Online shopping has come a long way from banner ads and shopping carts, while stores are doing much more than simply stocking products on their shelves.
As every way of buying what we need (and want) has changed in recent years, ADWEEK’s inaugural Commerce All-Stars list is celebrating exceptional talent in the growing commerce and retail media space.
Through innovation in measurement solutions, opening up retail media to smaller players, and crafting the invisible infrastructure that is redefining how brands, retailers, and technology partners collaborate, these executives are driving results—making the shopper journey more exciting than ever.
Kristi Argyilan
Retail media trailblazer Kristi Argyilan has become one of the key players defining commerce media. Before joining Uber as global head of advertising in December 2024, she helped build retail media juggernauts at Albertsons Media Collective and Target’s Roundel, shaping industry standards around measurement and performance. At Uber, she has accelerated an ad business that now spans more than 40 countries and surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue in 2025 (up over 50% year-over-year), while expanding commerce-driven formats across mobility and delivery. In mid-2025, Uber Advertising opened its in-house Creative Studio to build immersive brand experiences; clients so far include Diageo, La Mer, and Ulta Beauty. And at the beginning of 2026, Uber riders began seeing points of interest during their trip through Journey Takeovers.
Neel Arora
With experience on the retail (Amazon) and brand (PepsiCo) sides, Neel Arora has become one of the consumer packaged goods industry’s leading strategists. Heading up ecommerce at Nestlé since 2021, Arora has helped accelerate online sales across markets and categories, and built a global center of excellence around retail media, digital shelf optimization, and social commerce with a consistent focus known internally as “e-tensity.” By aligning incentives and measurement systems so that digital growth is owned broadly, rather than confined to a single function, Arora has pushed ecommerce to 20.5% of total sales in 2025, while scaling AI-driven personalization, retail media capabilities, and creator-led initiatives.
Michael Blanche
Michael Blanche saw early on that the next phase of commerce media growth would come from giving smaller retailers access to sophisticated retail media tools. This shaped omnichannel analytics platform Surfside into one that empowers what it calls the Retail Majority: indie, regional, and specialty retailers. Since its founding in 2018, Surfside has grown to support a network of over 8,000 small retailers, giving them data ownership and transparency into measurement and attribution. In 2025, Surfside’s commerce media revenue more than doubled over 2023 and the platform activated more than 1,000 campaigns, helping retailers monetize their data, personalize the shopping experience, and drive incremental revenue across digital and physical environments.
Tory Brangham
While other publishers chased affiliate revenue and new ad formats, People’s Tory Brangham bet that the inspiration moment—not the cart page—was the most undermonetized real estate in media. With Shopsense AI, Brangham installed an AI-powered shopping engine across People’s properties. The move saw clickthrough rates up to 100 times higher than IAB display benchmarks, while consumer satisfaction surveys confirm the power of native, relevant commerce to offer utility, not interruption. Her plan to let brands reach audiences at the discovery stage before intent has formed has helped drive more than 29 million transactions a year and grown her team from 50 to over 300 since she joined in 2017.
Jason Buechel
Jason Buechel has become one of retail’s most influential commerce operators, overseeing Amazon’s rapidly evolving ambitions as vice president of worldwide grocery stores as of January 2025. A former Accenture retail transformation executive, Buechel joined Whole Foods in 2013 as CIO before rising to COO and CEO in 2022. In 2025, Whole Foods expanded beyond 550 locations with 100 more on the way in the next few years, while Prime-powered same-day delivery boosted sales of perishables by more than 40x year-over-year. Buechel now leads Amazon’s One Grocery strategy, helping scale a business that generated $150 billion in gross sales in 2025, making Amazon the second largest grocer in the country.
Melissa Burdick
Building Pacvue into a leading tech partner for retailers—with 47% YoY ad spend growth in 2025 and over $150 billion in connected sales volume—is just one way Melissa Burdick is making an impact on the retail media industry. She is also the force behind Women in Commerce, a global community-building platform that elevates and connects women leaders shaping the future of shopping. She personally recruits the participants and through events, campaigns, and conversations, the program reaches the broader market with inspirational and educational content. On the other end of the career ladder, Burdick’s inaugural Generative AI Student Accelerator Program, in partnership with Amazon Ads, prepares students with portfolio-worthy experience.
April Carlisle
Spark Foundry landing Kenvue’s $1.3 billion global business wasn’t a one-off for April Carlisle. Carlisle has spent almost four decades proving the path forward doesn’t run through media or commerce alone, and her proprietary Media-to-Shelf framework bridges one of the industry’s biggest gaps: the distance between high-level brand media and point-of-sale conversion. Combining Epsilon’s proprietary ID, owned data and AI-enabled planning, Spark has seen double-digit agency revenue growth every year since 2022. A Path to Purchase Institute Hall of Fame inductee, Carlisle’s connected commerce architecture also helped win Campbell’s, Molson Coors, Starbucks, Abbott, and Kimberly-Clark.
Parbinder Dhariwal
Parbinder Dhariwal’s passion for standards and transparency has done more than evolve CVS Media Exchange (CMX) into a full-funnel connection between digital discovery and in-store purchasing; it’s moved the company into new spaces. CMX was the first health and wellness retail media network to have clean‑room integrations with partners such as Pinterest, enabling privacy-safe sales metrics. The platform has added omnichannel buying, scaled programmatic in-store audio, and created premium publisher integrations, expanding advertiser flexibility and speed to market. Dhariwal has also contributed to the Interactive Advertising Bureau to help define best practices for measurements and sales attribution, increasing trust and lifting expectations across the retail media landscape.
Matt Drzewicki
The next generation of retail media is taking shape at Target. Matt Drzewicki took Roundel from a transactional advertising channel to a strategic growth engine for brands by building a more transparent and performance-driven model. Roundel has been at the forefront of expanding retail media beyond owned platforms, with more than 30% of investment in offsite media to reach consumers wherever they are in their shopping journey through innovations such as Precision Plus and a first-to-market retail media network partnership pilot with OpenAI. The platform continues to be a key growth driver within Target, surpassing $2 billion in annual value in 2025 by scaling its omnichannel media and measurement capabilities that help advertisers achieve stronger engagement and more efficient spend.
Toby Espinosa
DoorDash hired Toby Espinosa as its 70th employee in 2015. Since then, he’s gone from being part of the operations team to launching DoorDash Ads in 2021 and building it into the world’s fastest-growing retail media network, passing an annualized $1 billion ad revenue run rate across over 30 countries in its first three years. While keeping the big picture in focus, he’s always zooming in to focus on small businesses, creating and implementing DoorDash’s cost-per-acquisition model that only charges restaurants for ads that convert. In 2025, Espinosa led the acquisition of Symbiosys, which helps DoorDash clients effectively reach customers through offsite channels, and accelerated the DoorDash Ads product suite with tools such as Smart Campaigns that deliver personalized promotions.
Jing Feng
Jing Feng brings agentic marketing to Fortune 500 brands, and few people are as well-equipped for the task. Before Bluefish AI, Feng built and scaled two other platforms: PromoteIQ, bought by Microsoft, and LiveRail, acquired by Meta. While shaping the architecture of Bluefish and the engine running it, she has scaled her team 500%, expanded coverage to more than 15 verticals, and brought in brands including Adidas, Hearst, and Ulta Beauty. Feng’s done this in part by arguing that AI is becoming the first audience, with the agentic internet heralding a generational shift in how brands are discovered and bought.
Harley Finkelstein
While brands scramble to find their footing in the new era of agentic commerce, Harvey Finkelstein spent 2025 building the capabilities into Shopify to ensure its clients could continue to find their audience. As president, he has pushed Shopify deeper into AI and spurred international expansion; it now powers more than 14% of U.S. ecommerce and processes hundreds of billions in GMV, while helping build the infrastructure for AI-powered shopping across ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms. Finkelstein has also become one of tech’s most visible advocates for independent businesses, arguing that AI can level the playing field between small brands and retail giants.
Tim Frank
It’s a new, AI-first world, and Tim Frank is making sure Microsoft is at the forefront. Since joining the company from Google, where he led the team behind Performance Max, he’s initiated a series of agentic commerce-focused launches including Copilot Checkout. The tool brings real-time agentic payments into Copilot, allowing consumers to compare, decide, and transact all in one AI-powered conversation through integrations with Stripe, Shopify, and PayPal. But Checkout does more than just help sell things: It preserves the sites making the sales as merchants of record, protecting their data and brand relationship. Further products including Brand Agents that guide customers through digital storefronts all contributed to Microsoft’s Commerce and Internet APIs division growing more than 500% year-over-year.
Christine Gambino
When you lead a global organization of over 1,000 experts, it’s easy to get lost in the details. So it’s a good thing that Christine Gambino is a master of scale. Previously Flywheel’s chief product and technology officer, Gambino led the design and implementation of Flywheel Commerce Cloud, a platform so differentiated it became central to Omnicom’s $835 million acquisition of the company. She has pioneered deterministic measurement, clean-room commerce strategies, and outcome-based buying while helping shift marketers beyond ROAS toward long-term metrics like share of voice and new-to-brand growth. That approach was key to Omnicom winning Amazon’s multibillion-dollar media account, a win underpinned by the commerce data and technology capabilities Gambino helped build.
Lauren Griewski
Lauren Griewski only joined Chase in 2025, but she brought over 15 years of senior leadership experience at companies like Meta and Viacom with her. As leader of commercialization, growth strategy, and marketing for Chase Media Solutions, Griewski’s efforts to build and scale the commerce media practice have helped Chase’s 87 million customers discover value from merchants while driving results for brands and partners. But her drive to connect doesn’t stop at customers and merchants. Her efforts to advance industry partnerships have aided brands in executing with greater accuracy and at scale.
Anne Hallock
Agentic commerce is already reshaping and democratizing retail media, and Anne Hallock is ready for the transformation. She pioneered conversations around AI-driven commerce and agentic ads, recognizing that AI-driven solutions can simplify campaign creation for mid- to long-tail advertisers, giving smaller voices more power than ever before. Hallock was instrumental in the Criteo-Mirakl integration, which gave third-party sellers access to retail media opportunities across over 220 networks, and led Mirakl Ads’ expansion into the Americas. Her work on advancements such as the platform’s omnichannel automation capability with intelligent budget optimization, built with Symbiosis, has closed technology gaps and made retail media accessible to thousands of advertisers, expanding who gets to participate in—and benefit from—RMNs.
Elena Klau
Momentum didn’t have a Global Chief Strategy & Product Officer until Elena Klau. Over 18 months, she’s unified the agency’s teams into a global center of excellence and drove 40% growth in Momentum’s Experiential Commerce vertical. It’s the kind of progress that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Klau has put in the work of educating not only her team, but Momentum’s clients and the rest of the industry about best practices and execution. With uncovering the latest consumer insights as one of her remits, Klau led the agency’s Global Shopper Research Study, which made a case for rethinking in-store media as an underutilized channel—and how the retailers that win will combine AI-powered personalization with human connection.
Harvey Ma
You can do a lot with over 40 years of first-party data. Harvey Ma has transformed the Sam’s Club Member Access Platform from traditional advertising into meaningful experiences for members that drive growth for brands. By embedding media across onsite, in-club, and offsite environments, powered by deterministic membership data, MAP reaches customers from awareness through purchase—always ensuring that advertising enhances the retail experience rather than interrupting it. Ma’s advocacy for focusing less on ROAS and more on a complete overview of business impact has led to MAP consistently driving measurable outcomes, with the average campaign delivering a 23% sales lift, powered by 46% new buyers.
Kelly Mahoney
Kelly Mahoney’s integration of data, technology, and culture into a cohesive strategy has helped deliver five consecutive quarters of sales growth for Ulta, reinforcing the power of marketing to boost the bottom line. A prominent voice in the broader marketing community, Mahoney led Ulta Beauty’s SXSW debut in 2025 by participating in six sessions, as well as appearing at 11 panels and conversations at Cannes Lions. And she’s as comfortable at the Big Game as she is on a big stage—Mahoney brought Ulta Beauty back to the Super Bowl with a creator-led campaign that generated over 81 million social impressions. Beyond the industry, Mahoney is committed to mentorship and community impact, serving on the Board of Directors for Metropolitan Family Services and championing the advancement of women in marketing.
Elizabeth Marsten
Practical commerce guidance is in short supply in the rapidly changing industry, but Elizabeth Marsten’s direct, clear strategies cut through the noise. A frequent speaker and board member of the IAB Commerce & Retail Media Committee, Marsten is often brought into early discussions with platforms and retailers to provide feedback on emerging ad products and capabilities, helping shape solutions that are more usable and effective for advertisers. At Tinuiti, she’s helped drive 14% year-over-year growth in total commerce media spend through expanded investment across major retail media networks, the acquisition of new client partnerships, and pushing for the adoption of emerging capabilities such as offsite media and audience extension.
Ryan Mayward
Ryan Mayward dreams of an industry that ditches proxy metrics like impressions and clicks in favor of commerce-driven advertising built on accountability and measurable outcomes, and he’s working to make it happen. He’s positioned Walmart Connect as a growth engine powered by actual customer behavior and closed-loop measurement, which has contributed to the retailer’s global advertising revenue soaring to $6.4 billion in 2025, an increase of 46% YoY. It’s an extension of his previous work at Amazon and Instacart, where he pushed retail media from bottom-funnel to full-funnel capabilities. As advertising becomes an increasingly significant contributor to a more diversified, higher-margin business mix at Walmart, Mayward’s leadership is accelerating platform adoption and deepening partner engagement.
Ali Miller
Ali Miller joined Instacart Ads at a time when it was primarily a lower-funnel performance channel. But she wanted more, a place where real purchase signals don’t stop at on-platform conversions but planning, targeting, and measurement extended through the full funnel. In her push to make Instacart’s first-party purchase data more useful to brands across every media buying channel, she’s forged partnerships with major platforms from Meta and TikTok to The Trade Desk and NBCUniversal to connect the top of the funnel to real purchases. Under her leadership, Instacart’s ad and other revenue passed $1 billion in 2025 after seven consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Today, over 9,000 brands put Instacart in their media mix.
Brian Monahan
Arriving at Albertsons Media Collective in July 2025 after stints at Walmart, Pinterest, and Dentsu, Brian Monahan immediately boosted the company’s retail media performance with a clear focus on performance, transparency, and measurable outcomes. Demonstrating how in-store media can be directly linked to incremental revenue, a major in-store campaign with Mondelēz using its matched-market incrementality methodology delivered a $2.41 iROAS, a 14% in-store sales lift, and over 5.5 million impressions. Monahan has published Albertsons’ entire iROAS research and framework, providing industry-leading insights and transparency, and rolled out in-store incrementality measurement to quantify the impact of physical retail media.
Marlow Nickell
While digital advertising has innovated, in-store has stagnated. Marlow Nickell has spent the past decade closing that gap by bringing retail media capability into the physical aisle. Independent platform Grocery TV has repositioned its product as a software play that meets retailers where they are, while its roster of CPG brands has grown through the launch of closed-loop measurement in April 2025 that has led to an average 4.7x ROAS. Grocery TV now reaches 1 in 4 Americans across over 6,500 stores through a network of over 120 partners such as Wakefern and Hy-Vee. And that reach is yielding strong, sustained growth: Revenue increased 43% year-over-year in 2025 (following on from 55% in 2024), device count grew 75%, and store count expanded 35%.
Sherry Smith
As AI reshapes how consumers shop, Sherry Smith has a vision to keep commerce grounded in performance and trust. At Criteo, she’s advancing innovations that help retailers and brands succeed, such as the Page Intelligence solution, an AI optimization layer that helps retailers prepare product pages for AI-driven discovery. Smith has also led continued global expansion, with new and renewed retailer partnerships around the world with DoorDash in Canada, Hyundai Department Store in APAC, and ASOS in the U.K. And she’s behind Criteo’s broader evolution into flexible retail media solutions like self-service capabilities that make it easier for brands and retailers to participate and scale. Taken together, her leadership is helping move retail media beyond a standalone channel and into a foundational layer of the commerce experience to better serve every link in the commerce chain as AI transforms the path to purchase.
Julie Spear
From schoolteacher to a retail media force, Julie Spear is showing what a career based on mentorship can do. Her unit is Acadia’s fastest-growing, raising revenue by 40% year-over-year in 2025 and EBITDA by over 60% due to developing new retail channels and tools, attracting clients including Monster Energy, Magic Spoon, and Puma. Spear has developed an industry-leading retail media mix modeling program that tracks spending across retailers, breaking down silos to give clients the ability to compare campaigns and overall sales. Her work helped win a 2025 Amazon Ads Challenger Award, recognizing agencies delivering outsize results for challenger brands; Pacvue also named Acadia a premier agency partner. Spear also looks out for the people of Acadia, developing a career advancement initiative that contributed to a 94% retention rate.
Lisa Valentino
While Best Buy Ads may have started as a retail media solution, Lisa Valentino has worked to transform it into a full-funnel commerce media platform that connect investment to outcomes. The business has scaled rapidly and now partners with about 750 advertisers, almost doubling year-over-year. And those advertisers are seeing real impact, with an average 36% sales lift and 3.75x return on ad spend. During the same period, first-party advertiser investment also grew 16%. Valentino’s work extends beyond the retailer, helping shape key conversations around retail and commerce media’s future through speaking engagements, thought leadership, and as a member of the IAB board.
Jason Wescott
Retail media is fragmented, and Jason Wescott wants to put it back together. How? By driving standardization efforts, especially in measurement and ad formats. Advertisers need consistent, reliable results, and Wescott hopes that by giving it to them, trust is built that lets the industry as a whole grow sustainably. He also brings his thought leadership to major European events and key industry summits while acting as the chair of IAB Europe’s Retail & Commerce Media Committee, composed of over 50 industry experts. It’s a powerful hub of collaboration, education, and shared best practices that works to empower businesses navigating a complex space.
Ryu Yokoi
Unilever spent 2025 in a period of strategic reshaping, focusing its portfolio on higher-growth categories such as Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care—categories that demand a modern, agile marketing approach. Leading that charge in North America is Ryu Yokoi, who has been a driving force behind Unilever’s evolution toward a more agile, signal-driven commerce model. He has championed a social-first approach, recognizing that consumer intent is increasingly shaped outside of traditional retail environments, that involves capturing real-time signals across platforms and integrating them into decision-making frameworks to enable faster, more precise action. By shortening the distance between insight and execution, his work helps Unilever operate more dynamically, moving beyond static planning cycles to a more responsive model of growth.
Sarah Paiji Yoo
Sarah Paiji Yoo has turned Blueland into one of sustainability’s breakout commerce success stories. Before co-founding the refillable cleaning brand in 2019, Yoo launched fashion-shopping app Snapette, which was acquired by PriceGrabber, and advised emerging consumer startups through accelerator Launch. With Blueland, she pioneered the plastic-free cleaning category, growing to more than $300 million in lifetime sales while securing retail distribution at Target, Costco, Whole Foods, and beyond. The company reported 80% revenue growth in 2025 and says it has prevented more than 1 billion single-use plastic bottles from entering landfills and oceans through initiatives including its anti-microplastics Pods Are Plastic Bill in the New York City legislature.
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