Boardroom Media (CEO News)
At CEO (Boardroom Media) we track over 1,000,000 startups and over 5,000,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top Columbia based CEO’ operating in the Retail space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected]
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Neil Kataria
Co-founder and CEO of Basket
Mr. Neil Kataria is the Founder of Basket Savings, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Kataria also serves as a Venture Partner at NextGen Venture Partners. He served as the Chief Executive Officer at newBrandAnalytics, Inc. until March 2012. Mr. Kataria also was a Founding Partner and Store Operator at Chakra Retail. He is the Founding Chairman at Cabana Ventures. Mr. Kataria is a Co-Founder of newBrandAnalytics, Inc. and served as its Chairman. Mr. Kataria co-founded and sold Conformia Software to Oracle. He served as a Member of Advisory Board of Venga, Inc. Mr. Kataria is a graduate with a B.A. in International Relations from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and attended the London School of Economics.
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About Basket, Blue Tiger Labs, KFI Sauces, MassClarity: Basket believes you should never overpay for groceries and is the largest community of Shoppers working together to save time and money.
Susan Tynan
Founder & CEO of Framebridge
A few years ago, Susan Tynan framed four National Parks posters. When they rang up at $1600, she funneled her sticker shock into a revolutionary idea. She felt sure that if someone made high-quality custom framing easy and affordable, people would frame a lot more—and they have. Since 2014, Tynan has grown Framebridge from the ground up. After four years of record growth, the company opened their first retail location in March 2019. Prior to Framebridge, Tynan held product and business development roles at several consumer technology startups including LivingSocial, Taxi Magic, and Revolution Health. She began her career at Accenture and served as a management advisor on technology and customer service for the Obama White House. Tynan is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Business School.
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About Framebridge: Framebridge is a custom framing startup that provides an online custom framing service.
Orville Thompson
CEO & Co-Owner of Scentsy
Orville Thompson is Board of Director at Direct Selling Association. He is also the CEO and co-owner at Scensty.
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About Scentsy: Scentsy is a consumer goods and fragrance company platform.
Kory Zelickson
Co-Founder, CEO of Vejii Holdings
With over 15 years of experience in innovation and online marketing, Kory Zelickson has developed multiple e-commerce and technology startup companies from the ground up. An engineer by trade, Kory is focused on developing retail distribution within the plant-based and sustainable product categories. Through his passion for the environment, in 2020 he founded and became CEO of Vejii, the world’s largest marketplace for plant-based and sustainable living products. With more consumers turning to e-commerce and looking to incorporate healthier, more sustainable practices into their lifestyle, Vejii’s unique platform offers high-growth opportunities given the market trends. Vejii’s mission is to make plant-based products more accessible to everyone, from consumers who want more selection compared to their local grocery store to flexitarians or conscious consumers who are looking to shop more sustainably. By simplifying the shopping experience and helping plant-based and sustainable-living brands reach wider audiences through its marketplace model, Vejii aims to become an industry consolidator in the sustainability field. Vejii is also committed to building a strong foundation of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace in order to improve organizational culture and to positively advance its mission forward. Additionally, Kory’s past experience includes co-founding Namaste Technologies in 2014, where he also served as COO and VP of Business Development and Investor Relations. Namaste Technologies eventually became a publicly-traded company, and in 2018 the company reached a market valuation of +$1 billion, realizing over 20x returns for its initial series of investors.
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About Karma Extracts, Namaste Technologies, Vejii Holdings: Vejii Holdings owns and operates ShopVejii.com, a digital marketplace for plant-based and sustainable living products and brands.
Marla Beck
Co-founder and CEO of Bluemercury
Marla Malcolm Beck is the co-founder and CEO of Bluemercury Inc., a luxury beauty retailer and cosmetics brand developer, founded in 1999 when she was twenty-nine years old. In 2015, Macy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) acquired the company. Ms. Beck also co-founded M-61 Laboratories, makers of M-61 Skincare, the first highly technical, natural cosmeceutical brand and makers of Lune and Aster Cosmetics, a vegan cosmetics line. Ms. Beck is often invited to share her entrepreneurship, branding, and innovation expertise. Bluemercury’s innovative retailing and human resource model has been the topic of numerous books, including Shopping: Why We Love it and How Retailers Can Create the Ultimate Customer Experience and Be Happy at Work: 100 Women Who Love Their Jobs and Why. She has appeared as a guest on CNBC, CNN and Fox Business News and has been a guest speaker for WWD’s Beauty Innovation Forum, Harvard University’s Luxury Branding Speaker Series and Columbia University’s Lang Center for Entrepreneurship’s Distinguished Speaker Series. In 2014, Ms. Beck received an appointment by Harvard Business School as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and was named as one of Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. Ms. Beck was Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005. Prior to founding Bluemercury, she was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. She holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, an M.P.A. from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. She serves on the Advisory Board of Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the Board of Directors of the National Retail Federation, the Board of Trustees at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C., the Board of Council for Public Leadership, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and is an independent director on the Board of Directors of The Children’s Place (NASDAQ:PLCE). She resides in Bethesda, Maryland, with her husband and three children.
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About Bluemercury, edX: Bluemercury is widely recognized as the nation’s largest and fastest growing luxury beauty products and spa retail chain.
Bernadette Butler
CEO & Founder of Storytap
CEO and chief storyteller, Bernadette is a 20 year veteran in marketing and advertising, and one of the creators of StoryTap.
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About Storytap: StoryTap is humanizing the online shopping experience with customer video reviews.
Jocelyn Gailliot
Founder & CEO of TuckerNuck
Jocelyn Gailliot is Founder & CEO at TuckerNuck.
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About TuckerNuck: Tuckernuck is an online boutique that puts a fresh spin on classic American style.
Christine Day
CEO of Luvo
Christine is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Luvo Inc., a company producing frozen meals prepared with nutritionally-dense, healthy ingredients. Prior to Luvo, Christine was Chief Executive Officer of lululemon (2008-2013). Along with John Currie and the rest of lululemon’s executive team, Christine created and executed lululemon’s long-term business strategies, directing its continued development and reinforced its position as a global leader of yoga-inspired athletic apparel. During her tenure, the company grew in revenue from $290 million to $1.6 billion and became the most profitable retail apparel company in the world. Prior to lululemon, Christine held several senior leadership positions at Starbucks over a 20-year period, most recently serving as Starbucks’ President of Asia Pacific (2004-2007). At Starbucks, Christine helped build a solid innovative company culture at one of the world’s most recognizable brands. Christine has been named Fortune Magazine’s “Top 5 International Most Powerful Women”, Canada’s “Top 100 Women”, and named “CEO of the Year”, by Globe and Mail and Business in Vancouver. Christine brings more than 30 years of senior leadership experience in building profitable, global brands in the food & beverage and apparel categories.
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About Campfire Capital, Luvo: Luvo produces and markets healthy food products such as main meals, snacks, flatbreads, yogurt bars, and frozen entrées.
Drew Green
Chief Executive Officer of INDOCHINO
Drew is founder and director of SHOP.CA. Having spent his entire career connecting online audiences with retailers through digital media, marketing solutions, mobile marketing and marketplace platforms in the United States. Prior to founding SHOP.CA, Drew served as Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Vibes Media. In this role, Drew was responsible for defining, implementing and leading the execution of Vibes’ Sales, Business Development and Marketing strategy. With over 14 years of online marketing, eCommerce and sales leadership experience, Drew has a proven track record of results based management and high growth strategy development and execution. Prior to joining Vibes in 2009, Drew was a member of SHOP.COM’s executive team since 2005, where he led the sales, merchant operations and business development departments during his tenure, and was responsible for ramping product supply from under 1 million products to over 25 million unique product SKUs from thousands of leading retailers and manufacturers in the US. SHOP.COM’S Marketplace platforms provided demand generation and branding for thousands of retailers and product brands in both the US and the UK. Prior to SHOP.COM, Drew held sales and sales leadership roles with Flonetwork, (acquired by DoubleClick) and DoubleClick (acquired by Google).
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About EMERGE Commerce, INDOCHINO, INDOCHINO, Liquuid: Indochino is a global leader in made to measure apparel, offering custom suits, shirts, chinos and outerwear online and in showrooms.
Ben Reich
CEO & Founder of Datasembly
Ben Reich is the CEO & Founder at Datasembly.
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About Datasembly: Datasembly collects product data and provides real-time pricing, promotions, assortment and availability data to the clients.
Cameron Hardesty
CEO & Founder of Poppy
Cameron Hardesty is a e-commerce entrepreneur. She is CEO & Founder of Poppy, a tech-enabled, managed marketplace modernizing the wedding and event flower industry. Previously, she served as Head of Products at VC-backed floral e-commerce UrbanStems, where she built the company’s farm-direct supply chain from scratch and was responsible for e-commerce and physical product.
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About Poppy: Poppy is a tech-enabled, managed marketplace that connects customers, event florists, and flower farms.
Joe Parenteau
Co-Founder & CEO of Fable
Joe Parenteau currently works as the Co-Founder and CEO for Fablehome.
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About Fable: Fable is a dinnerware company that sells premium tableware made by artisans from recycled clay.
Mike Wyrzykowski
Founder & CEO of Blackpurl
Mike Wyrzykowski is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Blackpurl.
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About Blackpurl: The first cloud-based dealership management platform built for the dealer who needs more then a DMS.
Matias Marquez
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Buyatab Online
Matias Marquez has received many awards for his entrepreneurial success, including SFU’s 2011 Entrepreneur of the year. Matias Marquez founded Buyatab in 2008 and has helped to grow Buyatab into a global leader in digital gift giving. He holds a Bachelors of Business Administration degree from Simon Fraser University and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
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About Buyatab Online: Buyatab Online is an innovative provider of egift cards solutions for retail, restuarants, hotels and luxury brands.
Robb Niemann
Founder and CEO of Rutherford Audio
Robb, a business man in Vancouver and a lifelong audiophile saw the opportunity to devlop a channel of products at a higher level than was being offered and has been growing Rutherford Audio year after year, since 2009.
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About Rutherford Audio: Rutherford Audio is North America’s premier distribution channel for a select few of Europe’s finest Hi-Fi audio brands.
Peter A Altabef
CEO of MICROS Systems
Mr. Peter A. Altabef is President, Chief Executive Officer, Director of Micros Systems Inc. Mr. Altabef previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Perot Systems from 2004 until 2009, when Perot Systems was acquired by Dell, Inc. Thereafter, Mr. Altabef served as President of Dell Services (a subsidiary of Dell, Inc.) until his departure in March 2011. Mr. Altabef served as Senior Advisor to 2M Companies, Inc. from January to December 2012. Mr. Altabef also serves on the Board of Directors of Belo Corporation, the Board of Managers of Merit Energy Company, LLC, and the Advisory Board of Petrus Trust Company, L.T.A. Mr. Altabef is a graduate of Binghamton University, SUNY, and the University of Chicago Law School.
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About MICROS Systems: MICROS Systems provides enterprise applications for the hospitality and retail industries worldwide.
Jasmine Jones
Founder & CEO of Cherry Blossom Intimates
Jasmine Jones is the Founder & CEO at Cherry Blossom Intimates.
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About Cherry Blossom Intimates: Fully customizable, fully insurance billable, breast prosthetics with a state-of-the-art fit experience.
Poya Haghnegahdar
CEO of FIND
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About FIND: FIND A.I. – Inventory Planning for AFA
Richard Hui
Co-Founder & CEO of Warranty Life
President/CEO at Warranty Life
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About Warranty Life: Providing Usage-Based Mobile Device Insurance
Mariya Pak
Co-founder, CEO of Simple Matters
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About Simple Matters: Simple Matters attempts to find new solutions to old problems by removing complexity from every day life and make it simpler
Matthew Shay
President & CEO of National Retail Federation
Matthew Shay is president and CEO of the National Retail Federation. As top executive of the world’s largest retail trade association, he serves as the chief advocate for one of the nation’s largest private sector employers, which supports one in four U.S. jobs – 42 million working Americans – and contributes $2.6 trillion to annual GDP. Shay came to NRF in 2010 and is credited with leading the organization to new levels of effectiveness on policy issues, increasing awareness of the industry’s economic contributions and emphasizing political activity. Shay has been recognized by CEO Update as one of the top 50 non-profit chief executives in Washington. He is a graduate of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and The Ohio State University College of Law, and holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business.
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About National Retail Federation: NRF is a retail trade association representing department specialty stores, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and internet retailers.
Bryan Gerber
Co-Founder / CEO of Hemper
Founder at Hunt
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About Hemper: Hemper is a leading cannabis accessories and lifestyle brand.
Daniel Ling
Founder/CEO of antsquare
Founder, CEO of antsquare.
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About antsquare: Antsquare builds the next generation of online retail marketplace, anywhere and everywhere with mobile
Ryan Smith
Founder & CEO of FTSY
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About FTSY: FTSY (‘footsy’) is an A.I. platform that matches people to consumer goods where fit and comfort matter.
Milan Hucko, PhD
CEO of Global Catalog
Milan Hucko, CEO at Global Catalog Inc. holds a Doctor’s degree in Computer Science – Data Management Systems. He used his knowledge of analyzing large volumes of data across a business sectors, to start a couple online projects, which interconnected and seamless flow of information between businesses. In 2011 drawing upon his vast business experience Milan Hucko and his business partner Pavel Hancak founded Global Catalog (www.globalcatalog.com) – one of the fastest growing, and most efficient, B2B online global business networks. Visit: globalcatalog.com
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About Global Catalog: Global Catalog is one of the fastest growing and most effective online business network platform available today.
Anthony Blount
Chairman & CEO of Blount Jewels, Inc.
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About : Blount Jewels is an multinational luxury jewelry & specialty retailer with a focus on providing couture pieces from international designers.
Gabrielle Jordan
Chief Executive Officer of Jewelz of Jordan
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About Jewelz of Jordan: Jewelz of Jordan is a Maryland-based jewelry company specializing in fashion jewelry made with semi-precious gem stones, freshwater pearls.
