Danielle Bunch Kimberly Cowen Rising Stars

Danielle BunchDirector of Sales, Enterprise Strategy, Advantage Solutions

Bunch provided crucial leadership and strategic direction as some Advantage Solutions employees became SAS Retail Services employees, ensuring that the transition went smoothly by holding 200-plus meetings with individual suppliers and associates to communicate the path forward and the added benefits of the partnership.

She gained responsibility for the retail analytics team, working with its leader to implement new processes and technology enhancements to gain operation-al efficiencies for the sales and retail teams.

Bunch created the first web-based vendor portal for the largest retailer, giving it real-time visibility to results.

COVER FEATURE

2018 Top Women in GroceryRISING STARS

Rising StarsKimberly CowenRegional Manager, Advantage Solutions

To help increase EBITDA, Cowen

stepped in to offer her organiza-tional skills for major events and activations such as the Meijer LPGA Classic and Back to Col-lege events.

She maintains a regular presence in stores and at events, doing whatever’s needed, whether it’s event prep, setup or cleanup, to help the team and her company.

This past January, Cowen was given several additional responsi-bilities, including crafting weekly client updates, summarizing field execution, and highlighting key operational initiatives driving innovation and creativity to meet Advantage’s platform annual EBITDA and revenue goals.

Kelli FickeSenior Category Manager, Team Leader, Advantage Solutions

Ficke’s analysis led to a brand’s expansion of its twin-pack solutions business at a major retailer, and she also iden-tified opportunities in the retailer’s divisions; the brand’s business subsequently grew more than 6 percent, driving the retailer’s eye care category growth of 3 percent.

She identified the right organic items for a brand undergoing SKU rationalization at a retailer, so that its business grew 16 per-cent with a reduced SKU count, while the retailer’s category rose more than 5 percent.

Ficke received a brand’s Cate-gory Manager of the Year award; she also volunteers as a coach for youth soccer and basketball teams.

Jennifer GruberSenior Director, Analytic Solutions, Advantage Solutions

Gruber devel-oped an online training program specifically focused on proper data use for all professional associates; the course was a critical element of Advantage’s efforts to ensure proper use of, and compliance with, high-value data assets.

She led the development of new data visualizations and applications for Adlumina, a next-generation Speed to In-sights analytic tool for clients and internal users.

Gruber pioneered the creation of a three-part shopper analytics online workshop, in which 50-plus associates participated in a fun, engaging program to develop their panel analytics and storytelling skills.

Brooke HeintzClient Service Manager, Advantage Solutions

Tasked with securing 30,000 in-store activa-tions, Heintz surpassed the goal by an extra 2,000 events, equiv-alent to an additional 7 percent increase to the overall profit.

For Family Meals Month in September, she helped introduce an event for Mars’ Uncle Ben’s brand; the customized event strategy, featuring uniquely branded carts with recipe cards, led to results exceeding those of previous programs.

Having determined that it would be beneficial not only to herself, but also to Advantage, Heintz is pursuing a business degree while continuing to excel at her full-time job.

Amanda KingSales Manager, Advantage Solutions

When Advan-tage transitioned

to a new financial system, King developed a new approach to the month-end reporting and processes, providing enhanced revenue detail and helping with the preparation of the month-end financial summary.

She was recognized as a significant contributor to the success of the headquarters sales services division’s ending the year 2 percent to budget.

King began serving as a coach for an Advantage leadership development associate team, which entailed collaborating with members on their responsibili-ties and learning assignments, and enrolled in the company’s year-long Accelerated Career Experience program.

Crystal RosselClient Team Leader, Advantage Solutions

In a year of declines for most

of the categories in which her clients participate, Rossel managed to deliver impressive overall combined growth of 108.4 percent compared with the prior year.

Her dedication, analysis, and desire to create win-win situa-tions for both Advantage and her clients resulted in a more than an $800,000 (four-point) margin improvement for her businesses.

Rossel played a key role in identifying and closing incre-mental business-to-business opportunities across her port-folio, successfully addressing specific client business needs that have delivered $1 million in incremental revenue to Advantage.

Amanda ReavesSales Team Leader, Advantage Solutions

Chosen as a re-tailer’s and a CPG

brand’s Top Branded Broker, Reaves achieved 16 percent over last year and secured $14 million in gross shipments by developing and executing key promotional plans to gain top- and bot-tom-line growth.

Her focus on building new brands through category lead-ership, commitment to identify-ing and communicating trends, eye for developing presenta-tions, successful track record in regard to the overall strategy, and expertise in identifying re-tailer opportunity gaps resulted in two new vendors/brands being sold into a retailer.

Reaves is a board member of NFRA’s Central Florida Chapter.

Amy KnoxAccount Executive, Advantage Solutions

Knox secured a divisional part-

nership with Kraft to promote its Hockeyville local community sports outreach initiative; the pro-gram generated 370-plus events over five weeks in the Eastern division.

She was instrumental in secur-ing Albertsons’ Eastern division’s first community involvement program, facilitating the donation of 15 cases of food and toiletries on behalf of Albertsons/Safeway to a local food bank.

Asked by Rasmussen Col-lege to assist college students in enhancing their interviewing skills to gain employment after graduation, Knox volunteered her time to conduct mock interviews and provide coach-ing and feedback.

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Bethany SchwartzClient Team Leader, Advantage Solutions

Schwartz was a key member of the team that led the RFP process to win a German chemical and con-sumer goods business; during the transition, she integrated the Advantage organization into the new business while building trust and credibility with senior leadership.

She co-developed content and led a course for Advantage mid-level managers, “Investing in Your Team Through Coaching.”

Schwartz teamed with multiple business units to finalize a con-tract with a Turkish cookie com-pany focused on private label expansion in the United States, leading to further business with allied companies.

Marilu RoblesDirector, Marketing Operations, Advantage Solutions/Advantage Marketing Partners

Following various changes to the Advantage Retail Experience Group, including the name, Robles led efforts to promote the “new” ARX, a strenuous educa-tional task that involved collabo-rating with business leaders and becoming fully knowledgeable on each new sector of ARX.

She created initiatives to keep business leaders ac-countable and showcase their work, including a monthly retail platform best practices phone call, capabilities decks for ARX services and innovative pro-gramming presentations.

Robles was a mentor and role model to a new hire just out of college, providing personal and professional guidance.

Elena SkaletskyInfluencer Marketing Supervisor, Advantage Solutions/Advantage Media Solutions

Skaletsky implemented influencer trade-desk capabilities and new ways of working that have brought in three new clients and $382,000 in campaign budgets.

She developed, maintained and strengthened Advantage Media Solutions’ vendor partnerships, and led a rebuild of the vendor platform, tailoring it to the com-pany’s needs to help streamline process flow, reduce wasted time and improve campaign results.

Skaletsky conducted an in-depth review of Advantage’s campaign execution process to identify areas of improve-ment, and subsequently put in place changes that have re-sulted in a 60 percent increase in operating margin.

Lindsey PruittDirector of Business Development, Advantage Solutions/Advantage Media Solutions

Pruitt drove more than 50 percent of 2017 sales for her division across a sales team of six people and exceeded personal revenue goal by more than 250 percent.

She created and implement-ed new processes to ensure effective program delivery; these processes have since been rolled out across all sales team divisions.

Pruitt formed a collaborative partnership with an external video team to produce new/undiscovered company revenue; managed the creation, scripting and production of 10 documen-tary-style videos for client media programs; and led the testing of four new media initiatives.

Samantha WeinsteinDirector, Media Operations, Advantage Solutions/Advantage Media Solutions

Working with upscale grocer The Fresh Market, Weinstein came up with a plan to improve the correlation between ad expo-sure and in-store traffic.

She also boosted her team’s efficiency to keep up with revenue growth of more than 50 percent, without increasing incremental cost.

In collaboration with leadership at Advantage Media Solutions, as well as with Retailtainment, Advantage’s demonstration part-nership with Walmart, Weinstein was a key part of the team that devised a video demo product that could be delivered program-matically, thereby broadening Advantage Media’s and Retailt-ainment’s digital demonstration capabilities.

Bessie BerdusisDirector, Managed Care, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Berdusis coor-dinated flu-sea-

son efforts across pharmacy functional groups, with the result that Albertsons protected 13 percent more patients than in the previous flu season, contributing $6.3 million in additional sales.

She led the expansion of Alb-ertsons’ service offering to include innovative practice areas, among them pharmacist-prescribed hormonal contraception and medi-cations for opioid overdoses.

When the specialty phar-macy needed assistance with standardized processes and data, Berdusis took on addi-tional duties so that one of her coordinators could assume new responsibilities in specialty, and offered coaching and support to assure a successful outcome.

Lynn BlasioSenior Director, Operations, Ahold Ecommerce Sales, an affiliate of Peapod

Under Bla-sio’s leadership, the Ahold Ecommerce Sales facility was recognized by both internal and external safety and sanitation audits as a top-rated distribution center in the area.

Year-over-year customer engagement scores improved as a result of her highly engaged management and associate teams, which daily review cus-tomer feedback and implement plans to improve service.

The facility achieved the highest associate engagement scores in the company, thanks to an aggressive associate engage-ment plan implemented by Blasio that includes daily interactions with associates as well as asso-ciate events held each month.

Susan VoelknerCenter Store Operations Specialist Albertsons Cos./Acme Division

Voelkner’s lead-ership and organizational skills led to an increase in sales and reduction in losses not just for center store, which she oversees for Acme’s District 9, but also for the entire operation.

She significantly reduced back-room assets in her district, from 12.13 percent in March 2017 to a mere 6.21 percent this past January.

Committed to driving sales by focusing on push items throughout her district, Voelkner pushed own-brand Signature Select K-Cups for a $109,000 sales increase, and generated a $43,000 sales lift for Snack Artist pretzel, and a $123,000 sales increase for Rao’s pasta sauce.

Jane AndersonSenior Manager, Environmental Compliance, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

An environmen-tal professional with more than 25 years of experience in due diligence, contaminant transport, and remediation and environmen-tal compliance implementation, Anderson created an innovative, extensive environmental module in a database specifically designed for risk management and safety.

She improved systems within the environmental affairs group for annual reporting of hazardous material inventory and compli-ance audits; the new systems streamline the process while ensuring accuracy in reporting.

Anderson participates in both Albertsons’ Toastmasters Club and Women’s Inspiration and In-clusion Network (WIIN) to improve her networking, leadership and presentation skills.

Christy Duncan-AndersonExecutive Director, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Creator of the successful Hunger Is annual campaign to eradicate childhood hunger, Duncan-Anderson also developed the Hunger Is Advisory Committee (HIAC), which enables CEOs of major food insecurity organizations to steer Albertsons’ work in this space.

Rather than selecting one national organization for funding, as is typical with most retailer programs, she and the HIAC mapped a network of 250-plus organizations doing the best anti-hunger work.

Duncan-Anderson is a trustee of the California Grocers Associ-ation Educational Foundation and sits on the Leadership Council of World Wide Women, among other affiliations.

Kendal CallenderDirector of Digital Partnerships and Shopper Innovation, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

An up-and-coming leader in the shopper marketing and grocery space, Callender has become the person many CPG companies go to for consulting and program-ming-mix recommendations, as well as shopper marketing inno-vation investment and activation.

Under her guidance, Albert-sons’ shopper marketing activa-tion grew 20 percent nationally year over year.

Callender was a speaker at two P2PI shopper marketing events this year, as well as providing keynote support at partner agency events, and she also took over Albertsons’ WIIN (Women’s Inspiration and Inclusion Net-work) chairperson position this past January.

Christina BoyleSenior Manager, Administration Services and Facilities, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Boyle assumed oversight of the Deer Valley annual budget plan-ning and monthly general ledger follow-up, quickly developing a strong understanding of the operating budgets and becoming the “go-to” person for questions or resolution.

She also took on responsibility for the mailroom and receiving staff, as well as for managing the reception staff.

Embracing yet more duties, including those well outside of her past and current expe-rience, Boyle now oversees Albertsons fleet vehicles, and recently represented the grocer at the annual small-truck fleet event for vehicles used by its IT technicians.

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Louise GerberDirector, Ecommerce, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Gerber led her Northern California team as the first division in the company to deploy the new Titan software platform, and transitioned to a three-shift operation allowing same-day delivery that signifi-cantly drove Albertsons’ value proposition to its customers and increased sales and cus-tomer satisfaction.

She also led a focused market-ing and operations campaign to acquire and retain customers.

Gerber’s efforts significantly increased Albertsons’ sales, re-sulting in initial 300 percent cus-tomer acquisition and 25 percent sustained new customer growth, with a 25 percent increase in sales across two geographic markets.

Angela MooreDirector of Shopper Marketing Scale Events, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Under Moore’s leadership, shopper market-ing activation grew 18 percent nationally year over year, with Monopoly officially the biggest game event in the United States; she’s become the person that Albertsons’ CPG partners go to for consulting and programming negotiations regarding scale na-tional events, and to coordinate with national merchant leads.

She oversaw the building of new processes such as a UPC portal.

Moore served as a key division point of contact for decentralized marketing communication and management, and was recog-nized as a leader for the entire company in this space.

Kim HornettEcommerce Program Manager, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

[ Selected to lead the marketing effort in a Tiger Team, Hornett worked closely with the Seattle division and creative on an intensive six-week push, leading to 26 percent year-over-year ecommerce order growth, up from 5 percent before the effort, while new customer counts grew from 58 percent to 168 percent.

Key learnings from her highly successful program are now being applied to the Portland and Southern California divisions.

Always ensuring accuracy of communications, Hornett helped develop marketing mes-saging and tactics for Albertsons stores in four markets where service is provided by either Safeway or Vons.

Kathy HosekReal Estate Accounting Manager, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Taking on additional responsibilities while driving results and supporting company initiatives, Hosek led the real estate accounting pro-cessing team through several conversion-related activities.

She provided support and guidance to the corporate real estate accounting and property management business units, overseeing the execution of var-ious processes; these included heading the team that performs the common area maintenance (CAM) reconciliations, which identified additional CAM ex-pense rebills of $1.2 million.

Hosek found ways to make efficiencies to offset the addition-al workload that these sorts of undertakings entailed.

Sarah LongSenior Product Manager, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Long played a key role in developing and exe-cuting Albertsons’ college intern program for the own brands team, for which she developed training tools and organized guest speakers.

Following the massive Northern California fires, Sarah organized the collection of three truckloads of food and other necessities, and, with her team, personally delivered items to a mission helping peo-ple affected by the fires.

Outside of work, Long and a friend made festive Thanksgiving lunches for homeless people around San Francisco, loaded up a bike trailer with the meals, and handed out more than 100, offering to pray with recipients.

Lisa RoachGeneral Merchandise/HBC National Sales Manager, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Sidelined by a medical issue that caused her to miss an important overseas trip to China, Roach meticulously planned the trip in advance for her replacement, and accelerated her recovery so as to return to work ahead of schedule and participate in the necessary follow-up.

She created a unique Easter promotion that tied in with other departments, leading to a $3.5 million sales increase.

Roach successfully mentored two associates that had not been achieving their potential, proactively meeting with them, counseling them and guiding them into more conducive work environments.

Maryrose RinellaDirector, Own Brands Product Management, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Sales of own brand items in Rinella’s product portfolio exceeded $530 million and grew 8.5 percent, significantly ahead of company and rest-of-market sales growth.

Her team introduced 44 new items worth a combined $30 million in annual sales; this included the expansion of the Soleil sparkling water line, which has an annual sales rate of more than $9 million.

Rinella and her team rede-signed 700-plus SKUs to be compliant with new NLEA packaging and added SmartLa-bels to all of the new packages; the redesign also simplified and strengthened the brand portfolio.

Darcie RennDirector, Sustainability, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Renn led the development of major corporate social responsibility policies and position statements at Albert-sons, including the company’s chemicals policy, responsible seafood policy, zero-waste goals and sustainable palm oil goal.

She helped position Albertsons as a leader on sustainability issues by speaking on its behalf at various public and private forums, among them Conser-vation International’s Business & Sustainability Council.

Renn worked on several initiatives with local universities to engage and inspire the next generation of leaders on import-ant business sustainability topics, providing guidance and input on various student projects.

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Leti RodriguezManager, Payroll Quality Assurance, Regulatory Reporting and Tax Department, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Rodriguez built a strong and effective team as her department was established to fill a critical need at Albertsons.

Her results-oriented achieve-ments included overseeing a process to recover $1 million in merger-related tax refunds, creating an upload process to eliminate additional manual W2-C work, compiling an MS Access database to automate the quar-terly worksite reporting process, and implementing a review and reconciliation process for com-pany health care cost data.

Rodriguez donates personal time to campus organizations benefiting local organiza-tions, and contributes to fun team-building activities.

Mei-Mei StarkProduct Management Director, Own Brands, Albertsons Cos./Corporate

Taking over leadership in ice cream and yogurt, Stark worked with her cross-functional team and self-manufacturing to ensure flawless retail execution.

She expanded own brands’ yogurt assortment from 42 to 73 items for a January 2018 launch, with 30-plus new items across the new Aussie, Icelandic and organic segments, along with Greek line extensions, while de-veloping and executing a strategy to successfully launch 28 ice cream items in February 2018.

Stark also executed numerous other growth platforms, including Value-Added Fruit/Vegetables, Power to the Plants/Vegan, Pro-tein Power, Snackified Eating and Convenience/Simplification.

Tina LuceroGeneral Merchandise Sales Manager, Albertsons Cos./Denver Division

Assuming her current role in February 2017, Lucero quickly identified catego-ries and seasonal opportunities where her leadership had an immediate impact on division results, developing ordering best practices for sales and gross for all store-level GM managers, and leading all training sessions.

She outpaced the division in sales IDs and made a significant impact on the growth of various categories.

By sourcing new items, introducing holiday merchan-dising campaigns and identi-fying areas within the division where the tourist trade can be leveraged, Lucero built a plan that should continue to show long-term growth.

Lynne BarringtonFloral Buyer, Albertsons Cos./Jewel-Osco

Barrington played a key role in developing new Jewel specs and standards for floral department receiving; the improved specs increased floral sales across the board by 210 basis points.

She helped improve the cus-tomer service index in the floral department quality category by 70 basis points year over year; this was accomplished by seeking suppliers offering the best quality.

For major floral holidays, Barrington organized meetings for the receiving and shipping de-partments, laying out all inbound and outbound deliveries by day to allow the warehouse to handle the additional volume.

Lindsey EllingsonBakery Operation Specialist, Albertsons Cos./ Jewel-Osco

Ellingson has developed and mentored seven associates to the position of bakery manager, recruited two to be future bak-ery managers and mentored various other newly hired asso-ciates in her stores.

Since she was assigned to her district, some of her im-provements include increasing average weekly sales per store; growing same-store sales from -0.2 percent to 1.82 percent in her first quarter; and improv-ing shrink results in 14 of the district’s 19 stores.

Ellingson helped spearhead the district’s Bowling for Bucks initiative, which raises money to provide needy families with holiday dinners.

Mirna FranjulSales Manager, Own Brands, Albertsons Cos./Jewel-Osco

Franjul and her team established the compa-ny’s best own brands pene-tration in its history, growing such items from 19.3 percent to 20-plus percent during the third quarter of 2017.

She worked on a revitalized O Organic launch in Q3 2017, growing weekly sales for the brand by 30 percent.

To grow private label sales penetration and customer recog-nition, in keeping with Jewel-Os-co’s and her shared mission, Franjul developed a first-class ad program for each week of the month, followed with a buy ad display plan to help build sales and profitability for all stores, as well as personal store visits to each of the 10 districts.

Melissa HillDirector, Community Relations and Government Affairs, Albertsons Cos./Jewel-Osco

Hill worked with the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and a grass-roots organization to repeal the sweetened-beverage tax in Cook County, Ill.

She worked closely with the Des Plaines Chamber of Com-merce to help establish the Veter-ans Back to Work Boot Camp, an event Jewel-Osco helped support that allowed 20 veterans to transition to the workforce.

In 2017, Jewel-Osco partic-ipated in a register campaign a month, raising millions for local charities; Hill worked with Souper Bowl of Caring, Go Red for Women, the Special Olym-pics and more to spearhead the campaigns at all 187 Jewel-Os-co locations.

Amy JankauskisAssistant Sales Manager, Deli and Food Service, Albertsons Cos./Jewel-Osco

Jankauskis de-veloped a new inventory sys-tem for the 187-store division, working with the corporate financial team, Jewel-Osco deli operational specialists and store deli managers to do it.

In the past year, she reviewed and updated all deli program manuals and SOPs to make them accurate and easy to use in stores, as well as developing a process for tracking key tasks in the deli office.

Jankauskis coaches and mentors the deli office’s support team and is the “go-to” person for not only the deli department, but also Jewel-Osco’s other merchandising teams; she also serves as the point person for the advertising team.

Sharee ScapazzoBakery Operation Specialist, Albertsons Cos./Jewel-Osco

Scapazzo holds quarterly meetings to discuss previous results, current challenges and future goals with her bakery man-agers; she’s big on teaching, coaching and training her entire bakery staff, and leads by example.

Under her leadership, all stores in her district exceeded their projected profitability for the last three quarters, adding $4,251,719 in profit to their bottom line.

Scapazzo is skilled at pulling data from micro-strategies, analyzing the information and explaining it to managers so that they know where their strengths and weaknesses are and can correct sales trajectories.

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Mary Frances TruccoCommunications Manager, Albertsons Cos./Jewel-Osco

Trucco has grown Jewel- Osco’s media exposure by 22 percent year to year, sharing her company’s stories as a local brand in print, radio and television.

One noteworthy feat she pulled off in the past year is getting Jew-el-Osco President Doug Cygan upwards of 10 interviews with pa-per, radio and television stations alone, a 75 percent rise from the previous year; she also increased story placement across all of the major media outlets in the chain’s operating area.

Trucco is active at Misericor-dia Heart of Mercy, a home for developmentally and intellectually disabled children and adults.

Beth DaCostaBakery Sales Manager, Albertsons Cos./Seattle Division

After com-pleting Albertsons’ advanced training, DaCosta was instru-mental in organizing Seattle division training sessions on key programs to give others valuable skill sets that will help them be more proficient in their jobs and learn new methods to manage business.

She was pivotal in developing ongoing cake-decorator training classes for the Seattle division, which also help to feed the train-ees’ creative passion.

DaCosta is a founding member of the Seattle chapter of WIIN (Women’s Inspiration and Inclu-sion Network), and also an active mentor, helping others achieve their career and personal goals.

Leah GiambarresiDivision Pharmacy Manager, Albertsons Cos./Shaw’s, Star Market

In the last year, Giambarresi met her sales expectations and exceeded her PGE (EBITDA) expectation by 353 percent, accomplishing this impressive feat by motivating her teams and creating healthy competition.

Ranked as one of the top district pharmacy managers in the company, she successfully led her team through a pharmacy systems conversion with no dis-ruption to the patient experience.

Giambarresi is an adjunct professor at the Boston Phar-macy Practice Lab, where she teaches and evaluates pharma-cy students in clinical practice guidelines, and offers instruction on the care and treatment of chronic illnesses.

Sheryl SalazarProduce Assistant Sales Manager, Albertsons Cos./SoCal Division

Salazar drove double-digit growth in such cat-egories as fresh-made cut fruit and vegetables, convenience vegetables and meat alternatives, and also played a key role during a system/warehouse conversion.

She partners with local grow-ers and companies to tell their story throughout the Albertsons and Vons produce departments, working with various functional groups within the organization to bring such programs to life, while being first to market with vendors’ unique offerings.

Salazar is involved in the Fresh Produce & Floral Council, serves as a troop leader for the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles, and is a member of the Boys & Girls Club of San Gabriel Valley.

Julie SpierDirector, Pharmacy Operations, Albertsons Cos./Southern Division

Spier helped ensure that all store pharmacies were operating in Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath, even setting up a mobile pharmacy outside of a flooded store to serve local residents.

She worked to ensure the quick reopening of Randall’s Houston stores affected by the hurricane by networking with pharmacists to staff certain stores when others were flooded.

Spier is active in Texas leg-islation and a member of the Texas Federation; additionally, she’s pursuing a Texas Board of Pharmacy seat, and, with her husband, leads a Cub Scout troop and serves at their church.

Janet Bishop RowanBakery Sales Manager, Albertsons Cos./Southern Division

Rowan grew the market share in Albertsons’ Southern Market area by 1.06 percent over the past 59 weeks, and also drove a 12 percent sales increase over last year while the rest of the market remained flat.

She worked with the team in Houston to renovate Store #1057 after it was flooded by Hurricane Harvey and gathered donations from vendors to help feed storm victims, personally working in the store to ensure that customers and employees were cared for.

Winner of the President’s Award as Outstanding Innova-tor of the Year for 2017 in her division, Rowan mentors and trains women who have a desire to move forward in the industry.

Maha EldabajaCenter Store Operations Specialist, Albertsons Cos./Southern Division

After becoming center store operations specialist — a position sought after by sev-eral highly qualified candidates — Eldabaja brought her district from rarely placing in company contests to excelling in many.

She provides consistent, infor-mative weekly district calls with all stores, showing her leader-ship and coaching skills, and is supported by her team.

A former Tom Thumb store director, Eldabaja has backed a number of district promotions since her promotion, including July’s Summer Palooza, August’s Coupon Redemption and Sep-tember’s Own Brands Contest, among others, resulting in high rankings for her division.

Katherine ChinSourcing Director, Albertsons Cos./Supply Chain

Chin success-fully leads a team responsible for

identifying, negotiating and managing spend of more than $5 billion annually.

She planned and executed the retailer’s biggest own brands event ever, bringing in 1,000 people from the retailer’s vendor community who were all focused on helping position Albertsons own brands as a leader in prod-uct innovation; suppliers raved that it was the most organized, fun and informative meeting of its kind that they’d ever attended.

Chin planned a “Shark Tank”-like event to meet with suppliers and determine win-win ideas for driving sales, ending with a pipe-line of 1,600-plus new private label items to launch and a larger number of vendor partnerships.

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Robin LeatherwoodTechnical Services Manager, Blount Fine Foods

Leatherwood’s recipe improvement efforts in the past year have led to the removal of 3.8 million parts-per-million of sulfites and 5.1 billion milligrams of sodium, converting more than 1.3 million pounds of meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.

She has already completed one degree, in culinary arts, and another, in engineering, and is currently working on a third, in food science and industry, with a focus on technology.

Leatherwood is an active member of the Institute for Food Technologists, both the national and the New England chapters, and volunteers at a local tech-nical high school’s culinary arts department.

Rosie ConnollyHuman Resource Manager, Albertsons Cos./Supply Chain

Connolly imple-mented key changes to recruiting and hiring practices, including the automation, re-engineering and streamlining of processes to enable more efficient operation.

She enhanced employee retention within the first 90 days of employment by modifying the retailer’s orientation program to appeal to a wide diversity of candidates; one of her ideas was a home-grown internal video reflecting “a day in the life of a warehouse employee.”

Connolly mentors and de-velops others through succes-sion-planning strategies; this has included creating a new leadership development program for high-potential employees with individualized development strategies for each person.

Heather StandiferCategory Manager II, Associated Wholesale Grocers

In addition to her normal cat-egory duties, Standifer added a fifth Seasonal Candy rotation to her duties with the introduction of Associated Wholesale Gro-cers’ (AWG) Summer Seasonal Candy event, helping to grow sales of seasonal candy by $2.5 million for the year.

She oversaw and managed the transition of all cookies and crackers from DSD to warehouse distribution for a major national vendor, leading to an increase in warehouse sales of more than $90 million annually.

Standifer sits on AWG’s Annual Innovation Showcase committee, which highlights creative initiatives from 100-plus supplier partners.

Meaghan TetreaultEmployee Services Specialist, Big Y Foods Inc.

Tetreault helped transition 1,000 new employees to Big Y’s culture through consis-tent store visits, training and team building in eastern Massachu-setts, 100 miles from her home and family, and also provided support for two store remodels in the district.

She created and implemented a management development workshop for 75 employee services representatives in the company to strengthen their skills as true advocates.

Tetreault co-founded Big Y’s first employee resource group, Women LEAD, and currently heads a team of women mem-bers that developed a women’s mentorship program for the entire company.

Risa JenkinsSenior Category Manager, C&S Wholesale Grocers

Jenkins drove outstanding results

in top-line sales and gross profit, exceeding budget in ice cream (up 28 percent in sales; 34 percent in gross profit) and frozen (up 1.5 percent in sales; 2.8 percent in gross profit).

She led center store category managers in creating almost $1 million in incremental sales in the Robesonia, Pa., division through C&S’ National Display Program.

Jenkins more than doubled the frozen sales projection in the January 2018 Robesonia Web-a-Thon, and she completed an extensive Frozen Food Month program for C&S Wholesale Grocers’ national independent footprint, generating $250,000-plus in revenue.

Damaris HernandezManager, Customer Service, C&S Wholesale Grocers

Hernandez and her team played an integral role in bringing an entire line of per-ishable business, both meat and produce, to her customer base; she traveled extensively to build key relationships that prepared her team to support the initiative.

She has operated her contact center with zero turnover in the past year, compared with a 23 percent rate across the other customer service centers — evidence of her outstanding “hearts and minds” approach to leadership.

Hernandez is active with the Network of Executive Women and BragNet, C&S Wholesale Grocers’ internal networking and mentoring program.

Deborah BaileySenior Manager, Customer Service, C&S Wholesale Grocers

Among an array of achievements, Bailey ex-ceeded all customer service key performance indicators by more than 10 percent.

She implemented a customer service outreach program to build relationships and quick-ly address issues with C&S Wholesale Grocers’ independent customer base, and also piloted a revenue generation program that yielded more than $50,000 during the pilot period alone; this program is currently being deployed to the entire customer service network.

Bailey is an active participant in the Network of Executive Women, WiNGs and C&S’ in-ternal mentoring and networking program, BragNet.

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Danielle McBreairtyManager, S&OP/Demand Planning, C&S Wholesale Grocers

McBreairty led a forecasting project that resulted in a com-pany reduction of inventory of $100 million.

She took on a small, struggling team with highly operational responsibilities, turning it into a best-in-class team.

McBreairty developed sales and operations planning as an internal capability within C&S Procurement and is a founding member of an internal career networking program, leading the development and expansion of an initiative providing career-path exposure to associates at the corporate office; she was also chosen to represent C&S at a women’s leadership development conference in Washington, D.C.

Melissa PulliamDirector, U.S. Sales, Costco, The Coca-Cola Co.

Partnering with the Coca-Cola

brand team, Pulliam developed a marketing plan specific to Costco for the Coke Zero Sugar relaunch that included impactful displays and in-outlet sampling to generate a 41 percent increase in dollar sales versus the prior year.

She developed a demo strategy for Costco around key holidays to bring awareness to Coke de Mexico, which result-ed in a 2017 sales increase of 9 percent.

Winner of the Coca-Cola Emerging Talent Award, Pull-iam collaborated with cross-func-tional teams to plan and execute a successful KO Lab (R&D/inno-vation) with Costco’s corporate leadership and buying team.

Heather SavantDirector, Human Resources, Robesonia, Pa; York, Pa.; and Aberdeen, Md.C&S Wholesale Grocers

Working with leadership to identify HR-related needs of the business, Savant held a workshop to review SMART goal setting and exercise for participants to design goals and development plans, and also helped coordinate a talent review process for distribution lead-ership and the sales group, which identified high-potential employees and authentic development and succession plans.

She coordinates events for both employees and their fami-lies, including a Family Fun Day involving games, tours and other fun activities.

Savant is a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, Oppor-tunity House and her local school district.

Gail SomersSenior Director, Chain Sales, C&S Wholesale Grocers

Taking on a team with the potential to improve, Somers transformed it to be more efficient, boost sales and grow customer satisfaction. The sales portfolio she oversees is expected to exceed annual bud-get by more than 5 percent.

She enrolled to prepare for the Professional Project Manage-ment exam, whose courses have helped her expand her interactive leadership, issue resolution and problem-solving facilitation skills.

Somers is a teacher and men-tor inside and outside of C&S Wholesale Grocers, including roles with the company’s internal networking group and the Net-work of Executive Women New England committee.

Crystal GonzalesDirector, Merchandising, C&S Wholesale Grocers/Grocers Supply

Expanding her director role, Gonzalez has become more involved in developing and strengthening vendor relation-ships through collaborative planning sessions.

She has worked with her team to grow the company’s regional show attendance by as much as 25 percent, and has developed item assortment to grow season-al sales by about 40 percent.

Gonzalez also strove to assist associates in becoming more decisive through a more robust planning process, which includes year-over-year comparisons and goal setting for all programs; this process has resulted in a more collaborative relationship with suppliers and internal teams.

Sara HerringDirector, Club Channel, Coca-Cola Co. Bottling Consolidated

Herring exceed-ed her 2017 revenue goal by $2.3 million and volume plan by 312,000 cases; her largest club customer surpassed goals by $2.8 million and 365,000 cases.

She created a process for bringing a new sparkling soft-drink package from concept to reality, and developed and implemented a multichain club product that filled a flavor gap in the sparkling soft-drink category.

Herring mentored a cross-functional teammate on the customer management team, and educated, trained and supported a team of 12 customer development managers on club strategy and best-in-class execution.

Danna CoxDirector, Customer Development II, Coca-Cola Co. Bottling Consolidated

Cox’s 95 Kroger stores in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky delivered dead net revenue of $48 million, which was 2.5 percent growth over the prior year.

She developed exclusive as-set partnerships for in-market programming with the Tennes-see Titans, Nashville Sounds, Dollywood, City of Nashville and Kroger, which led to accel-erated growth in key categories and brands.

A member of the Network of Executive Women, Cox, as an 11-year breast cancer survi-vor, has a passion for raising awareness for early detection and maintaining a positive mental outlook when facing a crisis.

Tara RobbeDirector of Sales, Warehouse Juice-Walmart US, The Coca-Cola Co.

Overseeing a 10-member team across multiple functions, Robbe led a complex strategic direction change that resulted in a successful chilled-juice launch; her leadership saw warehouse juice retail sales growth of $48 million — a 6 percent increase over the prior year — for Walmart.

She created a three-year growth strategy for the Fairlife milk brand in the Walmart value-added dairy category, securing a 60 percent distribution gain.

Robbe has set the stage for her portfolio to deliver up to 9 percent growth for Walmart in 2018, with 5 percent volume and 14 percent net revenue growth for the mega-retailer.

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Meghan PennellSenior Director, Customer Development, Coca-Cola Co. Bottling Consolidated

Pennell was pivotal in launching Lidl within Coca-Co-la Co. Bottling Consolidated, via internally aligned demand planning, operations and sev-eral department VPs, to bring the emerging chain to market and develop a price plan with Coca-Cola North America.

Under her team’s guidance, Aldi exceeded budgeted reve-nue by 28 percent and volume by 27 percent.

She also helped Walmart implement its first-ever com-mercial plan; the implementation included advising manageable operations parameters, targeting and coaching effective in-store tactics to tackle each strategic point of interest, and developing classroom sessions.

Emma BryanSenior Director, Daymon

Bryan’s lead-ership led to an increased supplier

representation in the past year, while she significantly mini-mized representation losses through team training and new processes for overall consistent performance.

She led an on-site team of 36 associates and worked with more than 200 supplier partners; during the time she has served as a key liaison for Daymon corporate support to retailers and suppliers, the account has never missed its budget, even exceeding bud-get for the past three years.

Bryan was a founding mem-ber of the Daymon Women’s Network.

Tonya PriceCustomer Development Director II-Publix Super Markets, Coca-Cola Co. Bottling Consolidated

Price collaborated with Publix Super Markets and Carowinds to create the first regional pro-motion in the Carolinas; initia-tives such as these led to 11.5 percent growth in volume for her territory, with double-digit growth expected in 2018.

In the new Charlotte divi-sion, she helped strategize Publix’s launch into Virginia and open eight stores in the Richmond market.

She serves as the subject-mat-ter expert with Publix headquar-ters in Lakeland, Fla., to develop and implement a unique retail plan specific to the Charlotte division to help keep the chain competitive and relevant.

Stephanie ClarkDirector of Client Operations, Crossmark

Clark assumed leadership of three

teams and implemented process changes on third-party teams to reduce process invoicing from 29 days to seven days.

She worked to implement an inactive-user billable “seat” cleanup to reduce monthly fees, and created a process to actively manage seat count to ensure real-time invoicing, which led to a cost savings of $43,000 in the fourth quarter.

Clark also reduced costs and increased revenue incentives on fulfillment through the implementation of a new batch process, working with IT and the fulfillment vendor to create a system that works for all client teams; fulfillment costs were reduced by 69 percent.

Shari WagnerBusiness Account Manager, Kroger Team, Crossmark

Wagner ex-ceeded budgeted

revenue growth on average of 13 percent across all clients through an active collaboration with clients and customers that delivered sales and profit growth.

She was responsible for more than $15 million dollars in annual sales to all Kroger divisions across eight categories, main-taining close relationships with category managers, buyers and management, as well as working with five manufacturers’ sales and marketing departments.

She was recognized by Cross-mark for always giving her best, no matter the size of the client, to help a business grow; outside of work, she volunteers annually to help raise funds for the Freestore Foodbank, in Cincinnati.

Kristen BairdSenior Director, Analytics and Insights, Daymon/Interactions Marketing

When a client representing club/warehouse retail believed that there was no way to use the manual process of data collection to analyze how effective the sampling program was for category growth, Baird collab-orated with internal teams to find a way to digitally repre-sent in-store sales.

Additionally, she was able to quantify the value of the program while working with client contacts to help them understand how to use sales performance data to drive smarter decisions.

Baird provides mentorship to three field team members, dis-cussing opportunities with each of them several times a week.

Hannah ZippDirector of Client Services, Daymon

Zipp helped launch a digital services pilot for

a key client last year and main-tained an active role in helping transform traditional broker service offerings to include a new wave of content, digital and microsite management where ecommerce meets brick and mortar.

She led multiple webinars to educate on new product launch-es to help grow private-brand shares, which resulted in a nearly full share point of growth.

Zipp expanded the reach of Daymon’s national coverage initiative through expansion dis-cussions with manufacturers that extended into major grocers and strategic channel accounts.

Lisa St. GermainSenior Manager, Daymon

Using her ability to assess the retail landscape, St.

Germain delivered more than 60 customized projects for field teams, all of which were well re-ceived and led to new business.

She also developed a perspective and a solution on category prioritization for center store alignment by connecting data and category trends to help others understand where consumers are going and how to capitalize on product develop-ment opportunities.

A leader on the category solu-tions team who’s been promoted twice in three years, St. Ger-main’s influence extends across all private-brand customers in the dairy and frozen departments.

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Misty FontaniniBusiness Manager, Daymon/Interactions Marketing

Fontanini lis-tened to partners

to create demo events that delivered real connections through numerous multivendor, recipe, health market and meal solution programs; the result was an expansion of a retailer’s program to twice its original size.

Last fall, Her demo account expanded into another 50 stores in new markets; the program is currently running 120 percent to budget as well as above last year’s average.

Fontanini also is delivering at 119 percent to budget for the first quarter on an adult-beverage program.

Melinda WingSenior Manager, Operations, Daymon/Interactions Marketing

Wing led her retail operations team, a $6.8 million division responsible for executing nearly 40,000 interactive consumer events, to a 95 percent execution rate in 2017, a 14 percent in-crease from the previous year.

She played a key role in the planning and successful launch of a Midwest retail program that expanded late last year, and a brand-new, multiplatform demo program in early 2018.

The key to Wing’s success is her “personal touch” mind-set, which ensures that each person feels like an important part of the team.

Crystal LaCourse Transportation Operations Manager, Delhaize America Distribution LLC

LaCourse took the lead on de-veloping new delivery schedules to help local brands balance la-bor, which also eliminated driver miles and has a potential savings of $1 million.

Even in a challenging weather year, she still outperformed expectations with her flexibility in implementing an ever-changing plan flawlessly; she person-ally worked countless hours to ensure that the local brand received the high level of service expected.

By setting clear expectations, LaCourse become a model leader and improved the culture of the transportation department, as evidenced by increased asso-ciate engagement survey scores.

Annette TaylorDirector, Category Management, Dean Foods Co.

Taylor developed space mapping

for Publix Super Markets to optimize assortment for milk and creamers, growing DairyPure and TruMoo distribution by 22 percent.

She optimized assortment for Mayfield Ice Cream and highlighted display execution opportunity in Publix locations, resulting in full store distribution and dollar sales growth of more than 51 percent.

Taylor also secured distri-bution for eight key grocery accounts and divisions off cycle for the national launch of DairyPure Mix-ins by illustrat-ing the growth in single-serve and conversion opportunity among Millennials in the cot-tage cheese segment.

Jennelle NystromHead of Product, Farmstead

Nystrom launched a Buy

One, Give One campaign encouraging customer dona-tions to help end childhood hunger; in nine weeks, the program donated 3,500 pounds of fresh produce to needy kids in the Bay Area.

Farmstead has grown five times in sales under her leader-ship, with new customers twice as likely to order again.

By introducing AI for smart recommendations and hy-per-speed checkout, Nystrom is on target to meet the goal of reducing shop time to 15 minutes versus 45 minutes in brick-and-mortar stores, and 30 to 40 minutes on other ecommerce platforms.

Leslie AtkinsonDirector of Brand Communications, Food Lion

Atkinson over-saw an integrated

and holistic campaign, which included in-store visual design, to support two successful remodel market launches in Greensboro, N.C., and Richmond, Va.

She was instrumental in the evolution of the Food Lion MVP loyalty program, Shop & Earn, as well as leading the campaign to launch the next generation of Food Lion’s shopper marketing promotions.

Atkinson received ADDY awards for her work involving the brand campaign evolution to ensure that the company built an emotional connection with customers, as well as for work in support of Food Lion Feeds.

Brandi LangfordHuman Resources Business Partner, Food Lion

Langford orga-nized the first HR

Centers of Excellence strategic initiative meeting, which led to the development of HR plans that aligned with each functional leader’s business goals in 2017.

During the Ahold Delhaize merger integration, she partnered with functional leaders on organi-zational design, assessing each functional area and executing the staff and selection process.

In a year of change, Langford supported ongoing talent con-versations with the leadership team, which resulted in the company’s maintaining an en-gagement with associates that ended the year exceeding the goal on talent retention.

Jamie OsborneAssociate Creative Director, Food Lion

Working with an ad agency, Osborne managed

the creative development that won two ADDY awards for the Food Lion holiday TV campaign and the Food Lion Feeds It Forward “Out of Reach” video campaign.

The holiday campaign set the highest connection scores with consumers and was more memorable and relatable than previous campaigns.

Osborne led the creative development for a new digital loyalty program with the Shop & Earn Celebrate campaign that helped its successful launch, as well as campaigns for new market remodel initiatives and digital shopper marketing programs.

Hannah WalkerSenior Director, Technology and Nutrition Policy, Food Marketing Institute

Walker was instrumental in FMI’s efforts to work with Con-gress to preserve pro-competi-tive debit reforms in the passage of the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017.

She worked tirelessly with the public affairs team to preserve USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s (SNAP) efficiency by collaborating with the agency and engaging SNAP customers in a digital format with more product information, menu planning and better budgeting.

During the extreme weather situations of 2017, Walker raised awareness of the portability of SNAP, as well as of Disaster SNAP, which is established after a federally declared disaster.

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Deanna L. Marion-WilsonDistrict Director, Giant Food

On a special assignment,

Marion-Wilson created Giant’s Customer Care Service Initiative, in which she worked closely with 22 underperforming store management teams to improve customer engagement and service behaviors.

Once she transitioned back to district director last October, she was able to inspire and lead the management teams of 18 Giant stores; within a short time, the stores in her district had significantly improved their net promoter scores.

She leads a WAV (Women Adding Value) mentoring circle that consists of eight women at various levels of leadership in the company.

Debbie GustafsonSenior Application Manager (IS), Giant Eagle

Gustafson led a cross-functional team of multiple vendors, business partners and IT analysts to prepare Giant Eagle’s payment technology for credit card chips, resulting in a seamless rollout that saved thousands of dollars in cost avoidance.

She was a key player in the launch of the Fuelperks loyalty program, providing technical leadership to ensure that the POS could meet the demands of the new initiative.

Gustafson also oversaw the transition of Giant Eagle gift cards from IBM to ACI, a more stable, highly redundant platform with additional security.

Tammy KampsulaDirector of Bakery, Giant Eagle

Kampsula oversaw a labeling

system enhancement at Giant Eagle for more than 2,000 individual SKUs that included cleaner, more transparent ingredients and recipes.

She initiated a reorganization of staff roles and responsibilities, as well as improving the training and development of baker and decorator positions.

Kampsula also played an essential role in creating innovative offerings to enhance the in-store bakery’s reputation and drive bottom-line sales and profits, including the introduc-tion of signature brownie bars, premium cakes, authentic French baguettes, imported gelato and a gourmet dipped-candy store.

Kelli HallHR Business Partner, Giant Food

Using a three-part approach, Hall met her aggressive

recruiting targets by using job boards and job fairs to find the right candidates while chang-ing the onboarding process to ensure new employees’ smooth transition to Giant.

She managed a mentor program in which supervisors acted as mentors to every new hire while reviewing their training progress.

With associate engagement a top priority, Hall planned multiple events to keep employees en-gaged; as a result, supply chain saw the highest-ever participation rate in the associate survey and an 11 percent increase in overall engagement compared with 2016.

Cynthia VolkCategory Manager, Giant Food

Volk’s per-formance as a category manager

for ethnic and specialty has ex-ceeded portfolio goals, and she’s building a strategy to continue the momentum.

She launched Giant’s first store-brand spice packet line, which features 23 items, acting as a decision-maker in choosing the assortment, packaging, dis-play and launch programming.

Volk was recognized as a lead-er for developing the Learning Circle, a group that encourages knowledge sharing and career development; in addition, she was chosen to participate in a three-day national Network of Executive Women Rising Star conference.

Melanie MnichManager, Digital and Loyalty Strategy, Giant Food

As digital planning manager,

Mnich aided in the training and onboarding of a new marketing and digital agency; she helped to develop new processes, time-lines and ways of working, which ensured a successful working relationship yielding high-quality creative material.

She planned and executed more than 350 digital offers to drive trips into Giant stores, in-crease basket size and generate incremental sales.

Throughout the process of Giant’s reorganization, Mnich worked to provide training doc-uments and direction to help the retailer’s various teams stand up as seamlessly as possible.

Amy McAllister-FlynnDistrict Director, Giant Food

McAllister-Flynn helped boost

bottom-line results in her district significantly: Her stores improved fresh shrink by 0.46 basis points, and her district ranked the highest in the region for associate engagement, with a score of 81.

She followed up on every customer service complaint, looking for accountability; in this way, she was able to im-prove customer service scores dramatically in her district, reducing complaints by 35 percent.

McAllister-Flynn raised $148,000 for the Children’s Cancer Foundation in 2017, making hers the highest-selling district in the region for the second year in a row.

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Summer MonnettCategory Manager, Giant/Martin’s

Recognizing the need for

assortment optimization and additional space for growing segments in the soup cate-gory, Monnett implemented a new planogram flow; through key vendor collaboration and the creation of store-specific planograms, she helped spur strong base unit and dollar growth for the entire category.

She took on additional catego-ries and helped increase sales and volume for the total edible grocery portfolio.

Monnett also worked with other departments to drive cus-tomer engagement and category growth through the creation of meal solution programs; this helped tie the center store into the perimeter.

Kimberly O’HaraDeli/Bakery Field Merchandising Specialist, Giant/Martin’s

While still a store manager, O’Hara became an interim deli/bakery specialist, in which role she helped strengthen the departments by focusing on training and customer engage-ment; she earned her position permanently last January.

She improved her district’s shrink opportunity dollars in focus stores by 35 percent in deli and 52 percent in bakery, saving the company about $34,000.

O’Hara implemented regular mystery shops with Boar’s Head partners and teamed up with a neighboring district to drive “slice, show and offer” initiatives; as a result of her efforts, one of her stores received a regional customer service award.

Jennifer ScottCategory Manager, Giant/Martin’s

Scott achieved bottom-line performance as

a category manager with less than two years of experience in merchandising; she implemented a winning strategy during the key selling seasons on the baking desk, which resulted in the cat-egory’s overdelivering on sales and profits for 2017.

She contributed to an initial concept redesign for the baking category, and helped to bring the packaging concept to reality.

Apart from her work at Giant/Martin’s, Scott is a director for her local school district and vol-unteers in many programs in her community, including the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank’s Raider Packs initiative, which ensures that students don’t go hungry outside of school.

Dana SherwoodDesign Manager, Giant/Martin’s

Responsible for creating the marketing “look”

for the new Giant/Martin’s brand, Sherwood represents the cre-ative voice ofr the division.

As the company relaunched its Nature’s Promise brand, she directed a marketing initiative to create a campaign that would support the lifecycle of con-sumers’ shopping experiences; her work helped the company exceed its $1 billion sales goal.

With a cross-functional team, Sherwood played a key role in creating a period market-ing calendar that has enabled the company to align key dates and processes for the entire busi-ness; beyond work, she offers an hour of free yoga in a local park in exchange for 30 minutes of trash pickup.

Melissa VogelAssistant VP, Marketing Projects, Hy-Vee Inc.

A key leader in launching online marketing project

tracking, Vogel helped integrate the platform into all marketing team members’ work for project progress and goal success rates.

She worked with the entire district leadership team on the openings of two new stores in the Twin Cities area, and she was a leader in Hy-Vee’s new marketing strategy designed for the media habits of today’s customer.

Aiding the evolution of the grocer’s approach to advertising, Vogel and her team created the new Hy-Vee “Mega Ad” distributed each month, as well as other mailings customized for different customer segments and markets.

Mary Beth HartDirector, State Government Relations, Hy-Vee Inc.

Hart’s efforts in sharing information

and building relationships helped move along crucial legislation in Minnesota and Missouri that was favorable to Hy-Vee’s customers and employees; the respective laws passed through the states’ legislatures and were signed by their governors.

She revamped all government relations communications, in-cluding the government relations newsletter, and engaged suc-cessfully with legislators across her four-state territory.

Hart’s previous work with polit-ical action committees provided insight into how Hy-Vee’s political action committee can function more effectively while improving enrollment and communication.

Jan CaruthersTraining Supervisor, Hy-Vee Inc.

Caruthers has been a key player in Hy-Vee’s con-

tinued expansion into the Twin Cities market, leading the training and onboarding of more than 500 employees in advance of a new store opening.

She was named to the Hy-Vee Hall of Fame in December 2017 as the winner of the Community Involvement Staff Member award.

Caruthers’ community service efforts are part of her daily life, most notably through her work to help create Count the Kicks, an initiative that encourages preg-nant women to track their babies’ movements during the third trimester; the educational effort has gained national attention.

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Kim TotaroFinance Director, Giant/Martin’s

Totaro devel-oped and trained a new team with

the aim of streamlining, simpli-fying and improving processes in regard to margin manage-ment; she was able to gain better visibility and accuracy of fresh margin results, as well as improved reaction times.

She led profit-and-loss basic training for more than 300 associates and in-depth mar-gin training for 65 associates across the organization in just 10 weeks.

Totaro spends a lot of time volunteering in her communi-ty: She was recognized as a Woman Who Rocks in 2017, in support of International Women’s Day.

Charlotte EssDeli/Bakery Sales Manager, The Kroger Co./Atlanta

In 2017, deli/bakery sales in Ess’ 186 stores

in Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama rose by 6 percent, $20 million over the previous year, and gross profit dollars increased by $10 million over 2016.

She led a focus on King’s Hawaiian products that result-ed in No. 1 sales, gross mar-gin dollars and gross margin growth in her division.

Ess assisted the Atlanta divi-sion in leading the whole com-pany in a breakfast commodity promotion that brought a 102 percent increase in sales and a 126 percent lift in units; she also championed United Way for deli/bakery by helping to raise funds for the organization.

Jennifer BarnettDistrict Meat and Seafood Coordinator The Kroger Co./Cincinnati, Dayton

Overseeing operations and merchandising at 10 high-volume meat and seafood district stores, Barnett also serves her division as a subject-matter expert for the meat and seafood departments.

Since she assumed this role in August 2017, sales have increased by 2.8 percent, shrink has dropped by 1.1 percent and department friendly scores are up by 1.5 percent.

A 25-year company veteran, Barnett graduated from Kroger’s Women’s Associate Group Re-source Management Develop-ment program; she helped build the resource group and is now a committee chair.

Terri CoffeyDivision Meat and Seafood Merchandiser, The Kroger Co./Cincinnati, Dayton

Coffey and her team rolled out meat/seafood expert training to teach store man-agers at 109 stores across the her division about the department; the training helped managers respond to the needs of an ever-changing customer base.

She saw a need to reinforce best practices within the depart-ment and so implemented train-ing to reduce shrink by creating a new cutting test that was given to 500-plus associates.

Challenging the mundane sales-planning process, Cof-fey introduced new promo-tions in a market where cus-tomer-shopping patterns had changed, leading to growth in sales and units.

Maria St. GermainDivision Deli/Bakery Merchandiser, The Kroger Co./Cincinnati, Dayton

In addition to St. Germain’s responsibilities in her divi-sion, she oversaw the Chef’s Choice Catering business and all functions that fell under the catering umbrella; in 2017, she launched Fresh Kitchens within the division to offer pre-made lunch and dinner solutions for customers.

Under her leadership, the division saw an increase of 5.5 percent in deli/bakery sales in 2017; identical sales increased 3 percent, and she achieved positive bakery shrink versus last year.

Currently mentoring four associates, St. Germain guided seven of her associates to promotions in 2017.

Danielle GordonOperations Specialist, The Kroger Co./Columbus

Gordon became an Our Promise specialist for 25 stores last January; previously, she was a store manager and was promoted to drug/general merchandise coordinator for two districts in 2017.

She increased weekly sales in both districts by 4.7 percent and 5 percent, respectively, and customer satisfaction scores also rose, thanks to her coaching of associates and store leaders in merchan-dising, inventory control and back-room best practices.

Gordon boosted the district’s center store sales and opera-tions, working with department leaders to implement inventory management practices to im-prove sales forecasting.

April MarkiewitzDistrict Human Resources Manager, The Kroger Co./Columbus

Markiewitz was recently selected to be an Our Promise specialist in her district; while still a district human resources man-ager, from April 2017 to January 2018, she improved her district’s turnover rate by 12 percent.

She helped cut the turnover rate at two Toledo stores in her district; the first store went from 85 percent to 64 percent in just under a year, while the sec-ond store’s rate plunged by 18 percent.

Markiewitz spearheaded Kroger’s Six Steps to Success retention program in her district to prepare HR managers for success.

Felicia DelkDivision Talent and Development Manager, The Kroger Co./Dallas

Delk achieved division reduc-tion in turnover from 93 percent to 80 percent, with a bottom-line cost savings of $3.1 million.

She led the streamlining of the pharmacy staffing process in her division, which was the only one to undertake such a project, leading to a signifi-cant drop in background er-rors; the new model has been recognized by the pharmacy compliance committee and is being considered for adoption company-wide.

Delk successfully piloted a retention program that was ad-opted by 110 store locations and reduced turnover; total head-count rose by 1,201 associates.

Rachel BookerGrocery Merchandising Sales Manager, The Kroger Co./Delta

In 2017, Booker led key initiatives that helped push the grocery department to an esti-mated $1.7 billion in total sales, which was a 4 percent increase over 2016.

She lobbied the Arkansas Gen-eral Assembly to allow expanded variety wine sales throughout the state, except in dry counties.

Booker led the rollout of wine in 19 stores across Arkansas after gaining approval from the state legislature, taking on such duties as merchandising, pricing and training wine stewards; her efforts resulted in an estimated $7.8 million increase in wine sales in the state.

Jade HoeferDeli/Bakery Coordinator, Kroger Co./Dillons

Although Hoefer only started her

current role in October 2017, she helped increase total de-partment sales at four locations within one quarter, and she wrote a manual for successful deli inventory processes.

In one store, she helped the department turn a negative sales trend to positive with increases of 4.5 percent in deli and 4.3 percent in bakery.

When another store un-derwent a total remodel, a Starbucks was added; with effective associate training, Hoefer helped the coffee shop achieve some of the highest daily sales perfor-mances in the division.

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Rhonda EtnireDistrict Human Resources Manager, The Kroger Co./ Fred Meyer

Etnire oversees the human resources opera-tions of 19 locations and 4,500 associates.

Last year, she led her teams to reduce annual turnover, equaling $750,000 in savings to the company; she also conduct-ed town hall meetings in seven locations selected as opportunity locations, helping to create action plans that led to improvements in associate satisfaction surveys during a time of major organiza-tional change.

Etnire’s fundraising effort earned her a 2016-17 Gold Level Sponsor Award from Junior Achievement of Idaho; outside of work, she’s a member of the American Heart Association’s Idaho executive leadership team.

Inshirah MarchanDivision Talent and Development Manager, The Kroger Co./ Food 4 Less

Responsible for human resources talent for more than 11,000 associates across 129 stores, Marchan also oversees the company’s executive devel-opment program.

Recently promoted to her current role, she modernized hiring, promotion and training processes for her division, including partnering to roll out a Start Fresh process for the Food 4 Less division; she also com-pleted the USC-FIM program this past year, in which her team won the capstone project.

Marchan joined the mentoring program for NEW of Southern California and is a board member at nonprofit Nerdrules Inc.

Marcie WilesCustomer 1st Manager, The Kroger Co./Dillon’s

Wiles created uplifting experiences for custom-ers, communities and associates through her collaborative work on customer-based metrics, coach-ing organizational teams and working with associate cultural councils.

She developed a new approach to standards walks, bringing the entire leadership team to stores weekly for training and development of manage-ment teams; the division and dis-tricts improved in all key overall customer satisfaction metrics.

She is active in Kroger’s Wom-en’s Edge associate resource group and participates in several community programs, from soup kitchens to a “random act of kindness” event.

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Katie TaylorDivision Talent and Development Manager, The Kroger Co./Fred Meyer

Taylor covers four states, supporting talent initiatives and leading division hiring/retention, diversity and performance man-agement goals for about 39,000 associates.

She took on that role in July 2017; since then, she has reduced the projected turnover rate and saved the company an estimated $1.2 million.

Earlier this year, Taylor was asked to join the company’s 9-Block Advisory Board, working to develop and roll out initiatives for talent calibration; she also takes part in the Gold Star Club and the Gold Star Family Holiday program, both of which offer assistance to associates affected by financial setbacks.

Janine WhelanDivision Produce Manager, The Kroger Co./Fry’s

A 25-year Fry’s employee, Whelan most recently took on the role of overseeing a sales territory of 122 stores, one of many leadership positions she’s held.

In her short time in pro-duce/floral, she’s spurred her department to exceed goals, achieving $8.3 million in citrus sales for the fourth quarter; she also championed the company’s Charmelia floral selling contest, leading her division to the top of the company.

Whelan recently finished her sixth term of the board of directors for Chrysalis, a shelter for domestic violence, and is actively involved in Fry’s volunteer activities.

Rachel BrowneBusiness Owner, Deli/Bakery, The Kroger Co./General Office

Browne part-nered with division teams to create and roll out new solutions in test stores, many based on associate feedback.

She and a team created a new training curriculum across 10 store divisions, resulting in in-creased performance indicators for deli/bakery; she designed operational best practices for the launch of Kroger’s Prep+Pared meal kits and was instrumental in the operational design of the retailer’s first restaurant, which opened in 2017.

Active in Kroger’s Women’s EDGE associate resource group, Browne is working on a black belt in Six Sigma’s business management strategy program.

Anne DiFilippoSenior Digital Marketing Manager, Corporate Digital Marketing, The Kroger Co./General Office

DiFilippo develops marketing strategies to grow Kroger’s ecommerce business, includ-ing ClickList pickup, home delivery and ship-to-home, and also leads the corporate digital marketing plan for omnichannel shopping experience.

She helped Kroger net a 188 percent gain in new ecom-merce customers, a 28 percent increase in new digital accounts and a 21 percent leap in digital engaged households.

DiFilippo led a departmental resource group that improves associate engagement, and was team captain for Cincinnati’s’ Corporate Olympics benefiting Special Olympics.

Rebekah ManisDirector of Investor Relations, The Kroger Co./General Office

Just promoted to a new role, Manis formerly developed strategic planning initiatives and coordinated sales planning efforts across all of the supermarket division, with budget oversight over $90 billion of retail sales and $26 billion of related gross profits.

She developed merchandis-ing efforts associated with the company’s Restock Kroger strategy refresh in 2017, and also worked with cross-func-tional teams to improve report-ing and processes.

Manis is junior board member for the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky and trea-surer for the Kroger United Way Campaign.

Kim HryhorchukHuman Resources Manager. The Kroger Co./Houston

Leading 17,500 associates in Texas and Loui-siana, Hryhorchuk assists the division in driving training and development, oversees annual workforce planning for 212 retail locations, and is responsible for health, welfare and pension benefits of hourly associates.

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey last fall, she developed a hur-ricane contingency plan and secured leaders from across all regions of Kroger to help restock products and recover in the wake of the disaster.

Hryhorchuk also launched a company-wide campaign that raised more than $183,000 for flood-affected associates in the greater Houston region.

Dana ThomasCategory Manager, Cosmetics and Nail Care, The Kroger Co./General Office

Thomas decides the full assortment of cosmetics and develops accompanying pro-motional strategies in all 2,700 Kroger stores.

She grew sales across several categories last year while driving cost savings in hair care by col-laborating with supplier partners; Thomas and her team identified three key strategies to deliver right assortment, pricing and shopping experience in beauty.

Thomas completed the YWCA Rising Star Leadership Program in 2017, recently went on a mission trip to South Africa and is an active member of the women’s associate resource group’s professional development team at Kroger.

Alicia PitoccoCollaborative Category Optimization Manager, The Kroger Co./General Office

Delivering a budget of $95 million in strategy savings and category margin improvements, Pitocco helps improve category profitability.

After a company reorganiza-tion, her team doubled to 20 direct reports and she became a key point of contact for multiple merchandising leaders; in 2017, she took on several high-priority projects, all while working on a CCO process redesign.

In fewer than four years, Pitocco has had four level advancements at Kroger, and gives back outside of work with organizations like Habitat for Humanity and her fami-ly-founded charitable group.

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Rene KendrickDistrict Merchandising Manager, The Kroger Co./Louisville

Kendrick began 2017 as a pharmacy merchandiser for 95 pharmacies; later, she assumed a special role as district mer-chandising manager.

As a pharmacy merchandiser, she headed the second-busiest division at Kroger; she also led the Louisville division to be the first chain in Kentucky to give Naloxone training to pharma-cists and provide the drug via protocol to those who’ve overdosed on opioids.

Kendrick is co-chair of the Louisville division chapter of Kroger’s associate resource group for women and an active volunteer in her church and community, as well as in pro-fessional organizations.

Cynthia LoganDistrict Manager, The Kroger Co./Louisville

Going into her 25th year at Kroger,

Logan leads store teams in planning, implementing and ex-ecuting merchandising and op-erations initiatives to help build store sales and gross profits.

Her district netted the high-est sales volume for the Louis-ville division and experienced a 54 percent increase in the retention rate.

In the spirit of Kroger’s Zero Hunger Zero Waste initiative, Logan is a strong community supporter: Her district donated more than a half-million pounds of food last year — a 20 percent increase — to God’s Pantry Food Bank, which she addition-ally serves as a volunteer and a member of its board of directors.

Tracy MobleyPlant Manager, Cheese Center of Excellence Leader, The Kroger Co./Manufacturing

Under Mobley’s leadership, year-end 2017 total plant effi-ciency was the highest since 2011, having seen a dramatic 14 percentage-point improve-ment in 2016 and another five percentage-point rise in 2017.

Other milestone metrics that she achieved throughout the year included improvements in cost per unit and material loss for two consecutive years, as well as managing a record EBITDA in 2017.

Mobley received a Kroger Manufacturing Excellence Award, along with the Kroger Iceberg Award, given to a plant for 365 days without an OSHA recordable, and the Kroger Eagle Award for Quality Excellence.

Amanda PuckDirector of Strategic Brand Development, The Kroger Co./Mariano’s

Puck has been described as one of Mariano’s biggest cheerleaders, heading brand development for that banner through social media, public re-lations and special events; she’s also involved in culinary and marketing initiatives and guides relationships with Mariano’s “Tastemakers.”

She positively affected the community with Stuff the Squad store events for local food pantries, and a Girls on the Run partnership to support Mariano’s initiative to raise 1 million pounds of food for two Chicago food banks.

In her personal time, Puck vol-unteers with the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Kendall ThomasEcommerce Specialist, The Kroger Co./Mariano’s

For the Mariano’s banner, Thomas oversees day-to-day store operations for ClickList.

In the past six months, she has helped open 17 locations and train store teams on the system and service expectations, streamlining the training process to save on overall expenses contributed to the openings; by the end of 2018, all Mariano’s locations will feature ClickList.

Under Thomas’ leadership, ClickList has been on an upward trend week over week, and she often adds thoughtful gestures like ensuring that customers receive a cookie, water or hot cocoa; this policy fits with her volunteer spirit, as she also gives time to a local food bank.

Marci ReynoldsClinical Sales Manager, The Kroger Co./QFC

Reynolds coor-dinates pharmacy

marketing and merchandising plans for QFC, where she applies her knowledge on local market trends and customer needs.

In 2017, she helped ensure that pharmacy managers got more autotomy, and was instrumen-tal in QFC’s selection for pilot programs, including a diabetes prevention program and an influ-enza screening initiative.

She was site coordinator for the Project VACCINATE program to increase local immunization rates, which won the 2018 Amer-ican Pharmacists Association Immunization Champions Award; Reynolds will be credited for her role in the Journal of the Ameri-can Pharmacists Association.

Linh LeePharmacy Merchandiser, The Kroger Co./Ralphs

Lee manag-es marketing,

merchandising and strategic planning for 80 Ralphs phar-macies, and develops division sales budgets and execution measurements.

She was instrumental in the evolution of Ralphs pharmacies in 2017, as the department was integrated into the overall stores; despite store closures last year, she helped grow pharmacy sales by $210 million and boosted clinical services volume.

Lee is currently president-elect of the Orange County Pharma-cists Association and a member of several industry boards and associations, including the Acad-emy of Managed Care Pharmacy and the Specialty Pharmacy Association of America.

Franice WilderFloral Director, The Kroger Co./Roundy’s Wisconsin

Wilder stops and smells the roses — and makes the floral programs at Roundy’s better: She creates selling plans, floral plans, layout schedules and sales budgets, among other responsibilities.

She has been promoted seven times since starting with Roundy’s as a cashier 13 years ago; in 2017, she brought collec-tions-themed displays to life and also exceeded sales budget ex-pectations by $1 million, among other accomplishments.

Wilder is part of Frani Cares 2, a five-person team of volunteers that aims to educate inner-city Milwaukee children ages 5 to 18 on how to change their commu-nities by acting.

Aubriana Martindale Division Corporate Affairs Manager, The Kroger Co./Smith’s

Martindale enhances Smith’s reputation by elevating its unique story through external/internal communications, sustainability, social responsi-bility and community relations, overseeing a $2.1 million budget and spearheading corporate and public affairs efforts across seven western states.

Thanks to her work, $12 million was donated to benefit commu-nities in which Smith’s operates; among other initiatives, she launched the Zero Hunger Zero Waste program last year.

Martindale and the Smith’s organization received an Amer-ican Red Cross Compassion in Action Award and recognition as Albuquerque Pride Center’s OUTstanding Major Corporation, among other accolades.

Haritha ReddySenior Director, Business Intelligence, The Kroger Co./VitaCost

Reddy is the architect and leader of VitaCost’s business intelligence systems.

In 2017, she led her team to write a full replacement for the company’s parcel spend man-agement vendor, ultimately sav-ing VitaCost $450,000 annually and increasing shipping credits from carriers; the team worked closely with the Email Marketing Group to win the 2018 Marketing Innovation Award from service provider Selligent at a recent user conference.

Based on her outstanding achievements, Reddy was asked to lead the technical design and implementation of a similar business intelligence system for the Kroger digital team.

Camille BalfanzBrand Manager, Litehouse Inc.

Balfanz manag-es core dress-ing, Litehouse’s

largest retail line; helps execute all company national promo-tions; and oversees the brand’s business in Mexico.

Since she came on board at the company, she has launched six new products and spearheaded a complete package redesign; she also brought Litehouse, NatureSweet tomatoes and Fresh Express salads together for a unique and successful brand partnership that led to a 36 percent increase in units sold during the promo-tional period.

Balfanz is treasurer of the board at Panhandle Animal Shelter and a “class president” of Leadership Sandpoint.

Diane MoravitsDirector of Sales, San Antonio Division, Maher Marketing

Moravits is responsible for all meat, seafood and frozen sales in Texas for her client, H-E-B, by sourcing, securing and maintaining lines of product; she’s the only female sales representative calling on H-E-B’s meat department.

In a challenging retail climate, she grew the business by 27 percent and helped Maher Mar-keting win a Broker of the Year award, based in part on securing new items with Bob Evans; she also implemented several new items to support H-E-B’s Meal Simple program.

Outside of work, she helps with the San Antonio Rodeo Livestock Association.

Robin AfrikDiversity and Inclusion Manager, Meijer

Afrik leads Meijer’s efforts to

promote diversity and inclusion: She directs the company’s Diversity and Inclusion Council to increase demographic diversity, and created the framework for team member resource groups.

In 2017, the organization was recognized as one of the best places to work for disability inclu-sion; Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder highlighted Meijer’s sustainable best practices in valuing team members with disabilities.

Afrik works with several organizations that improve local communities and enhance dialogues, including the Women at Meijer team member resource group and the Holland/Zeeland Community Foundations.

COVER FEATURE


Cynthia CarbonaroTeam Leader, Market Asset Protection, Meijer

Carbonaro supports a culture of safety and “200 percent accountability” in the North Chicago market, working with market directors and store directors on programs devoted to personal safety, asset security, regulatory compliance and shrink prevention.

She was given a stretch assignment in addition to her customary role, leading three out of four markets to achieve their safety and shrink goals, and received the 2017 Market Asset Protection Manager Award.

Carbonaro has given time to many organizations, including National Night Out, Just One Inc., Shop with a Cop and local rescue-dog programs.

Melody LangelandSenior Director, Application Managed Services, Meijer

Langeland is responsible for all software, applications and systems in Meijer’s operations.

Last year, she undertook the largest transition in IT operations that Meijer has undergone in the past four decades, saving millions of dollars and helping simplify and standardize the company’s software environ-ment; she additionally directed the digital coupon program, which now includes 2 million members.

Also in 2017, she merged the group she founded, Women in IT, with Meijer’s Women in Retail and Women in Supply Chain groups to create a new resource group, Women at Meijer.

Karen LangelandDivisional Merchandise Manager, Soft Home, Meijer

Langeland drives the strategic direction of soft home (home textiles, seasonal and crafts) for Meijer, covering pricing, assortment, brands, marketing, store presentation and product development.

She fueled a 36 percent increase in sales of cold-weath-er bedding, turning it from an area of flat sales to an in-store destination; following an internal company culture assessment, Langeland created a new road map for measuring her team’s direction and results.

She volunteers with a local organization that fights child-hood hunger, and takes to heart her role as a mentor to team members.

Emily HenaoDirector, Marketing Strategy, Campaign Planning and Development, Meijer

Overall, Henao guided Meijer through a notable process of transforming project management, directing market-ing strategy and brand develop-ment across the business.

Among her many other accom-plishments in 2017, she devel-oped various campaigns and programs for more than $100 million in paid media, exceeded fiscal-year revenue goals and led Meijer Marketing to win an impressive 30 ADDY Awards.

Mentoring is a priority for Hen-ao, who cites her father as her earliest and most enduring men-toring relationship; she shares her time and talent with Meijer’s Sustainability Council and the Women at Meijer resource group.

COVER FEATURE


Amy BrondykeSpecialist, Interactive Sales and Support, Peapod LLC, an Ahold Delhaize USA Company

Brondyke helped lead the Pea-pod Preferred Partners program, driving its highest revenue level, with a more than 20 percent partner revenue increase above plan; she delivered significant revenue to margins in partner fees and media buys.

She and her team developed and implemented such suc-cessful initiatives as pre-or-dering product not yet on the market and advancing the baby category.

Brondyke helped lead an ex-tension of the Olympics program to the company, marking the first time that a program was lever-aged broadly over partner brands in 26 markets and Peapod.

Elizabeth GastineauKey Account Manager, Frito-Lay North America Division, PepsiCo

Gastineau covers Frito-Lay’s Heartland region, encompassing Roundy’s, Mariano’s, Kroger banner Food 4 Less and Meijer, and representing $110 million in ticket sales.

She developed market-lead-ing local sports promotions for three customers: Meijer, Kroger and Roundy’s; one example was the development of the first Roundy’s-specific Green Bay Packers program.

Gastineau also oversaw the development and in-market activation of the first-ever Mei-jer-specific Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts programs, with both customers gaining share of market.

Hana GoldenSenior Marketing Manager, PepsiCo

Golden covers all shopper marketing strategic develop-

ment/activation for the more than $1.5 billion Frito-Lay, Quaker and chilled beverages category for PepsiCo at Kroger.

In mid-summer 2017, she led the beginning operation of PepsiCo’s proprietary house-hold media tool, which has changed the company’s ability to deliver return-on-investment and efficacy measures.

Golden delivered significant improvements of return on invest-ment, with a 7 percent increase; she also led the creative devel-opment for EDGE technology, partnering with Kroger to deliver brand-relevant content at the point of sale, a first for a brand and a national grocer.

Stephanie KinneySC Operations, Senior Manager Pepsi Beverages Co., PepsiCo

In April 2017, Kinney began her role leading all Pepsi Beverages Cos. (PBC) region transformation work for the California region.

That same year, she led the Geo Box conversion for six locations and 159 routes, which has increased productivity and improved safety and turnover results.

Kinney also rolled out Chilled Transformation across the region, deploying eight locations and 186 routes in 2017, and will deploy another seven locations and 220 routes in 2018; her work on both Geo Box and Chilled Transformation was rated best in class for PBC.

Jyoti MujumudarSenior Category Advisor for Dollar General, Frito-Lay North America Division, PepsiCo

Mujumudar manages nation-al Frito-Lay insights and cate-gory leadership for PepsiCo’s Dollar General account, a $500 million portfolio.

Under her leadership, Dollar General became the No. 1 Frito-Lay North America growth customer in absolute dollars in 2017 in the United States; she worked with the retailer to exceed the net revenue plan by $14.4 million, and as a result, sa-vory share gained 1.1 points and salty share gained one point.

Mujumudar grew Dollar Gener-al Frito-Lay North America sales and share growth in identification of stores with best-destination treatment for 4-foot sets.

Stephanie RiveraSales/Category Management, Senior Manager, North America Commercial Category Leadership, PepsiCo

Rivera led a joint busi-ness-planning process with Publix, resulting in outstanding customer alignment for 2018 Big Bets; through her leadership, PepsiCo achieved major incre-mental space gains in multiple categories, including the grow-ing Starbucks brand and water, giving placement for Pepsi’s largest innovation of the year.

She was acknowledged as a valuable member of the team by Publix leadership for insights and analytics leading to mutual growth.

Recently promoted, Rivera leads the category advisory team for the two largest Northeast grocery customers, overseeing the total PepsiCo portfolio.

Aminta PriceCustomer Manager, Senior Director Costco, Frito-Lay North America Division, PepsiCo

In her previous role, Price increased the joint business-planning (JBP) process for the Texoma region, with more regional account participation by such retailers as Kroger and Alb-ertsons; a key win was conversion of the salty set from subcategory to vendor set in 2018.

In Homeland, salty and Frito-Lay gained more than 1,000 linear feet due to Price’s work with category manage-ment and customers.

With H-E-B, teams aligned during JBP to increase clean/premium space; thanks to the process that Price put in place, Frito-Lay is leading salty growth in Texoma grocery year to date.

Kaylee NiestromKey Account Manager, Frito-Lay North America Division, PepsiCo

Niestrom’s cus-tomers needed help in matching brand strategies with customer needs, which she ably provided.

For Woodman’s, she es-tablished Frito-Lay’s first joint business-planning process; she changed Frito-Lay’s relationship with Kwik Trip from transactional to a joint partnership to gain distribution, perimeter planning and local marketing; and with Econofoods, she used account management principles to deliver successes beneficial to both businesses, growing top-line sales by 7.3 percent and gaining share in the savory category.

Niestrom helped all three retailer customers gain share of market in snacks.

COVER FEATURE


Katie SchiavoneSenior Director, Shopper, Marketing, North American Nutrition and Gatorade, DX Shopper Marketing, PepsiCo

Schiavone’s major 2017 accomplishment was leading the Quaker Overnight Oats launch, which ranks No 1 in Quaker history; she created customized overlays for programmed cus-tomers and drove more than 60 percent of the total volume.

At Albertsons, her team lever-aged shopper and retailer data targeting 2.1 million high-value breakfast households with digital media and card offers; as a result of the 12-week trial program, Albertsons led the grocery category in scans ($207,000) and NOD (3,971).

Schiavone also led other suc-cessful launches for G Flow and Tropicana Probiotics.

Christina FullerCategory Development Senior Account Executive, Procter & Gamble

Fuller leads the P&G Publix HBC category management group, supporting $200 million in retail dollars for total category management of hair and skin care of more than $35 million.

She helped grow the total P&G HBC business ahead of total U.S. share, with a gain of 30 basis points and core sales delivera-bles more than 3.5 points ahead of total U.S. measures.

Fuller created a category man-agement skill tracker to identify opportunities for improvement in the team, and led a training pro-gram to make progress in those areas; on her own time, she and her husband founded a nonprofit organization to provide tutoring to underprivileged students.

LaJeanna JenningsGrocery Supply Chain Leader, Kroger Team, Procter & Gamble

One of four CPG members of the supply chain board, Jennings manages $1 billion of supply across 10-plus sites and one of the largest supply chains in all of Kroger CPGs.

She developed an omni supply chain strategy for Kroger that will deliver the No. 1 source of new growth in the next five years via consumers, stores, distribution centers and the company; she also created a holistic supply chain analysis for pick, fulfillment and packing.

Jennings devised rapid-re-sponse displays/out-of-stock solutions, as a result of which sales increased by 25 percent and out-of-stocks decreased by 32 percent.

Marie MataciaSenior Manager, Customer and Market Knowledge, Publix and Grocery Omnichannel, Procter & Gamble

Matacia leads all research, an-alytics and insight generation for grocery omnichannel and Publix.

She led the first cross-retailer omnichannel “Store Choice” re-search to identify why shoppers choose an online retailer over a brick-and-mortar store, even when the online option is the same, as with Kroger; the output led to improvements of more than $2 million.

Matacia is the consumer and market knowledge training (CMK) leader for B2 College, which achieved a high overall score of 4.5 out of 5; her contribution to the success of future CMK man-agers was recognized by multiple directors and associate directors within the company.

Aileen MusselmanSenior Account Executive, Procter & Gamble

Musselman has direct selling responsibility for P&G fabric care at Ahold Del-haize USA, ($95 million in sales) and is P&G household needs team leader at Ahold Delhaize USA ($340 million.)

In her second year of delivering outstanding results (two-year compound annual growth rate of 7 percent), she’s growing P&G sales by 7 percent and total cate-gory sales by 2 percent annually; Tide, the second-largest P&G brand at Ahold Delhaize USA, is growing by 8 percent.

A seasoned leader with 25 years of industry experience, Musselman was recognized by P&G as the Fabric Care Execu-tive of the Year; she’s also active-ly involved with the Network of Executive Women

Lesley DanielsDirector, Sales and Account Development, Produce for Kids

Responsible for sales of Produce for Kids’ programs across the United States and Canada, Daniels also oversees promotions, in-store displays, contracts, events, main-taining vendor relationships, and recruiting new retail and vendor partners.

Since joining Produce for Kids in July 2017, she has fulfilled her responsibilities of selling-in and execution of the largest year-round program the company has launched to date, with 17 produce companies taking part, 14 of them returning participants and three of them new sponsors.

Formerly the own brand strategic soucing manager at Giant Eagle, Daniels brought two new retailers to the Produce for Kids program.

Jennifer WilliamsMarketing Manager, Kroger Team, Procter & Gamble

Williams has marketing responsibilities for $1 billion in sales, with an emphasis on programs that deliver more than 50 percent of the growth to Kroger.

She established a new benchmark for CPG and retailer co-marketing programs using broad-scale advertising and social media activation (Febreze-Super Bowl), with the companies’ first-ever use of in-store pallets that successfully sold through.

Williams launched a first-time Tide-NASCAR activation that generated more than 12 million impressions and helped Kroger gain almost three times its fair share of the Tide Oxi launch, combining new demand with in-store execution.

Thu-Hien RonasAssociate Director, Meijer, H-E-B and Wegmans, Procter & Gamble

In September 2014, Ronas joined the Meijer consumables team after several years of inconsistent growth and led the quarter-billion-dollar busi-ness to sustainable growth for 13 consecutive quarters across all categories.

Over the past three years, her business has grown 16 percent, five times that of competing retailers in the remaining market.

Ronas received the Great Manager of Others award from P&G leadership and employees in 2017 for having developed and coached new hires at the company, including 50 percent of her high-performing, dynamic, multifunctional sales team, which has delivered strong results over the past three years, and contin-ues to earn recognition.

COVER FEATURE


Alexis ForemanDirector of Employee Relations, Redner’s Markets

Promoted to the role of Redner’s

director of employee relations in 2017, in which capacity she oversees more than 4,500 em-ployees and is the company’s wellness coordinator, Foreman assisted in the transition from a traditional health care plan to a health care exchange.

She also became the HIPPA compliance officer this year and has initiated several programs in this area.

An assistant and consultant in human resources strategy, with ultimate responsibility for pre-serving the employee-employer relationship through the design of the company’s employee rela-tions strategy, Foreman advised the VP of human resources in strategic areas.

Anne MorroneManager II Logistics, Retail Business Services, an Ahold Delhaize USA Company

With financial governance responsibility for the logistics department, including budget development and execution, Morrone developed the sched-uling system known as the Integrated Management System (IMS); her work has been critical to creating the right system for the company.

Her leadership of the IMS for inbound logistics has affected all distribution and transportation; the initiative will drive efficiency by removing $10 million from the supply chain and enable visibility and execution.

In 2017, Morrone helped drive department growth and captured an additional 13.4 percent of savings from other initiatives.

Christina FranklinDirector, Space Management, Rouses Markets

Overseeing all planogram updates, center store fixturing and store resets, Franklin developed an official reset team for Rouses in 2017.

A dedicated problem solver, she coordinated the reset/refresh of 30-plus stores, helping the company gross more than $1 billion, and developed a process and tracking system for all requested updates via business unit to space planning.

Franklin is currently working on a category business plan process and a timeline for category managers to ensure that timelines are followed and opportunities aren’t missed, and acts as a planogram liaison between Rouses and manufac-turers’ representatives.

Dianne GravesAssistant General Counsel, Save-A-Lot Food Stores

Under Graves’ leadership, respon-

sibility for managing workers’ compensation, general liability and other claims transitioned away from the former parent company, Supervalu.

Over the past few months, she has conducted an evaluation of the claims intake process, proposing a simplification to se-nior management and reducing intake steps from eight to three; implementation will take place this summer.

Graves and her team proposed new litigation counsel across the country where formerly approved litigation outside counsel were underperforming or over-whelmed; under her supervision a record number of litigation matters — 49 — was resolved.

Kendra ShawRegional Director, Florida East, Save-A-Lot Food Stores

In her previous role as director of

operations for another company before joining Save-A-Lot this past September and taking over her current territory three months later, Shaw made significant contributions to improvements in operational efficiencies, including $700 mil-lion in revenue, 6 percent sales growth comps and a 7 percent decrease in inventory shrink.

She also helped empower staff, from entry-level to director, resulting in 100 intra-corporate promotions and a 20 percent reduction in turnover.

Currently overseeing 55 Save-A-Lot stores, Shaw sits on the new staffing matrix and job description committees.

Giselle RestrepoSenior Manager, Consumer Insights and Analytics, Schwan’s Consumer Brands Inc.

Bringing a one-company view of the consumer and marketplace to business unit leaders and other leadership teams, Restrepo drives learning to all areas of the company and interfaces with all of Schwan’s business units.

She leads a team of cross-functional partners who each have a stake in monitoring food trends; the team is currently designing a trends summit for corporate employees.

Restrepo played a key role in providing guidance for Schwan’s ingredient simplicity initiative, building a Consumer Empathy platform where teams can learn to think as target consumers do.

Jennifer HolmbergSenior Manager, Product Development, Schwan’s Co.

Holmberg is se-nior product development/inno-vation category manager across Schwan’s dessert portfolio.

She led a cross-functional team pursuing a multimillion-dol-lar growth opportunity, develop-ing a new product according to customer specifications; in spite of a short delay, the product was delivered and Schwan’s won the business.

As part of Schwan’s commit-ment to eliminate four ingredient groups in its products for health-and-wellness reasons, Holmberg led the change in ice cream and pie formulas; even though the transition involved a large number of SKUs, the work was complet-ed at the end of 2017.

Megan SiedlarczykDistrict Manager, Save-A-Lot Food Stores

Siedlarczyk began her career as a part-time clerk and rose through the ranks to assume responsibility for a district consisting of six stores; during her tenure, she has helped improve operational measures such as sales, profit and turnover while reducing expense allocations to increase net profitability.

Overseeing 100 team mem-bers, she also acts as a trainer for other markets.

Siedlarczyk decreased her operating expenses by 20 percent, which directly affected the profitability of her district, and was influential in develop-ing her team’s competencies in respect to operations.

COVER FEATURE


Michelle DelamielleureDirector, Consumer Insights and Analytics, Schwan’s Consumer Brands Inc.

Representing the consumer in all strategy aspects, Delamiel-leure has instilled a consum-er-first perspective within the organization by keeping the consumer front and center in all business decisions; this was accomplished through training sessions and presentation.

She guided her team to create infographics to share learnings, developing and implementing an enterprise-wide best-in-class approach to consumer-first innovation for Schwan’s.

Delamielleure conducted large-scale brand-equity studies across every brand within Schwan’s retail portfolio, and used these learnings to find opportunities for improve-ment of the company’s brands.

Jessica LongshoreDirector, Field Sales Strategy, Schwan’s Consumer Brands Inc.

In her first year, Longshore’s team won Zone of the Year in the East region.

She was promoted to director of field sales strategy, in which capacity one of her first tasks was to lead the launch and ongoing management of new hand-held technology, providing teams with tools for best-in-class execution.

Longshore developed a checklist and an action plan to ensure that newly hired area managers had the necessary equipment, standard operating procedures and knowledge, testing the process with her own managers and then shar-ing it broadly with her peer group.

Angela McKeandDirector, Strategic Growth Channels Marketing, Schwan’s Consumer Brands Inc.

McKeand acquired cross-func-tional leadership alignment and support in the creation of a new channel marketing vision and go-to-market capabilities; she was charged with building a dedicated support team and developing long-term strategies for this channel.

She spearheaded initial cus-tomer discovery conversations, teasing out what shoppers’ needs were.

The sales team of a strategic customer came to McKeand to oversee the development of a new product representing multimillion-dollar growth for Schwan’s; she involved many areas within the company to suc-cessfully create the product.

Tracy CleavesFront End Operations Senior Director, Skogen’s Festival Foods

By looking for best practices in each store and implementing them across the company, Cleaves created efficiencies that reduced labor by more than $400,000 during the last fiscal year.

After listening carefully to cus-tomer complaints that receipts were difficult to understand, she redesigned them and then worked with the vendor partner to implement the changes.

Responsible for the assess-ment and performance of more than 2,500 associates, Cleaves created a new training program for customer service representa-tives and launched a new online associate training program, The Hub, which attained 94 percent participation.

Melissa Van GheemHuman Resources Director, Skogen’s Festival Foods

Van Gheem led a complete trans-

formation of the Festival Foods performance management process, abandoning perfor-mance ratings to use career and engagement discussions.

Her new associate empow-erment program, You’ll Love It, We Promise, gives every associate, regardless of rank, the ability to do anything, using their discretion, to solve a customer’s problem.

Van Gheem rolled out the On-boarding Playbook, which helps reduce turnover and targets the first three critical months of em-ployment; she was also selected to train department managers in collaborative leadership.

Amanda CuellarCorporate Merchandising Manager, Smart & Final

Through training, Cuellar strove to elevate the work performance not only of her team, but also of associates di-rectly affected by Smart & Final’s project work.

She helped create a centralized merchandising internet portal that houses all current docu-ments needed for remodels and new store projects, and was part of the team working on the new tag and sign program, which rolled out this year.

Cuellar controlled all budgets on capital projects, underspend-ing on most; 2017 merchandising projects that she participated in included 14 new stores, five major remodels, five expansions and 22 natural food additions.

Kim CookGeneral Manager, Transportation and Traffic, Smart & Final

Managing negotiations and

the selection process with all third-party carriers, as well as $3 million in backhaul revenue, Cook helped drive improvement of inbound transportation on-time performance from 81 percent in 2016 to 85 percent in 2017 through a partnership with the buying team.

She created and implemented an innovative less-than-load (LTL) backhaul program with the potential to increase backhaul revenues by 20 percent.

A certified Oz accountabil-ity trainer, Cook worked with Unipro and current carriers to add 20-plus vendors and more than $250,000 in revenue to the backhaul program in 2017.

Madelyn BrooksHuman Resources Manager, Associate Relations and Compliance, Smart & Final

The corporate office underwent a major change in 2017, and Brooks played a sig-nificant role in helping corporate staff manage and work through the change.

California requires that all management staff complete a workplace harassment training session every two years, so, as 2017 was a training year for the company, she ensured that all associates completed this train-ing through a new online system.

Brooks saved the company more than $3 million in un-employment claims and work opportunity tax credits (WOTC), and moved the company from paper WOTC forms to online.

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Aishia KindigHuman Resource Manager, Supply Chain, Smart & Final

Kindig led a campaign to award and rec-ognize important and top-per-forming employees, and also created Smart & Final’s new Supply Chain Manager of the Year award.

As a member of the company’s HR team, Kindig oversees two distribution centers as well as a crew of private fleet drivers; she has improved the flow of communication and engagement between upper management and associates.

Kindig works closely with Smart & Final’s charitable foundation, not only volunteering hours herself, but also recruiting fellow employees to join in, espe-cially for winter holiday events.

Katrina PetersonCategory Manager, Southeastern Grocers

Known for her pricing and category man-agement expertise, Peterson developed a streamlined pricing survey process that kept South-eastern Grocers priced compet-itively at the market level across all stores, and was updated weekly based on market condi-tions; she also created a process allowing the team to plan circular activity further into the future.

She won the company’s Mer-chandising Triple Crown Award twice in a row, beating plan metrics for Q3 and Q4 in fiscal year 2017.

Peterson is involved with the North Florida Frozen & Refrig-erated Food Association as one of Southeastern Grocers’ delegates.

Kristie Bohn-BermanReal Estate Manager, SpartanNash

Last year, Bohn-Berman led a team effort in reviewing outstanding leases and early terminations that netted a savings of $2.94 million for SpartanNash.

She was instrumental in a major acquisition involving the integration of five new facilities, including the company’s first USDA-certified food-processing plant, and supported wholesale distribution when independent customers consolidated and sold numerous retail locations.

Bohn-Berman was a key player when SpartanNash’s military distribution network won a multi-million-dollar contract with a 90-day implementation window and it became imperative to lease a 30,000-square-foot warehouse.

Mary BrunstingDirector of Network Systems Engineering, SpartanNash

A strong leader within SpartanNash’s informa-tion technology unit, Brunsting was responsible for a string of network systems improvements that helped her company better track, measure and identify more than 120 project requests from business partners.

She leads a 15-person team that has deployed improvements and upgrades in data and video technology for all SpartanNash locations and their customers.

Brunsting was selected by senior leadership to serve as a volunteer lead for SpartanNash’s Helping Hands in the Commu-nity Day; this year’s effort raised $76,600 for local community organizations.

Karen Calligaris-RodriguezPharmacy Procurement Manager and Pharmacy

Warehouse Manager, SpartanNash

Managing two direct reports within warehouse and pharmacy, Calligaris-Rodriguez led a prod-uct and price evaluation effort to decrease the cost of goods by $1.5 million in 2017.

She also led a project that resulted in the opening of SpartanNash’s first warehouse and pharmacy in October 2017, and a new and more efficient state licensing and accreditation process within the firm.

Active in her community, Calligaris-Rodriguez volunteers for the American Cancer Society and the Walk for Life, as well as for the West Michigan Knights of Columbus Honor Guard.

Sherry FerebeeMDV Division Controller, SpartanNash

A self-professed Microsoft Excel

“geek,” Ferebee has striven to make the MDV finance depart-ment’s systems more user-friend-ly and efficient, earning kudos from colleagues along the way.

She also played a critical role in developing an overall process for the new Revenue Recognition Standard, devel-oping tracking systems and an ongoing review procedure of the contracts as required by the new accounting guidance.

As a SpartanNash Community Captain for the Norfolk Service Center, Ferebee organized more than a half-dozen events, includ-ing Helping Hands Day, Earth Week and the SpartanNash Foundation Pledge Campaign.

Amy EllisPharmacy Services Manager, SpartanNash

Recently, Ellis led the clinical team’s

initiatives to improve medication therapy management (MTM) services by collaborating with physician offices to improve patient care; the effort also led to increased revenues of $200,000.

She was also a key player in expanding the Opioid Safety Project to 61 Michigan phar-macies, in the process making SpartanNash the first major grocery retailer in Michigan to offer this kind of program.

Ellis is a member of the Michi-gan Pharmacists Association, the American Pharmacists Associ-ation and the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs; locally, she sits on the Kent County Opioid Task Force.

Carlye CordesConsumer Relations Manager, SpartanNash

Adept at understanding

customer styles and segmen-tations, Cordes, who manages consumer relations at more than 140 corporate-owned stores in eight states, as well as at 40-plus fuel centers, is noted by Spartan Nash as a key player in helping the retailer deliver a more personal and relevant message to the consumer.

Her work on SpartanNash’s loyalty program accounted for more than $11 million in incre-mental sales in 12 months.

Cordes devotes her time in the community to various organizations, including Kids’ Food Basket, and also teaches dance to young children in her own studio.

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Janis HuffmanPharmacy Operations Manager, SpartanNash

Overseeing goals and performance management for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in 61 locations, Huff-man drove a $400,000 reduction in labor costs.

She was instrumental in building SpartanNash’s Central Fill initiative; for the program’s expansion, she identified the building design, workflow process and logistics, and established a second prescrip-tion-fill machine and associated technology to accommodate the increased volume.

Huffman is a member of the Michigan Pharmacists Associa-tion and the Network of Execu-tive Women; she is also active in her church and volunteers as a Sunday school teacher.

Trish JonesMDV Division Customer Service Manager, SpartanNash

Jones oversees 14 area managers across Spar-tanNash’s military network, and has been pivotal in maintaining the company’s close relation-ship with more than 130 unique military customer installation locations.

She helped lead the rollout of SpartanNash’s exclusive military private-brand program, increas-ing speed to shelf and fill voids on products.

A current board member of the Hampton Roads American Logistic Association (ALA), Jones has also volunteered for the past 25 years with the organization to help with military family Christ-mas assistance programs, and also to raise funds for various scholarships.

Lauren MillsMarketing Analytics Supervisor, SpartanNash

Regarded as a thought leader in

her company, Mills was instru-mental in leveraging resources and business partnerships while creating efficiencies that have re-sulted in reducing SpartanNash’s annual expenses in one area by more than $750,000.

Using her aptitude for digging into the specifics of the compa-ny’s data to solve problems, she has also been a critical part of training SpartanNash’s marketing and analyst teams.

Mills developed and improved many of SpartanNash’s new analytic processes while making its quarterly process of gathering business results, industry trends and analytic feedback more efficient and user-friendly.

Cassandra NinoGrocery Category Manager, SpartanNash

As a grocery category manager

on special assignment, Nino was called upon by Spartan-Nash’s senior management to oversee innovations in forecast-ing, budgeting and reporting, as well as a number of cross-func-tional projects and process improvement efforts.

She also played a critical role in the transition of SpartanNash’s once-exclusive Our Family brand to the Michigan marketplace of 87 corporate-owned stores and nearly 400 independent customers.

Nino was selected by senior management to serve as one of its 2017 Innovation Award judges, due to her extensive knowledge of the industry and its innovations.

Kenya PhillipsMDV Division Inventory Control Manager, SpartanNash

Phillips’ leader-ship and dedication

to getting the job done resulted in SpartanNash’s successful support of military customers during an accelerated timeline of less than two months from job inception to completion; she helped enable the project to be completed on time and on budget.

While managing a team of specialists, she has kept an inventory accuracy level of more 99.7 percent annually.

Phillips is also involved with the Network of Executive Women, the largest women’s leadership organization serving the retail and consumer goods industry, and organizes charity fundraising events at her Co-lumbus, Ga., facility.

Evette SmithGrocery Category Manager, Sprouts Farmers Markets

Responsible for liaising with

300 stores nationwide, Smith was able to turn around several underperforming categories by building best-in-class vendor partnerships that also led to the creation of more profitable customer-centric promotional strategies.

She led Sprouts’ direct warehouse initiative, in which she built processes and systems that enabled the company to increase direct buying, and was instru-mental in training new category managers.

Smith is instrumental in organizing and facilitating SproutsFest, a two-day table-top educational event that the retailer holds each year for 400 vendors and more than 700 Sprouts team members.

Kate GibsonDirector of Vitamins, Sprouts Farmers Markets

In charge of Sprouts’ key vitamin categories,

Gibson has been pivotal in the category’s growth and profitabil-ity; she additionally helps lead the company’s Vitamin Camp, in which Sprouts team members engage in a training program to enhance their knowledge of vitamin products.

A leader in team member product education, merchan-dising, category promotions and vendor onboarding, she also manages Sprouts’ private label supplement line, which contains about 450 SKUs.

Gibson was awarded the “Learn and Grow Together” Sprouts Values Award in 2017 for her inspiring leadership and outstanding contributions to the company.

Carrie QuigleyDirector of the Project Management Office, SpartanNash

Heading up all of Spartan Nash’s major undertak-ings in information technology, Quigley oversaw 129 projects involving 24 retail, 51 distribu-tion, 15 food manufacturing and 39 service center tech-based initiatives.

She is recognized by the company for building useful tech tools to increase efficiencies and for spearheading improvements in its manufacturing process, which was previously plagued by system issues.

Quigley has also served as a committee member on behalf of SpartanNash for the Uniform Communication Standard com-mittee for the past five years, and coaches for her local American Youth Soccer Organization.

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Kelli WalterDairy Category Manager, Sprouts Farmers Markets

As grocery category manager,

Walter quickly turned around underperforming categories through innovative product offerings and relevant promo-tions; over the past year,she was subsequently named frozen food category manager and, most recently, dairy category manager.

She played a key role in bringing local products to new markets while also leading the department training program and new product training webinars.

During a company trip to Mex-ico City, Walter provided major support to Sprouts’ Vitamin Angels partnership, under which the two organizations helped more than 2 million mothers and children receive access to life-saving vitamins.

Michele MerchantCategory Manager, Dairy, Stop & Shop

Merchant previously led an

ethnic merchandising team at Ahold USA that saw ethnic, specialty and kosher food sales growth outpace total store sales growth.

In her latest role at Stop & Shop, she was challenged with taking on responsibility for dairy, which also included training a whole new team of analysts, while making time to nurture and maintain good vendor relation-ships and drive private-brand growth and sharing her knowl-edge and expertise across other categories.

An experienced professional in the grocery and retail sector, Merchant is also skilled in mento-ring and developing members of a diverse team.

Laura RajchelHuman Resources Business Partner II, Stop & Shop

Cited for her ability to create

a positive culture, Rajchel leads Stop & Shop’s endeavors to keep managers consistent with regard to company policies/practices, legal considerations, compliance regulations and company priori-ties, while advocating both com-pany and associate concerns, providing insights and leading action-planning efforts.

She has been key to expanding Stop & Shop’s Women Adding Value (WAV) program, which helps the retailer foster diversity in its leadership while mentoring women in the company.

Rajchel also organized WAV group participants to partner with the Salvation Army to raise $15,000 to buy gifts and es-sential items for needy families.

Sheila WaltonHuman Resources Business Partner, Stop & Shop

Supporting two districts consisting

of 42 stores and two separate district teams, Walton is lauded for her ability to create an inclu-sive environment, drive customer engagement and act as a skilled labor relations specialist within her stores.

She received the Women Who Rock award for her HR achievements, participates in the company’s Woman Adding Value program, volunteers her time for all of the International Women’s Day events and is part of the Network of Executive Women’s Rising Star program.

Walton helped organize a Christmas drive that allowed more than 250 families to receive winter clothing and have their letters to Santa fulfilled.

Stacy BoulierCompensation Manager, Supervalu

In charge of compensation administration for

10,000-plus employees, Boulier played a major role in a project involving Supervalu’s $4 billion acquisition of a competitor, stepping out of her comfort zone to take on responsibilities that extended far outside of her compensation expertise.

In addition to managing job mapping for more than 1,000 employees, she helped identify the initial cost impacts of HR decisions related to onboarding new employees.

Boulier is also a member of World-At-Work, a compensa-tion-based trade group, and a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP), as well as having received Professional in HR (PHR) certification.

Brandy DressenSenior Manager, Supervalu

As senior man-ager responsible for Supervalu’s

technology services messag-ing and collaboration teams, Dressen played a pivotal role in merger-and-acquisition activities, communications, and document management efforts after the acquisition of a huge competitor.

Last year, she established governance of the company’s SharePoint systems, helping to eliminate or reduce costs and increase usability across the enterprise.

Beyond her busy work sched-ule, Dressen demonstrates her abiding love for dogs by volun-teering locally for the Minnesota Pit Bull and Secondhand Hound dog rescue groups, and helping to organize annual fundraisers for both groups.

Liz MichelettiManager, Retail Integrity, Supervalu

Having worked in grocery for most of her life, Micheletti

now manages and oversees the tag and sign process, as well as point-of-sale promotional pricing tools that are used across six Supervalu retail brands and at more than 230 stores.

A top performer in the store operations department, she led a project with stores to identify and implement 11 separate system enhancements that resulted in significantly improved efficiency and cost savings in merchandis-ing and price tagging.

Micheletti also designed a communication portal that enhanced communication, and led an initiative to enhance com-munication and execution of the digital coupon program across all six Supervalu banners.

Liz PhamManager, Corporate Communications, Supervalu

Handling communications

for the 5,000-plus attendees of Supervalu’s largest sales event, the National Expo, and directing internal communications for the company’s 31,000 employees, Pham helped onboard a new wholesale leadership team and about 7,000 employees from two newly acquired companies.

She put together comprehen-sive plans and key messaging for a new distribution center in Harrisburg, Pa., and the major reorganization of Supervalu’s distribution facilities in the Pacific Northwest.

Pham’s efforts have helped increase readership of the com-pany’s bimonthly wholesale digital newsletter, and use of its mobile app rose 25 percent.

Melissa SaxSenior Director, Wholesale Human Resources and Talent Acquisition, Supervalu

With wholesale HR responsibil-ities for about 10,000 employees and recruiting responsibilities for around 13,000 employees, Sax works closely with the executive leadership team and the CEO on facilitating candidate sourcing and selection of new talent for the company.

She was instrumental in the development and rollout of a standard hiring process for all dis-tribution centers that focuses on a quality prescreening process.

Sax spearheaded planning for Supervalu’s Welcome Week, put together to foster an inviting and informative set of events for employees coming on board subsequent to the acquisition of Unified Grocers.

Mary Vander LeestManager, Supervalu

A star with expe-rience working with the retail, pharma-

cy, and private-brand divisions on boosting the company’s philanthropic activities, Vander Leest directs company-wide dis-tribution of more than $2 million in planned charitable giving.

She developed the company’s first private-brand taste test specifically for children: During 45-minute sessions with Super-valu chefs and food scientists, children ages 6 to 16 sampled and critiqued products against national brands.

Vander Leest directed a sepa-rate $1 million giving campaign, working with 39 internal teams across the country to identify local nonprofits that could benefit from company and associate volunteering.

Kellie WalkerSenior Category Manager, Supervalu

Walker imple-mented an effec-tive set of daily and

weekly processes to increase accuracy in reports while helping grow category sales.

She organized and laid out pro-cesses to help increase advertis-ing dollars to retail partners by 15 percent over the previous year; as a result of this, Supervalu was able to boost its advertising.

A founding member of the Northern California Women’s Resource Group, Walker is also heavily involved in local fundrais-ing for the Special Olympics and the American Cancer Society; additionally, as an adviser to the Rowell Ranch Rodeo, she coordinates fundraisers, charity benefit events and children’s agricultural education enrichment studies.

Kelley WedekingDirector, Human Resources Project Management and Organizational Development, Supervalu

As corporate HR director, Wedeking was responsible for running the integration work for Supervalu’s acquisition of Unified Grocers; with no previous expe-rience in this area, she used her background and experiences to develop meaningful processes.

Subsequently named the com-pany’s first-ever director of proj-ect management and organiza-tional development, she oversaw a handful of successful projects aimed at making administration easier and more efficient.

Currently working on her master’s degree in organiza-tional development and change, Wedeking recently took part in a cross-cultural exchange in India as part of her coursework.

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Brenda DolanShelf Management Representative, Supervalu/Eastern Region

One of the company’s top shelf-manage-ment pros, Dolan manages a territory of 23 stores over a wide geography that saw her weekly revenue increase 34 percent in 2017 even as her territory grew 28 percent; she supports many independent retailers across West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio and Maryland.

Thanks to her excellent planning and coordination, she was able to execute 27 resets ef-fectively in 2017, often managing multiple projects simultaneously at different steps in the rest process.

Dolan is also involved in her community, and was a past pres-ident of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knights of Columbus.

Katy OlinskiManager, Regulatory, Nutrition and Scientific Affairs, Topco

Olinski manages a team of regu-

latory and nutrition specialists, and provides guidance to Topco members and internal stakehold-ers on regulatory issues.

She designed a tool for management and associates for collecting information to conduct competitive product assess-ments, which aided the com-pany in reviewing and making competitive decisions regarding its own-brand product offering, and has also been actively engaged in Topco’s Product Transparency Initiative enabling consumers to get additional information about its products.

Olinski has received a number of Topco’s TopNotch awards for her accomplishments in innova-tion, collaboration and leadership.

Nadine ParrisSenior Manager, Sales and Marketing, Supervalu/Professional Services

Heading up an $800,000 mar-keting budget used to educate company sales reps, Parris has made a huge impact through her efforts to drive Supervalu’s product awareness and maxi-mize sales leads from clients and prospects nationwide.

She initiated a weekly field sales training program for 30 to 50 sales representatives and service specialists to further their knowledge and under-standing of Supervalu’s service offerings, thereby helping them increase sales.

Parris has garnered a number of accolades from partners, including GE’s Change Agent Award and Ceridian’s Circle of Excellence Award.

Jill DaviesBusiness Integration Lead, Target

As the lead-er of Target’s

grocery sustainability initiatives Davies has been exemplary in shepherding Target’s practices to become an industry leader, especially in sustainable seafood; an important part of her role is managing relationships with external sustainability partners.

Under her direction, in July 2017, Target met its goal of offering 100 percent sustainably sourced fresh and frozen sea-food products.

Davies represents Target in the Seafood Task Force, a group of retail-sector profes-sionals, suppliers and NGOs that addresses the problem of unfair labor practices and aims to promote improved traceability in the seafood industry.

Kristin KulpinskiCampaign Manager, TCC Global

Responsible for the management of the marketing

budget for each of the com-pany’s campaigns in North America, Kulpinski has been in-strumental in helping TCC Global achieve maximum performance and return on investment.

In her primary role as a cam-paign manager, Kulpinski created and executed highly creative, insight-based marketing cam-paigns that helped drive a path to purchase and retailer brand loyalty; her strategic role is critical to winning new business.

Kulpinski volunteers her time weekly with The Porch, the largest ministry of its kind for young adults, and also serves as a mentor through Mercy Street Dallas, a ministry that works with at-risk youth.

Jillian SiricaManager, Digital Marketing, Tops Markets LLC

Sirica continu-ously challenged herself while

managing all daily digital mar-keting initiatives, budgets and social media strategies, as well as overseeing strategic business development ecommerce proj-ects integral to Tops’ success.

Her team developed a digital sweepstakes promotion that helped drive incremental sales, increase trip frequency and strengthen vendor relationships; with the promise of winning free Gatorade for a year, the program included the brand’s products across the store, from sports drinks to health care items.

Sirica led Tops’ partnership with grocery delivery service Instacart, coordinating efforts among pricing, IT, operations, merchandising and marketing.

Kathy RomanowskiPublic and Media Relations Manager, Tops Markets LLC

Promoted to her current post

this past February, Romanowski was instrumental in conducting full-scale media training for all store managers, ensuring that they were prepared to handle any potential interviews and respond appropriately to questions per-taining to a labor dispute.

Due to her diligent efforts, Tops’ media presence more than doubled from 2016 to 2017; she accomplished this impressive feat by meeting with team members regularly to develop stories to pitch to the local media about the retailer.

Romanowski has received the 40 Under 40 Award from Buffalo Business First and the President’s Award from YMCA Buffalo Niagara.

Kathleen AllenSenior Manager, Community Relations, Tops Markets LLC

Allen’s primary focus in 2017

was to train a new community relations team, working with each member to ensure that they could succeed in their roles.

Fostering relationships with the communities that Tops serves, she played a key role in increasing Tops in Education par-ticipation: The program, which gives back to schools, achieved increases of 7 percent and 10 percent in school and customer participation, respectively.

Allen worked with nonprofits whose mission aligns with Tops’ mission to eradicate hunger and improve the quality of life of children, and she streamlined her department budget, saving labor and achieving more accurate reporting through automation.

COVER FEATURE

2018 Top Women in Grocery

Kanika SodhiTeam Leader, Wakefern, Unilever

Sodhi com-pletely trans-formed Unilever’s

relationship with retailer coop-erative Wakefern Food Corp. by connecting with all levels to deliver a compelling strate-gic partnership grounded in results: 4.6 percent growth in personal care, and 4.9 percent in Unilever’s foods business.

She built two key programs: Growing Roots — Seed What’s Happening, to teach consumers healthier eating habits, and the Right on Girls self-esteem initia-tive with the Dove brand.

Thanks to her passion for her job and her strong work ethic, Sodhi’s reach has extended far beyond the Wakefern business — she also offers her viewpoint on initiatives within Unilever’s corporate headquarters.

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The Top Women in Grocery Gala will take place

Nov. 8 at the Palmer House Hilton, in Chicago.

PG looks forward to seeing many of the honorees and

their supporters at this inspirational event.

Danielle Bunch Kimberly Cowen Rising Stars

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