LeaderIQ Podcast

Today's guest is Mark Edmonson, Chief Marketing Officer of GoGo squeeZ. Guru and Mark dive deep into Mark's early life, where he learned the values of accountability and focus while growing up on a farm in Louisiana. From his love of problem solving, he went from interning as a computer scientist at Microsoft, to becoming a digital marketer at P&G. Since then, Mark has continued his incredible career path at companies like Campbell's Soup and Henkel, culminating in his current role as Chief Marketing Officer at GoGo squeeZ.

Today's guest is Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer of e.l.f. Cosmetics.   Guru and Ekta dive deep into Ekta's early life, where she learned the values of empathy and hard work while being raised by her mother after moving from New Delhi to Toronto. From her first foray into business selling flowers as a child, to breaking gender roles by entering IT, Ekta has built an incredible career path in technology and retail, culminating in her role as Chief Digital Officer at e.l.f., where she's been for the past 6 years.

Today's guest is Gonzalve Bich, CEO of BIC.  Growing up, Gonzalve watched BIC grow from a family business to a global company. In this episode, Guru and Gonzalve take a deep dive into the experiences that led Gonzalve to join the family business and the values that helped BIC become a household name around the world. 

Today's guest is Jim Sustar, President and Co-Founder of Trademark Global. Jim and his brother started out home selling on eBay after college, before deciding to turn it into a business. In the early 2000's, Trademark accurately predicted that a turning point had arrived for e-commerce businesses, and changed their mission from acting as an online seller, to supplying and distributing products for mass market retailers.  Today, Trademark Global is a Consumer Brand Manufacturer that provides an “Endless Aisle” solution for retailers like Amazon, Wayfair, and Walmart.

Today's guest is Jim Welsh, who is the Senior Vice President of Western Digital. Jim's love for electronics led him to become an expert in external storage,  launching the first external hard drive in the market at Maxtor. Jim then went on to become General Manager of Western Digital, where he has successfully led the consumer electronics unit and reached the brand's #1 worldwide share position for external hard drive storage since 2006.

Today's guest is Greg Hoffman, Founder of the brand advisory group Modern Arena and former Chief Marketing Officer at Nike. Greg has spent over two decades strategizing and influencing Nike's brand at every major sporting event, focusing on themes of equality, sustainability, and empowerment through sport. Greg and Guru take a deep dive on these themes as well as Greg's new book, "Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike."

Today's guest is Kristina Lambert, Executive Vice President at Pilgrim's. Kristina is a Bentonville native who started her incredible career as an intern at Tyson Foods, where she held several positions over 20 years, including Vice President and General Manager. In 2013, she was named to the 40 Under 40 list by NWA Business Journal for her work at Tyson building brands from the ground up. In this episode, Kristina shares her insights with Guru that led her to lead Prepared Foods across multiple companies.

This week we sat down with Esi Eggleston Bracey, who was on the path to becoming a Biomedical Engineer when she fell in love with marketing and brand management. Esi shares her learnings from over 25 years of working with P&G, leading the merger of Coty and P&G specialty beauty business, and eventually landing at Unilever as the EVP and COO of Beauty & Personal Care.

Today's guest is Lisa Curtis, Founder & CEO of Kuli Kuli, the first brand to bring the superfood moringa to the US market. Lisa shares with Guru her incredible story, from her discovery of moringa in the Peace Corp to launching her multi-million dollar brand in 11,000 stores across North America. Lisa was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2018 and offers valuable lessons on entrepreneurship, scaling, and the future of food retail.

Today's guest is Vince Jones, Senior Vice President and Head of E-Commerce at PepsiCo.  Guru and Vince dive deep into Vince's personal story about growing up in the Midwest, how he went from consultant at Accenture to Walmart during the dot-com boom, then to C-suite roles at eBags and Bluestem Brands.  Vince shares lessons from his career and insights he's gained while leading e-commerce for the iconic company, PepsiCo.  Enjoy our first episode of 2022!

Today's guest is Max Rangel, CEO & Global President at Spin Master.  Guru and Max cover lessons from all across Max's global career, from P&G, The Hershey Company, SC Johnson and now as CEO at Spin Master. Enjoy our final episode of 2021 :-) 

Today's guest is Sandeep Dadlani, Global Chief Digital Officer at Mars Inc.  Fun fact, Guru and Sandeep grew up in the same town!  They cover Sandeep's 16+ year career at Infosys before exploring the story of how it led him to becoming CDO at Mars.

This week's guest is Sri Rajagopalan, Chief Omnichannel Commercial Officer at General Mills. Sri has had an illustrious career across companies like Frito-Lay, J&J, Revlon and now General Mills, and this episodes dives deep into all the lessons he's learned along the way. If you enjoyed this conversation, we encourage you to check out Sri's podcast at www.cpgguys.com

This weeks guest is Claudine Patel, CMO at Post Consumer Brands. Prior to joining Post, Claudine was the CMO of NA Health at Reckitt, a role she rose to just 9 months into her time at the company. Her career spans iconic brands owned by companies like Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, and The Coca-Cola Company and this episode highlights some of the amazing lessons learned over that span of time.

Jim Sanduski started his career in the mailroom at a bank in Omaha — when he was just a junior in high school. He was an aspirational teen, juggling active involvement in multiple youth leadership and professional development organizations, and took advantage of opportunities that stretched and challenged him, like studying abroad in Japan for two years.  It was interesting to talk to Jim and learn about how influential some of those early experiences were in shaping his career path, which led him to key roles at iconic consumer electronic brands, including Sony, Samsung, HP, Panasonic and now Sharp. Our conversation covered many great learnings on leadership, risk-taking, navigating difficult career decisions and the benefits of international exposure and experience.

Kevin George's resume is beyond impressive—CMO of Harvest Health, President of Mosaic NA, Global CMO of Beam Suntory, to name a few of his most recent roles—but even more impressive is the path he took to get where he is. Kevin's story proves that the journey has an immense impact on how successful you will be when you arrive at your “destination,” however high up the corporate ladder you hope to climb. 

CommerceIQ regularly brings together senior business leaders in the e-commerce space to share their story or discuss a particular topic. Prior to the pandemic, these gatherings took the form of a lively dinner. Since we haven't been able to meet in person, we've held these chats online, because it's important to us to continue to play a part in building community among our industry's leaders. The added benefit of an online venue is that our podcast audience is able to enjoy the conversion now, too.   When my team and I were thinking about who to bring in to help leaders think about navigating this post-pandemic world, we couldn't think of a better person than Hubert Joly. Throughout his career, Hubert led a number of important business transformations, most notably that of Best Buy. Now he is a Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author of the recently released book The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism. Our conversation with Hubert centered around three main topics: the behind-the-scenes of the incredible turnaround of Best Buy, Hubert's inspiring leadership journey and philosophy, and how these two intertwined to create a lasting legacy at Best Buy.

Kal Raman has had an illustrious career, working alongside iconic entrepreneurs like Sam Walton at Walmart and Jeff Bezos at Amazon. In between he's started and sold a number of companies, including Founding Drugstore.com at the heart of the dotcom boom, and later jumping into the Daily Deals craze as COO of Groupon. Kal's story is absolutely incredible. He lost his father as a teenager, forcing his mother to take care of him and his siblings on her own on what inflation adjusted would be $500 a month on a pension. Today Kal is the Chief Digital Officer at Samsung, leading change and innovation of this iconic consumer electronics brand. 

How Doug Straton used his Founder Mentality to Become Chief Digital Officer of The Hershey Company Doug Straton is a nonconformist who sets his own rules. This rebellious approach to life is less anti-authority and more a character trait that drives his ambition to seek innovative solutions and build them from the ground up.  I talked to Doug about his fascinating journey from starting a fraternity at Michigan State to his post-college path through both startup and corporate cultures, and how those experiences led him to his current role as Hershey's Chief Digital Officer.  If there's one thing that stood out to me about Doug, it's that his comfort zone is ever-expanding. He'll admit when something isn't part of his existing skill set, but that doesn't mean he isn't willing to do the hard work to change that. 

Ben Gadbois arrived in the United States from Canada at age 17, not speaking a lick of English. He wasn't going to let language barriers get in the way of his ambitions. He scrubbed toilets and painted homes to make money in high school, and then put his English skills to the test by waiting tables. Throughout his life, Ben has displayed a dogged determination to better himself and create professional opportunities where others were scared away by obstacles. When you look at the progression of his career and the age he was when reaching certain milestones, it's impressive. But when you get into the stories behind each advancement, you see the heart and business savvy that Ben put into each role.  You'll notice Ben spends a lot of time supporting not-for-profit initiatives.  Ben takes his family to disadvantaged areas around the world, such as Kenya, India and Ecuador, to build schools or hospitals. They spend about two-thirds of each trip within the local community so that Ben's kids can be exposed to different ways of living. They also work with U.S. inner city programs as a family. Ben finds that this is a great way for their family to bond while helping his kids appreciate all that they have. A local Chicago-area organization that Ben and his team at Instant Brands are fond of supporting is Cal's Angels. This nonprofit focuses on pediatric cancer—raising awareness, granting wishes and funding research.    

How Cynthia Chen Became a 7x Cannes Lions Winner and Forbes Top 100 Business Woman  Today's guest is Cynthia Chen, ​​President, North America Health at Reckitt. Calling Cynthia's career “impressive” is simply an understatement.  In addition to being named a Forbes Top 100 Businesswoman, Cynthia won 7 Cannes Lions Awards over a span of just two years for her work leading Oreo at Mondelez.  Guru and Cynthia discuss what the story was behind her amazing work at Mondelez, where she spearheaded an effort to bring real-time advertising to Oreo, creating 100 ads over 100 days, culminating in the iconic advertisement response to the Super Bowl blackout. Since her time at Mondelez, Cynthia went on to be a VP at GSK and then was named Managing Director and CEO of General Mills China were she turned around the business from negative growth to double digit growth in just 2 years. Today, she leads the North America Health team as President at Reckitt.

How this Aerospace Engineer ended up becoming Chief Technology Officer at Walmart It's been a real pleasure to follow Suresh's meteoric rise through the executive ranks of Microsoft, Google and Walmart over the past 15 years. As someone who was raised to hold education in high regard, learning—whether formal or self-directed—has guided Suresh's career from interning at IBM Research to becoming Global CTO and CDO at Walmart today. Just as impressive as his career path are the principles and values that guide his decision-making at every turn.  On this latest podcast episode, Guru and Suresh discuss many interesting topics, from why life doesn't always work out as planned to how to balance risks when running product experiments—but you won't want to miss Suresh's “3 innings of retail” and why he's well-positioned to disrupt the industry as we know it. 

If there were ever a person who embodies the saying “with knowledge comes power,” it would be Monica McGurk. Her deep love of learning and intense intellectual curiosity led her from rural Minnesota roots to earning degrees from Harvard and Stanford, and rising through the corporate ranks from McKinsey consultant to chief global growth officer at Kellogg's.    The odds were against Monica to reach such heights in the corporate world—with just 21% of women in the U.S. workforce reaching the C-suite level—and it by no means has been a smooth journey for her. But she has been a hard-working, unstoppable force with an “I'm willing to try anything” attitude.  I spoke to Monica about her early influences, career trajectory and family life. One thing that stood out about her personality is that she is seemingly able to extract a lesson from any event in her life, grow from what she's learned and not lose sight of its importance. It's one of the reasons that—on top of being an executive, wife and mother—Monica reignited her passion for writing and became a novelist.   You, too, will be inspired by her incredible journey

Ikdeep Singh's journey from growing up in a small mining town in India to running multibillion-dollar businesses is an impressive one. Though it's not surprising when you consider the resilience he's shown and the personal philosophies he's maintained to get where he is today.  During college, Ikdeep struggled to find a job, which makes a great story now considering that he has since gone on to build and grow some of the world's most iconic brands at Procter & Gamble and L'Oréal. His high-profile roles at those ecompanies brought him all over the globe—from North America to Asia and Europe—to live and work. Now he's landed in Nashville Regional President Pet Nutrition NA at Mars Petcare. I had the pleasure of chatting with Ikdeep about his fascinating journey and the lessons he's learned along the way

Bracken Darrell was kind enough to give me time out of his incredibly busy schedule to share his story. For those of you who don't know him, Bracken has been a fast-rising executive who excelled throughout his professional career and was eventually brought in to turnaround Logitech in 2012. Under his leadership, Logitech's market capitalization has grown by more than 6x and the rise has been meteoric.  But most people don't know that Bracken started with very humble roots. He grew up in Kentucky and was raised by a single mother. His story and philosophies are so rich with thought and intention

It's one thing to be the CMO of a Fortune 500 company but another thing to be the CMO of the NFL which is probably the world's most important professional sports league. I really enjoyed my latest interview with Dawn Hudson who was most recently the CMO of the NFL. Today, she also serves on the Board of leading organizations like IPG, Rodan and Fields, Modern Times Group and NVIDIA. But I'm leaving out a whole lot. Dawn was previously the CEO of PepsiCo North America and Vice Chair of the Parthenon Group. Thought I was done? She also served on the Board of the LPGA Tour, Lowe's, Allergan, Amplify Snacks and PF Chang's. It's safe to say that what Dawn has achieved in a single lifetime is equivalent to what most could only dream of doing over multiple lifetimes. We now live in an era where we are finally starting to make progress on the glass ceiling. Dawn managed to achieve all of these things when the world was far less progressive and accepting of women in leadership positions. What I took away from my interview with Dawn was that she has always had an insatiable curiosity and desire to learn new things. But she was also intentional and very well aware of how her career choices would impact the brand and reputation that she would have.