Oliver Chen is a Managing Director and senior equity research analyst covering retail and luxury goods. Mr. Chen’s deep understanding of the consumer and his ability to forecast the latest trends and technological changes that will impact the retail space has set him apart from peers. Oliver’s broad coverage and circumspect view makes him the thought partner of retail and brand leaders. His coverage of the retail sector has led to numerous industry awards and press coverage from CNBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Financial Times, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal and others. Most recently, Mr. Chen was recognized on the 2018 and 2017 Institutional Investor All-America Research team as a top analyst in the retailing/department stores & specialty softlines sector. Mr. Chen was also selected as a preeminent retail influencer as he was named to the National Retail Federation (NRF) Foundation’s “2019 List of People Shaping Retail’s Future.” Considered an “industry expert,” Mr. Chen frequently appears as a speaker/panelist at key industry events.

Prior to joining Cowen in 2014, he spent seven years at Citigroup covering a broad spectrum of the U.S. consumer retail landscape, including specialty stores, apparel, footwear & textiles, luxury retail, department stores and broadlines. Before Citigroup, he worked in the investment research division at UBS, in the global mergers and acquisitions/strategic planning group at PepsiCo International, and in JPMorgan’s consumer products/retail mergers and acquisitions group.

Mr. Chen holds a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Georgetown University, a master’s of business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a CFA charterholder. At the Wharton School, Mr. Chen was a recipient of the Jay H. Baker Retail Award for impact in retailing and was a co-founding president of the Wharton Retail Club. He also serves as a member of the PhD Retail Research Review Committee for the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at the Wharton School. Mr. Chen was recognized in the Wharton School’s “40 Under 40” brightest stars alumni list in 2017.

Mr. Chen’s passion for the sector began at the age of 12 when he began working with his parents at their retail business in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Erika became CMO for adidas originals, collaborations and basketball in January 2021 following a career across fintech, accelerated tech, gaming, sports, automotive and advertising. She is also the co-founder and global lead for the adidas metaverse strategy, PNL and operations globally. As CMO of adidas €XXB lifestyle business, she oversees strategic direction and global marketing & consumer experience across Originals, Collaborations and Basketball.

Her leadership introduced ‘The New Age of Originality’ to adidas — a multi-disciplined portfolio approach to winning a new generation spanning product, experience and services. She set the 3-year vision for the brand’s bourgeoning connection to fashion, youth and the arts. Erika’s passion for emerging culture inspired her to establish the one-adidas initiative – Into the Metaverse – with a focus on the intersection of sport-inspired tableau spanning Web3 enabled-experiences, membership and collectibles (NFTs).

Born in Palm Springs, California, Erika currently resides in Nuremberg, Germany with her daughter and partner.

Sara Fischer is a media reporter for Axios. She joined the company in 2016 as a founding staff member. She was also recently named to Forbes “30 Under 30” Media list and to the 2019 Folio 100 in their “Creator” category. Beyond her weekly newsletter, Fischer oversees Axios’ media coverage for the newsroom, and steers the company’s products and events around that topic. Her coverage spans corporate media, advertising and marketing, technology, social media, deals, entertainment, media regulation, policy and consumer habits. She frequently appears on “Axios on HBO.”

Nilufar leads WPP’s Strategic Partnerships function. The Strategic Partnerships team drive and manage WPP’s largest strategic partner relationships across martech, adtech, cloud, commerce, AI and channels, including Adobe, Sitecore, Salesforce, Google, Amazon and Microsoft. They work with operating companies and business units across WPP on complex strategic partnership implementation, new capability building, growth initiatives (organic and net new business), technology and data acquisition/licensing, and other highly-visible, industry leading projects.  Prior to taking on this role in 2022, Nilufar spent 15 years with Mindshare, a WPP media agency within GroupM, fulfilling various roles, including CEO of their Thailand operation, Global Client Lead for Team Unilever, CEO of the Worldwide office, and most recently Global Chief Client Officer. 

As the co-founder and co-CEO of Gopuff, the pioneer of the instant commerce category and go-to platform for immediate delivery of consumers’ everyday needs, Yakir Gola sets the vision for the company and leads global business operations. Yakir and Rafael Ilishayev co-founded Gopuff in 2013 as students at Drexel University and made the first several thousand deliveries themselves, deliberately building the foundation of their business on the values they learned from their entrepreneurial families. Since then, they’ve expanded the platform’s product assortment, developed and introduced new verticals including Gopuff’s Fresh Food Hall and its own private label line of snacks and home essentials, launched an advertising platform for partners, and more. Today, Yakir continues to power unprecedented innovation as he and Rafael build the rails for the future of commerce.

Yakir was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the Retail & Ecommerce category in 2017, in 2019 received the Drexel University Founders Award, and in 2020, 2021 and 2022, Gopuff was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50. Yakir is closely involved with Chabad serving Drexel University and spearheads many of Gopuff’s philanthropic efforts.

Tehmina Haider is the Vice President of Harry’s Ventures. Prior to Harry’s, Tehmina was a Principal at L Catterton private equity firm and formerly, Vice President at Castanea Partners, a middle-market private equity firm focused on growth equity investments and leveraged buyouts in the consumer and retail sectors. Tehmina previously worked in Strategy and New Business Development at the Estée Lauder Companies, a global leader in prestige beauty. She began her career as a management consultant at Bain & Company.

Tehmina is a Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Columbia College with a B.A. degree in Economics-Philosophy. She received an M.B.A from the Harvard Business School.

Darren Herman joined Bain Capital in October 2016 as an Operating Partner presiding over digital media, advertising, e-commerce and data. He splits his time between the Portfolio Team and Deal Teams where he uses his industry operating experience to source new opportunities for Bain Capital.

Prior to Bain Capital, Herman was on the executive leadership team of Mozilla where he was instrumental in securing and renegotiating the Firefox revenue deals from Google to Yahoo!, Yandex, Baidu, and others totaling over $2B. He ran the content and advertising team at Mozilla and under his leadership, his team concepted, executed and shipped the industries first privacy respecting advertising and content system in under 24 months.

Prior to Mozilla, Herman was a senior executive at MDC Partners’ (Nasdaq: MDCA) largest media agencies and created one of the first trading desks on Madison Avenue and launched one of the first corporate advertising venture funds. Herman was responsible for digital media, analytics, and innovation broadly across MDC and often participated in board meetings and M&A conversations.

Earlier in his career, he was a venture capital backed founder/executive having built multiple technologies in the advertising, content and media space. His investors include NBC Universal, Morgenthaler, Hakuhodo, and Presidio amongst others.

For the past 14 years, Herman also runs Silicon Alley Sports in his spare time bringing executives together outside of Manhattan to network and play sports while raising money for charity.

As co-founder and co-CEO of Gopuff, Rafael Ilishayev sets the vision for the instant commerce company with a focus on logistics, product and technology development. Rafael and co-founder Yakir Gola founded Gopuff in 2013 to make immediate delivery of everyday items a reality. The pair bootstrapped their early business and made the first several thousand deliveries themselves. Since then, they have expanded the platform’s product assortment, developed and introduced new verticals including Gopuff’s Fresh Food Hall and its own private label line of snacks and home essentials, launched an advertising platform for partners, and more.

Rafael was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the Retail & Ecommerce category in 2017, in 2019 received the Drexel University Founders Award, and in 2020, 2021 and 2022, Gopuff was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50. Rafael is closely involved with his alma mater, Drexel University, through the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship and Chabad Serving Drexel University.

As the GM,Vice President for Sam’s Club’s Member Access Platform [MAP], Lex is responsible for building an ads experience that is additive to the member’s experience, while simultaneously accelerating profit and growth for Sam’s Club. Lex’s focus is on the organization’s People, Proposition, Product, Processes and Profit.​

Prior to Sam’s Club, Lex worked for Walmart [Sam’s Club’s parent company]. Lex was one of the original leaders at Walmart Media Group [now Walmart Connect] who helped lead the in-sourcing, restructuring, transforming and acceleration of the ad sales business within Walmart. In her time at Walmart, Lex and the Walmart Connect team grew the business by 400%. Lex’s team, which started as 18 associates in San Bruno, grew to over 400 associates in Bentonville, Hoboken, Chicago, and San Bruno. In her role as VP of Sales and Ad Tech partnerships for 3.5 years, Lex focused on several key R’s: Regaining trust. Relationship growth. Revenue achievement and acceleration. Rigor for financial accuracy/pipeline management. Reward in the construct of a new type of sales incentive compensation plan. Results for our customers. And a profitable Return for Walmart. Lex and her team have done the above with the help from many customer segments: Merchants, Marketers, Suppliers, 3P marketplace sellers, ad agencies and ad tech platforms.​

As a leader who builds, Lex splits her time between Hoboken, Bentonville and the Bay Area. When she is not in the sky, Lex loves to be with her 10 year-old son [Mason], 6 year-old daughter [Jordan], and husband [Dan]. Lex loves to be on the move, write, mentor women, and be involved with both of her children’s schools & activities.

Joe leads the analytics team for Hill’s US and has a passion for identifying how media can drive growth.  Joe’s team has been building analytical expertise to analyze media investments through market mix modeling and revenue management analytics.  In the three years the team has grown by adding data scientists working on retailer/media & eCommerce clean rooms to deliver lifetime value and path to purchase analysis. Joe has worked for Hill’s for 16 years in Europe and the US, having previously worked for P&G in Europe for 6 years.

John Lee is a marketing leader with over 20 years of experience building global brands Like Kubota, Harley-Davidson, and Coors through creative integrated marketing strategy, meaningful consumer engagement, and data-driven insights across traditional and digital channels. 

  Jeff Lin has a long history of success at both large institutions, as well as gritty start-ups.  He was founder and CEO of FANCHEST, a D2C sports business that became the 2nd Fastest Growing Retailer in America  and top 50 in Inc. Magazine’s 5,000 Most Successful Companies in America.  He sold the business to a private equity firm specializing in consumer products and media (2019). Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he spent 10-years on Wall Street where he was one of the youngest executive directors at his firm.  Jeff is an active advisory board member in the start-up community and has worked with over 60 companies.  He sits on the Consumer Brand Council at the Interactive Advertising Bureau.   He also serves as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Morgan Stanley with a focus on investing in female and multi-cultural founders.   Since 2020, Jeff has been increasingly involved in the Web3 ecosystem and holds positions at JDS Crypto, Medallion, and KOTA.  He lives with his wife Ali, and their boys, Jayce and Luca, in NYC.

Anthony serves as President of thredUP and is responsible for marketplace supply and demand growth. He directs the company’s consumer-facing initiatives that are inspiring a new generation of consumers to think secondhand first. Before thredUP, Anthony spent seven years serving directly under Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. He led the creation of multiple Virgin businesses, including the Virgin Hotels Group, where he served as CEO. Prior to joining Virgin, Anthony was a Principal at Venrock, where he worked closely with start-up founders to develop highly-disruptive products and scale their businesses through periods of rapid growth. Anthony earned an AB, magna cum laude, from Princeton University where he was a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Daniel McCarthy is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business. His research specialty is the application of leading-edge statistical methodology to contemporary empirical marketing problems. His research interests include customer lifetime value, limited data problems, and the marketing/finance interface.

He popularized customer-based corporate valuation (CBCV), a methodology that drives any traditional valuation model off of the underlying behaviors of the target company’s customers. His work has been featured in major media outlets such as the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Wall Street Journal, FT, Fortune, Barronís, Inc Magazine, The Economist, and CNBC. His research has been accepted and published in top-tier academic journals and has won numerous research awards.

In addition to his roles and responsibilities at Emory, Dan co-founded and was Chief Statistician for Zodiac, a predictive customer analytics SaaS firm. Nike acquired Zodiac in March 2018. Dan has since co-founded Theta Equity Partners (https://thetaclv.com/) to revolutionize how firms (e.g., private equity, venture capital, and operating companies directly) value companies through CBCV.

Ryan Moore is the Global Chief Revenue Officer at SuperAwesome, an Epic Games company. He leads the company’s revenue, marketing, insights & partnerships teams in helping brands and content creators have safe, meaningful interactions with audiences online. Part of Epic Games, he and his teams are focused on helping create a version of the metaverse that is designed particularly with the needs of younger audiences and families online. He also leads Epic Games’ broader Agency Partnerships team across the wider Epic portfolio.

Prior to this role, Ryan has spent 15 years at the intersection of media, entertainment and technology at companies like Quibi and Twitter and has built and run teams across US, European and Asian markets.

On the personal front, with his firsthand experience of how technology can affect behavioral change, Ryan is deeply passionate about helping non profit organizations leverage these platforms to scale and amplify the reach of their work. He is on the Board of Directors of the Google-born Search Inside Yourself Institute alongside other similar organizations that seek to use technology to make people happier, healthier and more resilient in their personal and professional lives.

Michelle Morris is Vice President of Global Services across Facebook’s US Automotive, Financial Services, Restaurants and Travel business. Michelle leads a national team transforming the way industries connect, communicate, and drive business in a mobile first and personal world. She helps clients and agencies use Facebook to build brands, acquire new customers and craft owner advocacy strategies. Michelle leads with an entrepreneurial passion fueled by her knowledge of both traditional and digital mediums and is a champion for Franchisee/Local marketing efforts.

Prior to Facebook, Michelle built Google’s North American automotive manufacturing and dealerships business as Managing Director responsible for creative, direct response and strategic brand activation. For nearly 8 years, she led teams across multiple coasts and notable contributions included the launch of custom research, creation of new sub-verticals to drive focused growth and the establishment of Google’s bankruptcy policy which kept accounts active while recovering 100% of spend. Michelle’s industry and marketing expertise helped deepen Google’s Automotive relationships beyond advertising for Google Maps, Android and in-vehicle integrations.

Before joining Google, Michelle served as Group Senior Vice President and Account Director of the Chrysler brand at Chrysler’s ad agency BBDO, responsible for all aspects of Chrysler’s advertising, CRM, event partnerships and product placement efforts. At BBDO for over 8 years, Michelle held executive leadership roles in the agency’s corporate marketing, dealer/franchise training and human resource departments. Never one to turn down a challenge, Michelle’s teams improved agency turnaround times while launching new mediums to help their clients reach customers.

A people first leader highly capable of navigating ambiguity, Michelle began her career in Human Resources as an Executive Director in the innovative partnered staffing division of Kelly Services, managing branches embedded within key client locations.

Michelle has shared her integrated marketing experience at industry conferences conducted by J.D. Power, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), Mobile World Congress and the Direct Marketing Association. She was honored as a Crain’s 40 under 40 professional in 2010, one of Vista Maria’s 2012 Celebrating Women award winners and a 2015 Rising Star by The Automotive News.

Michelle is a founding board member of the Cassie Hines Shoes Cancer foundation, a 501(c)(3) that helps young adults diagnosed with cancer, founder of the Scott Stephenson Eastern Echo Scholarship and an advocate for Suicide Prevention and Awareness. Michelle earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Michigan State University and lives in the Greater Detroit Area with her husband, two children, gecko and 3 cats

Lesa joined Ampersand as Head of Client Partnerships, Midwest in January of 2019, focusing on building client partnerships with leading marketers, to help solve market challenges and build effective media strategies for brands navigating a fractured viewership segment. Lesa previously served as VP, South West Region, for NBC Universal Network Sales with a focus on Multicultural and Portfolio sales. She worked directly with Fortune 500 clients to develop marketing strategies and audience strategies. She began her career in local TV Sales before moving into National, Network TV and Digital Ad Sales, and now currently into TV, Digital and Technology.  

Jessica Peltz-Zatulove is a Founding Partner at Hannah Grey, an early stage venture capital fund investing in visionary founders redefining everyday experiences. Prior to founding Hannah Grey, Jessica was the Senior Managing Partner at MDC Ventures, the corporate VC fund of Stagwell Group (formerly MDC Partners). She’s a known thought leader and was recognized on the Global Corporate VC PowerList for top CVC fund managers in 2019 and 2020. Jessica has led investments in Subject, August, Catch & Release, Floor, Upstream, Lively (acquired by Wacoal), Mezzobit (acquired by OpenX), Gradient.io (acquired by Criteo), Netomi, Veritonic, Perksy, Bennie, Alleyoop, among others.

Before transitioning to VC, Jessica specialized in connecting marketers with emerging tech and spent 10+ years as an operator working with brands including Verizon, Kraft, PUMA, 20th Century Fox, Jim Beam Brands, H&M, and others. She was the second employee at innovation consultancy Evol8tion, where she was instrumental in scaling the business while helping startups secure their first customers through brand partnerships. Her deep understanding of the intersection between customer needs, branding, and technology has enabled her to guide countless startups on positioning and commercializing their business effectively.

Jessica is an outspoken advocate for gender diversity and inclusion in the venture community. She’s also the co-founder of Women in VC, the world’s largest community for women investors which now includes 4,200+ women spanning 2,400+ venture funds across 200+ cities and 65+ countries. She is also an active mentor in the tech community at Techstars, ERA, and 500 Startups, as well as being a builder in several web3 communities, including JPEG Morgan, MetaCollective, JoanDAO, and led the recent NFT project for Women in VC to raise money for financial literacy organizations for Womens History Month..

Jessica lives in New York City with her husband and two spunky daughters.

Larissa leads strategy and operations for Gap Inc’s Strategic Growth Office (SGO), a unit of the company charged with thinking beyond its day-to-day business in order to meet the consumer and industry demands of the future. The SGO seeks out investments that fuel growth and accelerate new capabilities at Gap Inc. and across its portfolio of purpose-led brands. Larissa’s team accelerates new business pursuits, drives the go-to-market strategies, and objectively governs status and progress. Under her leadership, the SGO has acquired two technology companies – 3D fit statup Drapr and AI/ML software maker CB4 – and stood up three new B2B services focused on media & advertising, custom apparel, and supply chain & logistics.

Randy Saperstone is the Vice President of Media Sales and Brand Partnerships at Realtor.com®. Prior to Randy’s experience at Realtor.com he held senior level positions with Trusted Media Brands and Time Inc. He also served as a sales director at Realtor.com and HGTV in past positions. He’s currently obsessed with leveraging data to create the ultimate user and brand partner experience. Most importantly he’s a South Jersey native who will always be known for over scrutinizing the quality of diners, cheesesteaks, and convenience stores.

David Seals (Director, Strategic Growth) works in Accenture’s strategy activation hub, which helps clients bring their strategies to life using visual artists, filmmakers and writers. Built on a belief that one-way communication doesn’t change humans, this hub (formerly Root Inc.) carefully crafts experiences that change the conversations employees are having. Before joining Accenture, David worked at Center for Creative Leadership helping transform the lives of leaders in Global 2000 companies. He spent his early career at TRG Arts, starting new projects with arts organizations across the US, Canada and UK. Through TRG, David launched Audience 360, a marketing cooperative among the largest performing arts organizations here in New York City.

Eric Benjamin Seufert is a media strategist, quantitative marketer, and author who spent his career working for transformative consumer technology and media companies before launching Heracles Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on the mobile ecosystem. Eric is also the author of the book Freemium Economics, published by Elsevier in 2014, and he developed Theseus, an open source Python library for marketing cohort analysis.

Eric started his career at Skype and subsequently held strategy and marketing roles at a number of consumer technology start-ups, including Wooga (acquired by Playtika) and Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds. Eric founded Agamemnon, a start-up that built a mobile marketing analytics platform, which was acquired in 2017.

Eric runs Mobile Dev Memo, a mobile advertising and freemium monetization trade blog, and QuantMar, a knowledge-sharing platform for quantitative marketers. Eric’s writing has been featured in The Information, Business Insider, and the Harvard Business Review, and he has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Sunday Times, and The Financial Times, among others.

Neha Singh is the CEO & Founder of Obsess, an experiential e-commerce platform enabling brands and retailers to create visual, immersive, 3D virtual stores on their websites and on metaverse platforms. She was previously the Head of Product at Vogue, where she was responsible for the product strategy and technology execution of Vogue’s digital business including content products, ad products and distribution platforms. Prior to that, Neha was VP of Product and Engineering at AHAlife, an e-commerce startup for luxury lifestyle products. Neha began her career at Google, where she was a Software Engineer and Tech Lead for 5 years and worked on Google AdWords and Google News. She holds an undergraduate Computer Science degree from The University of Texas at Austin and a graduate Computer Science degree from MIT.

Aaron leads media investment at Unilever and has a wealth of investment and partnership experience across all channels. Aaron’s 16+ years in media spans a range of categories and marketers, from Coke and Microsoft to Fiat Chrysler.

Hunter Thurman is Founder and CEO of Alpha-Diver, the market research firm that applies neuroscience to more deeply understand marketplace behavior. The firm’s neuroscientists and strategists work with leading brands, retailers and the Wall Street analyst community to explain, measure, and predict consumer behavior.

Renaldo Webb is Founder and Chief Product Officer at PetPlate. Inspired by his first dog Winston, Renaldo founded PetPlate after realizing that he did not want to feed his dog anything less than real food. After making hundreds of batches of home-cooked dog food for Winston and his pup pals, Renaldo decided to launch a pet food brand that he could proudly call his own. Since making the first delicious fresh-cooked meal in his kitchen, PetPlate has delivered over 18 million healthy meals and organic treats to tens of thousands of dogs across America and continues to innovate and delight pet parents with its direct-to-consumer service and retail products.

Renaldo graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Physics. Prior to starting PetPlate, he worked at L Catterton and McKinsey & Company. He launched PetPlate as a nationwide subscription service in early 2017, following an appearance on the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has attracted a loyal following both online and at retail. Renaldo lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife Suzanne and their Berna doodle Cooper.