New Advisory Board Members Announced
New York, April 15, 2021 – CommerceNext, a community and conference for marketers at retail and direct-to-consumer brands, today announces that it’s restarting in-person conferences, beginning with CommerceNext IRL, scheduled for September 28-29, 2021, at the New York Hilton Midtown.
More than 600 ecommerce and retail executives are expected to attend and gather in person for the first time since the Covid pandemic shut down in-person gatherings in March 2020. CommerceNext will follow CDC guidelines and venue protocols to ensure the safety of its attendees.
“With the acceleration of vaccinations, we now have the confidence to prepare for our community to finally be back together in person for information-sharing, learning and networking,” said CommerceNext Co-Founder Veronika Sonsev. “We could not be more excited to see the CommerceNext community in person in late September.”
During the pandemic, CommerceNext continued to provide its community with critical industry information via virtual events and networking. CommerceNext’s virtual events engaged more than 5,000 participants since March 2020 and included four virtual summits, more than 30 webinars and nearly 40 virtual lunch and learns. The company also released proprietary shopper and merchant research with benchmarking and trend data as the industry navigated through major business adjustments due to the pandemic.
“CommerceNext has done the best job in the industry of filling the void left from in-person events with their virtual programming – and the advisory board is extremely proud of how we’ve contributed to that success… but let’s get back to it,” said FTD CEO and CommerceNext advisory board member Charlie Cole. “If you haven’t attended a CommerceNext event in the past – you are missing the most genuine opportunity to connect with folks across the digital industry in an authentic, collaborative way. I think I speak for the whole advisory board when I say we can’t WAIT to see all of you in-person.”
New Advisory Board Members
For the past three years, CommerceNext’s advisory board of industry leaders has provided critical feedback and guidance to ensure that its programming and content are relevant and timely. The advisory board spans a wide variety of ecommerce and retail categories and business models. A number of new advisory board members are being announced today. Below is an updated list of advisory board members:
Web Smith, Founder at 2PM
Melissa Grillo Aruz, Founder at Aruz Ventures
Sunil Kaki, EVP, Marketing at Beachbody
Elyse Burack, Head of DTC Marketing at Capsule
Lev Peker, CEO at CarParts.com
Emily Hickey, Founder at Chief Detective Growth Consulting
Emily Culp, fmr CEO at CoverFX
*Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer at E.L.F. BEAUTY
Amy Africa, CEO at Eight By Eight
*Doug Jensen, SVP Go-to-Market (GTM) Analytics & Activation and Learning Center of Excellence (COE) at Estee Lauder Companies, Inc.
*Matt Gehring, GM at Everlane
Geoff Sanders, CMO at Firstleaf
Vijay Talwar, CEO of EMEA at Foot Locker
Shawna Hausman, CMO at FSA Store
Charlie Cole, CEO at FTD
Leslie Emmons Burthey, VP of Marketing, Gold and Telehealth at GoodRX
Jason Nickel, fmr SVP, Marketing & E-commerce at Kjaer Weis
Angela Hsu, SVP, Marketing and eCommerce at Lamps Plus
Qun Wei, Head of Growth Data & Analytics at Lemonade
Scott Ableman, CMO at LevelFields
*Rob Schmults, Executive Board at MidOcean Partners
Bree Casart, Senior Director, Connected Consumer Experience at Nike
Liesel Walsh, fmr VP, CRM, Loyalty and Insights at Party City
Barkha Saxena, Chief Data Officer at Poshmark
Joe Megibow, CEO at Purple
Naomi Jacobs, Director, Social Strategy & Business Development at Qurate Retail Group (QVC, HSN)
David Cost, VP, Ecommerce & Digital Marketing at Rainbow
Rohan Deuskar, Founder & CEO at Stylitics
Anurag Kadyan, Vice President of eCommerce & Digital Marketing at S’well
Mike Lackman, CEO at Trade Coffee
*Alex Waldman, Co-Founder & Creative Director at Universal Standard
Malena Higuera, General Manager at Urban Decay
*Daren Hull, President at Vera Bradley
*Sarah Henry, Sr. Director | Head of Content & Influencer Marketing at Walmart
Jon Mandell, SVP, Membership Marketing and Global Ecommerce at WW
*Newly added
