PLMA 2024 Annual Meeting & Leadership Conference

His teams are responsible for innovation, marketing, revenue management, sales planning, product development, regulatory, sourcing and replenishment.

Prior to joining Albertsons, Brandon spent 12 years at McKinsey & Company as a Partner and Global Leader of McKinsey’s Consumer Goods Practice. He started his career with General Mills as a Customer Account Manager and then spent time as an Associate Marketing Manager for Wells' Dairy leading Blue Bunny's frozen novelty business

Jason’s experience also includes P&L oversight, store operations, category management, private brands, global sourcing, marketing, real estate, supply chain, digital tools, and eCommerce across mass, club, and specialty retail channels.

He most recently served as EVP, Chief Merchandising Officer of Dollar General, leading Merchandising, Marketing, Digital Tools / eCommerce, Innovation, Global Sourcing, Private Brands, and In-Store Experience with responsibility for sales, margin, traffic, market share, and strategic initiatives. 

Jason was previously EVP and COO of The Vitamin Shoppe and EVP, Chief Merchandising Officer at Family Dollar. He spent more than 15 years with Walmart/Sam’s Club, beginning in government relations/regulatory affairs and culminating his tenure as VP, Merchandising, Health & Family Care for Sam’s Club.

Arjun has worked closely with several companies in the food and grocery industry and has served in leadership roles both in industry and academia. Prior to COGKNITION, he was a member of the executive leadership team Global Experience Specialists (GES), serving as Senior Vice President of Strategy, Analytics, and Insights. He was also an award-winning business school professor at Illinois Tech, having published in leading academic journals and developed graduate and executive programs in analytics, design, and management.

Arjun currently serves on the board of the Center for Event Industry Research (CEIR) as well as Consulting Economist for Winsight-Technomic.

The beginning of his professional career was spent focusing on insights and today he has become an expert in primary research techniques, ranging from market segmentation to new product development, to customer satisfaction and loyalty studies.

Previously, Erich served as the Strategy PMO at a $10B grocery retailer, helping them build a change management infrastructure and governance process for the execution of their customer strategy.

Since 2018 he has authored the US Grocery Retailer Preference Index (RPI), an industry standard for benchmarking grocery retailer brand equity, in addition to other thought leadership pieces. 

In his current role, as Director of Products & Solutions, Joe is the U.S. product lead for dunnhumby’s flagship assortment strategy tool within the Walmart Luminate suite of solutions. One of the original members of the dunnhumby team at Walmart, Joe helped map out the vision for how integrating customer insights would change the category management and assortment planning process at Walmart.

Joe spent the first 17 years of his career with Daymon, working closely with retailers and suppliers to grow their private brand programs and was also a key contributor and co-author of dunnhumby’s 2021 whitepaper, “Why Private Brands should form part of every Retailer’s growth strategy.” 

Amber previously spent about four years working for Kroger, where she was one of the first digital hires, established the framework for its current RMN offering and launched several multi-billion-dollar businesses and alternative revenue streams.

Most recently, Amber worked as a consultant for small- and mid-sized grocery retailers to develop their omnichannel marketing strategies.

Threefold offers retailers services that include RMN consultancy, a white-label in-house RMN management service and Plan-Apps, its proprietary commerce marketing technology. Threefold works with 95% of the top global CPG brands, and its current Retail Media Network partners include Walgreens Boots, Asda, Co-op, Morrisons and The Very Group.

She currently leads the Direct to Retail sales team, working with customers across retail private label and traditional consumer packaged goods. Brooke and her team focus on bringing valuable solutions to retailers and supplier partners alike to launch innovative and consistent private brand products. She prides herself in being able to build and cultivate sales strategy and high performing sales teams which led to a 45% sales growth in private brands over a two year span in her previous role as VP of Sales at SunOpta Inc.

She focuses on creatively executing customer engagements, leading with consumer insights and marketplace trends, and bringing to life Kerry’s sustainable nutrition strategy.

Over her 10-year career at Kerry, Jocelyn has worked across functions, teams and channels, building a reputation as a problem solver and innovative thinker. She led the development of Kerry’s best-in-class innovation xcelerator program, iXp, to meet customer demand in an everchanging and fast-paced industry.

 Jennifer has successfully supported several of MPG’s largest clients as Senior Director, Client Engagement since transitioning to the Omni-Commerce Sales Services teams. Before transitioning to MPG’s Client Engagement team, Jennifer spent nine years as an MPG consultant successfully leading a wide variety of projects including go-to-market commercialization, launch strategy, voice of customer, organizational design.  

Jennifer has directly managed or supported nearly every class of trade, including alternate channel specialty customers and TV network shopping. Throughout her supplier career at the Johnson and Johnson Consumer Company, she worked closely with cross-functional partners to create impactful national brand strategies and consumption-based demand generation programs. She was also based in Bentonville, Arkansas and served as a Walmart Team Leader for five years.

Over the last several years, Sherry has successfully coached and supported top, mid-size and small brands drive and improve growth, ROI, and sharpen their GTM strategies and financial plans.

Sherry’s experience includes nearly 14 years in beauty and personal care leadership positions for CVS Health where she managed a $4.5B+ CVS ebauty and personal care business and led efforts such as P&L training, the launch of CVS Beauty Club and contributed to the growth of many well-known and exclusive beauty and personal care brands. 

Prior to CVS, Sherry spent 15 years at Kmart and has held roles in retail store management and corporate, including Inventory Planning, Category Manager, and Divisional Merchandise Manager.

Kristy began her career in the Quality Assurance Department at the H-E-B Ice Cream Plant. She later held the positions of Production Planner and Production Team Leader. Kristy then transferred to the H-E-B Meat Plant and oversaw a production team of 42 partners and played a key role in driving production and optimizing value stream mapping for the plant.

Most recently Kristy worked in beauty procurement where she assisted with managing the skincare category and oversaw depilatories and health living seasonal product. Over the past few years, she has worked to increase her procurement knowledge by managing initiatives and programs to grow profitable sales for the company, as well as managing pricing, promotions, marketing, inventory and supplier management. Through Kristy’s deep focus on objectives, end-to-end thinking, thorough knowledge, and level setting, she elevates quality and implementation success.

IDave serves clients on a broad range of topics including product development, ecommerce, retail and assortment strategy, supply chain, design to value and operations transformation.

Prior to McKinsey, Dave spent several years as VP Private Brands at Home Depot where he drove outsize growth across the business.

Brooke co-leads McKinsey’s Industrial Distribution Practice across North America where she serves B2B clients on category management topics, including assortment optimization and private label business building.

Prior to McKinsey, Brooke was Chief Business Officer at Palmetto, a leading clean technology company where she was responsible for advising and structuring key functions to drive growth.

In his current role, Jon and his team function as strategy consultants for Daymon’s key partners, focusing on private brand development, strategic design, operational execution, and relationship management.

Prior to Daymon, Jon held multiple roles in the service industry and pharmaceuticals, as well as being an entrepreneur.

In his role, Mooney leads merchandising efforts that deliver in-demand, on-trend products for an exceptional customer shopping experience. Patrick most recently served as Vice President of Merchandising Support, where he supported commodity tracking and vendor cost management in the Vendor Management Office.

Prior to that, he worked as director of Sales Planning, centralizing, and executing marketing programs. He also worked as a manager in Corporate Merchandising and was responsible for weekly promotional and planning initiatives for stores. Patrick joined Wakefern as a Leader in Training in 2009 and has held various roles in the company’s Information Technology, Health and Beauty Care, and Grocery divisions.

...marketing solutions, long- and short-term market channel strategies, and ongoing customer solutions that deliver positive impact. 

Prior to MPG, Chris spent more than 20 years with Wakefern Corp, where he led the teams and strategies for banner brands including ShopRite, Price Rite, The Fresh Grocer and Dearborn Market.

During his tenure at Wakefern, Chris served as Vice President, Private Label and Own Brands and spearheaded the successful overhaul of the ShopRite private label through the creation of two completely new and proprietary brands, Bowl & Basket and Paperbird. His team also led the reinvention of the organization's better-for-you brand, Wholesome Pantry and grew this business by more than $2.7 billion in sales.

Prior to that she served on the PLMA Board of Directors for more than 20 years, including the position of Chair in 2003 and 2004.

Her career includes multiple decades of executive experience in the private label industry, including positions with Daymon Associates, Comstock Michigan Fruit-Agrilink-Birds Eye and McCain Foods USA, Inc.

In 2013, Davies became the first woman to be inducted into the Private Label Hall of Fame and is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.