer adoption. This structural innovation cut product-launch enablement time by two to three times compared to prior baseline and produced a three-times increase in cross team engagement during launches, proving that her organizational design directly accelerated the company's ability to bring products to market. Those frameworks now underpin Pacvue's service to more than 70,000 brands and agencies. 

Most recently, Harrell helped launch Pacvue Prism, the company's commerce-native platform for the Agentic Commerce Grid, which connects every media channel to verifiable commerce outcomes. Delivering presentations to diverse audiences across enterprise brands, agencies and internal stakeholders, she translated Prism's complex capabilities into clear, compelling narratives that accelerated early understanding and adoption. 

With more than 25 enterprise brands now actively testing Prism, alpha results show an increase of 24% new-to-brand purchases, -23% CPM and an increase of 12% total sales within the first six weeks. Harrell has been instrumental in every major AI-powered initiative at the company, including Pacvue Agent, the Incrementality Console with iROAS measurement, and Machine Learning Generated Audiences, ensuring that complex innovation is grounded in real market demand and customer value.

Ashley Kennemer

Director of Customer Activation – Walmart
Kenvue

Under Ashley Kennemer’s leadership, Kenvue’s customer activation team for Walmart delivered 18 consecutive months of double-digit e-commerce sales growth, increased total traffic to Kenvue brands by 14%, and saw digital penetration grow by 242 basis points. Using performance insights, digital growth formula expectations leveraging digital traffic modeling and a clear business case for Walmart, she helped secure a 25% incremental investment increase for 2026 versus 2025. 

Kennemer also co-led the Neutrogena digital acceleration sprint for Walmart in the fourth quarter of 2025, with the purpose of increasing traffic, sales and share on Walmart.com while optimizing ways of working across teams. The sprint delivered a traffic increase of 45% versus the prior period, share growth of 36.9% versus category growth of 27.5%, and a sales increase of 41% versus the prior period on Walmart.com. The sprint also created a repeatable model for accelerating priority brands through sharper investment planning, digital shelf execution, retailer alignment and cross-functional operating discipline that was replicated across the entire U.S. Kenvue portfolio.

She has played an instrumental role in streamlining Kenvue’s creative development and implementation process. During multiple organizational transitions, Kennemer represented shopper marketing and omnichannel performance by making recommendations for a new omni operating model that were implemented, creating Decision Advisor Inform mapping to clarify decision rights and accountability, and advising on new creative development processes. 

Kennemer has been with Kenvue since 2023. Prior, she held roles at Dillards, Ivie, Saatchi & Saatchi X and, most recently, more than five years under the Johnson & Johnson umbrella.

Julia Klemensic

Account Supervisor
HMT Associates

Julia Klemensic’s ability to connect insight, execution and client partnership has directly contributed to sustained growth, stronger retailer relationships and expanded service offerings in her nearly 12-year tenure with the company. She plays a central role in advancing business development and growth by leading regional and local grocery activation efforts for Mondelez International across the Western U.S. 

As a trusted partner to more than 10 key retail accounts, including Hy-Vee, she is instrumental in bringing strategic shopper campaigns to life across Mondelez’s portfolio of cookies, crackers, bars and candy. Through her leadership, Klemensic has driven the successful execution of RedMedia activation strategies, ensuring alignment between brand objectives, retailer priorities and shopper needs. By partnering closely with sales teams, she has helped unlock display incrementality at retail while delivering strong return-on-retailer and return-on-investment performance, demonstrating how insight-led activation can translate into tangible business outcomes at the shelf. 

Klemensic’s expertise in leveraging insights to inform strategy extends across her work with Tropicana Brands Group, where she partners with shopper and trade marketing teams to develop and execute customer-specific activation plans, planning efforts for regional and local grocery customers and ensuring that each activation is tailored to the nuances of the retailer, shopper base and category dynamics. She also oversees retail media execution across leading platforms, including Kroger Precision Marketing and Walmart Connect. 

Her work has strengthened and expanded the partnership between HMT and Tropicana, and has helped grow HMT’s scope of services within the account. She has also been instrumental in expanding HMT’s service offerings across key accounts, identifying ways to integrate retail media, shopper activation and strategic planning into more cohesive and impactful solutions for clients. 

Ashley Knight

President and Chief Operating Officer
Harvest Group

Ashley Knight has spent nearly 16 years at Harvest Group, starting as a director on the Walmart team and rising through the ranks to her current post. She has led the company through a period of immense growth, and her impact touches every aspect of the business. 

In 2023, she designed Harvest Group's proprietary Client Growth Model, a five-stage framework across the entire client service organization. The model guides how Harvest Group understands a client's why, builds a plan, aligns collaboratively, executes with visibility, and tracks results against the plan. 

There were fewer than 20 employees when Knight came on board. Today, it has grown to more than 500 — representing a 2,500% growth — the result of her intentional leadership and disciplined strategy, and a culture built to scale. 

The company has also seen significant growth in the business in the past five years under her direction. From 2020 to 2025, Harvest Group achieved a compound annual growth rate of 28.8%, representing 253.8% cumulative revenue growth. In 2025 alone, the company grew revenue by 21.8%. 

Knight’s most significant strategic push — a restructure of the company’s client service organization in the last 18 months — focused on moving from a service-centric model to a client-centric model. As clients increasingly want seamless, integrated commerce support across retailers and services, she began driving the company toward the client-centric organizational model.

At the start of 2026, Knight and enterprise leaders set a company-wide goal for 90% of employees to actively use generative AI tools as part of their work every week. At the end of the first quarter, 82% of employees were already weekly active users. 

Jackie Mason

Customer Vice President
Kraft Heinz

Jackie Mason served as the director of field category leadership for grocery and wholesale for more than three years before assuming her current role in September 2025. In that post, she played a key leadership role in elevating Kraft Heinz's category management function and strengthening its ability to deliver strategic value to customers and retail partners.

The collaborative transformation focused on enhancing analytics, improving customer engagement and enabling stronger cross-functional decision-making across the organization. Working alongside the broader category leadership group as well as Clarkston Consulting, Mason helped lead a comprehensive assessment of the function's capabilities. Through extensive stakeholder engagement, customer focused analysis and evaluation of current ways of working, the team identified opportunities to elevate the strategic role category management plays in supporting both customers and the business, leveraging high-value, insight-driven activities that strengthen retailer partnerships and improve the shopper experience. 

The work included enhancements to organizational structure, capability development, work prioritization and ways of working designed to create a more consistent and strategic customer experience. The transformation also strengthened collaboration across sales, shopper insights, IT, omnichannel and other key business functions, ensuring that customer-facing teams could leverage shared insights and common objectives to better serve retailers. 

The initiative successfully secured leadership alignment and created a roadmap for foundational excellence across people, process, technology and capabilities. Most importantly, it positioned the category management function to build stronger retailer relationships and create deeper partnerships with customers. As a leader throughout this effort, Mason demonstrated the ability to unite teams around a shared vision and deliver value for customers, retail partners and the Kraft Heinz business. 

Pia Ostos

Executive Vice President and President, Martech 
Inmar Intelligence

Pia Ostos joined Inmar Intelligence six years ago as its senior director, product marketing. She has held several positions of increasing responsibility and is now the executive vice president and president of the Martech division.

Throughout her career, she has built a reputation as a mentor who identifies potential in others, creates opportunities for growth and empowers people to pursue goals they may not have thought possible on their own. Most recently, she served as Inmar's first chief performance officer, where she built a reputation for developing high-performing teams and empowering others to achieve their full potential.

Across every stage of her career, including leadership roles at Procter & Gamble, Hasbro and Wayfair, Ostos has been known as a connector, collaborator and advocate for shared success. Her mentorship style is rooted in her “we can” mindset. She brings optimism, clarity and confidence to the people she leads, helping them move through uncertainty with a stronger sense of purpose.

Her impact is especially meaningful for emerging leaders and women navigating moments of growth, change or increased responsibility. She creates a climate of trust, openness, candor and rapport, where people feel comfortable asking questions, sharing challenges and learning without fear of judgment. She is the kind of leader who listens carefully, challenges thoughtfully and advocates for people when they are ready for their next opportunity. 

Brooke Roller

Senior Vice President, Retail Consultancy Client Solutions
Mars United Commerce

Brooke Roller is the foremost expert in both the beverage-alcohol category and small-format retail channel at Mars United Commerce, and is one of the most trusted and respected voices within Mars and the broader Publicis Commerce ecosystem. Her contributions have directly supported client success and agency growth since she joined the commerce marketing firm in October 2023.

Roller oversees a team of 23 associates. Her leadership, category expertise and deep understanding of omnichannel commerce, has made her an indispensable adviser to clients, cross-functional teams and agency management. Under her strategic guidance, the BevAlc business has achieved 9% year-over-year growth, driven by strengthened client partnerships that have led to a leadership position in the category. Her ability to translate retailer, shopper and channel insights into actionable business strategies has helped clients identify growth opportunities, improve omnichannel performance and navigate an increasingly complex retail landscape. In addition to her direct client work, she serves as one of the agency's leading authorities in the convenience, value and drug channels, providing best-in-class intelligence, personal relationships with retailers, and strategic guidance that benefit clients throughout the organization. 

Roller’s understanding of shoppers in these channels enables brands to build stronger commerce strategies and deliver more effective business outcomes. She is also a trusted contributor to new business efforts and routinely supports some of Mars United's most important growth opportunities. Her strategic thinking, industry knowledge and category expertise recently played a key role in helping secure the Constellation Brands business. Internally, she is widely recognized as a leading BevAlc and omnichannel commerce authority and is regularly sought out by teams across Publicis Commerce for guidance, strategic counsel and category expertise, helping to shape strategies, solving complex challenges and elevating capabilities across the broader organization.

Amanda Villa

Former Senior Vice President, Operations Support
Product Connections (Acosta Group)
(currently SVP, Client Growth, Mosaic North America)

Over the past year, Amanda Villa has strengthened Product Connections’ operational foundation, financial discipline and scalability during a period of record execution volume and 15% year-over-year revenue growth across the grocery and club channel. She led the comprehensive restructuring of the brand, retail and Sam’s Club support teams, unifying them under a single operating model that elevated governance, accountability and performance management.

Working closely with senior leadership, she eliminated outdated commission structures, streamlined office expenses, closed non-performing locations, and removed operational bloat and unprofitable initiatives, driving $1.7 million in cost savings and positioning the organization for sustainable, profitable growth.

She also spearheaded the rebranding of Product Connections, transitioning ownership from an external agency to her in-house creative and digital teams. The rebrand positioned the organization to go to market with a modern, differentiated identity that reflects its evolution into a full-service marketing agency and supports long-term growth. 

Her leadership has contributed to substantial commercial outcomes. The brand’s business achieved 189% year-over-year growth, expanding into more retailers than ever before and diversifying the client portfolio to strengthen margin resilience. In partnership with sales, operations and field leadership, Villa supported 10% growth in the company’s largest grocery client while maintaining execution rates above 98%, enabling the organization to absorb incremental revenue without added operational risk. 

Villa helped deliver the highest execution volume in company history — more than 1.5 million events across more than 35 retailers nationwide. Despite a 9.5% increase in total event volume, performance improved across every segment, averaging more than 97% total execution with zero reportable compliance violations. She also supported high-profile industry and retailer events, strengthening retailer partnerships and supporting new business development across hundreds of CPG brands.

Claire Wyatt

Former Retail Sector Lead
The Trade Desk
(currently Chief Growth Officer, GSTV)

As the general manager of business development for retail at The Trade Desk, Claire Wyatt built the commercial infrastructure that is helping retail media networks make the leap from on-site inventory to the open internet. Her combination of strategic vision, client-facing commercial delivery and industry education positioned The Trade Desk as a strategic partner for retail media networks navigating the next phase of growth.

Under her leadership, it introduced landmark new retail partnerships, including a first-of-its-kind integration with Koddi to sell onsite ad inventory for Gopuff, a collaboration with Dollar General and Kevel to unify on-site and off-site activation with consistent measurement, and an expanded integration with Instacart that made it the first U.S. retail media network to bring SKU-level grocery data directly into the platform for real-time audience building and closed-loop measurement — all representing a fundamental expansion of what retail media can do on the open internet.

A cross-brand study conducted with measurement partner Attain showed that retail data activation on The Trade Desk delivers measurable, incremental business results. Every campaign produced statistically significant incremental sales lift, and 90% drove new buyer ROAS above industry benchmarks, outperforming those benchmarks by an average of 122%. Retail data also drove a 23% increase in average transaction value among attributed consumers.

Wyatt also championed The Commerce Media Playbook on The Trade Desk's Edge Academy, developed alongside Instacart, DoorDash and OpenAI. The program equips retail media network operators and advertiser teams with the specific frameworks to activate first-party data off-platform, connect media exposure to online and in-store sales outcomes, and build trust with national and non-endemic advertisers. 

Wyatt, who joined The Trade Desk in January 2025, recently became chief growth officer at GSTV.