Mobile First

Our Guest Aki Iido is the Head of Mobile at Zappos Family of Companies. He holds lead link roles to the mobile and engineering circles, as well as a CTO role. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Aki’s background from being originally from Japan but born in Guatemala, having a Japanese dad and a mom from Central America. He also shares going to college in the US, getting a job in LinkExchange which was acquired by Microsoft, and his initial hesitations in joining Zappos. How Aki was led by his roommate, who was then a Computer Science major, to the engineering space. The pivots and transitions that he made when he worked in Zappos and some challenging things that they had encountered such as learning new systems and tools, and doing some back end work such as developing workhouses systems. Coming from this, Aki then shares the take aways that he learned from all the experience in modernizing the supply chain. How it is working the full gamut of the business from the

Our Guest Luvleen Sidhu is the Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder of the BankMobile Foundation. She's been recognized in the industry, including being named one of Bank Innovation’s Top 10 ‘Innovators to Watch’ worldwide in 2016; the Lehigh Valley Business Women of Influence - Woman to Watch Honoree in 2016; a winner of New York Business Journal's Women of Influence Awards in 2016; one of Auto Finance News’ ‘10 Executives to Watch in Auto Finance’ in 2015; and one of Bank Innovation’s ‘2015 Innovators to Watch.’ She holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Government from Harvard. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Luvleen shares how her desire to have a positive impact to the society drove her to find ways to explore means of doing so. Government is a good vehicle to serve as a catalyst to change but she later found out that a combination of business and exponential growth in technology can positivity impact -- from local to global – people’s live

Our Guest Dan Armstrong is the Chief Digital Officer at BankMobile, America’s first fee- free mobile first bank. With mobile banking and financial services, telecommunications and technology projects in 40+ countries, Dan brings unique expertise in developing new products, technologies and distribution strategies that accurately match technology with consumers’ needs. For the past 20 years, Dan has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America start-ups, mobile banking/payments, instant-account opening and correspondent banking, telecommunications, NFC, cards, alliances, regulatory, feasibility and automation programs. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Daniel more including his travels, e-telco projects and his learnings regarding the ubiquity of mobile around the world after being in many other continents. As takeaways from trying things out from the rest of the world, Dan shares the bigger things and functionalities that we should bring back. Dan’s observations

Our Guest Diane Loviglio is the Co-Founder & CEO of Boon + Gable whose vision is to make shopping less time-intensive and more enjoyable. Boon + Gable sends a personal stylist to your home with clothes from brick and mortar retailers. The stylist advises what best fits for you and you pay only for what you keep. When not being a CEO, she can often be found in her favorite pair of AG jeans and playing with her 2-year-old daughter. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Diane shares how Boon + Gable was born from a personal pain point, her background in architecture and her hobbies which include trying new recipes out, staircase walks in San Francisco, and exploring cities. Why Boon + Gable means ‘a favor to your home’ and why Diane choose this name for the company. What inspired Diane to transition from architecture to start up, her frustrations about the way she shopped before, and how she came up with the current model of their company. Diane introduces Clark, the company’s algori

Our Guest Joshua Behar, Junior Director of Marketing for the brand, Ike Behar Apparel and Design, has worked in the company since the age of 15 and currently, is responsible in allocating ad dollars to create comprehensive marketing strategies in order to maximize brand exposure, awareness, and ROI. He also developed numerous corporate and promotional partnerships to promote brand awareness. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: All about Josh: from starting the job at a young age, his reverence for his grandfather who started the company, and how he got into digital marketing. When and why he pivoted towards new media and content marketing, and how being part of Gen Y gave him a fresh perspective to move towards implementation and adoption of modern methodologies in the seasoned company. How he drew their company, which is not too susceptible to change, to embrace and transition to the new concepts he had introduced and see the value of technology and his ideas. About the first campaign

Our Guest Daniel is a designer with nine years of professional experience, focused on creating memorable, cutting edge web experiences. Daniel has worked in print and web for both product companies as well as in client services— serving such clients as ID90T, The National Geographic Society, Starbucks, Freeman, ComData, Nintendo, and Funimation. He is currently Vinli's EVP of Experience, leading all design and front-end development for the connected car company. Daniel is responsible for ensuring a consistent experience across the entire Vinli ecosystem. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Daniel more from his passion for technology and products up to their interesting version of pillow talk. How a pirated copy of Dreamweaver and Photoshop and the necessity of promoting a band led and inspired Daniel to pursue web design and development at the age of 14. The reasons on what drove him to transition from client services to the world of product and the challenges -- su

Our Guest Joe Blecha is the Global Director for Product Development at Stance Socks whose cause is to make a product as imaginative, as expressive and uncommonly cool as the people who wear it. Joe has over 16 years of experience the field of outer wear and has worked with companies like Nike, DC and Burton. He has worked for projects for the US Olympics Snowboarding team and mini clothing collections like the Nike SB and Jordan, to name a few. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Joe, what keeps him busy, and about his love for surfing, snowboarding, meditation and yoga. How his passion for outdoor clothing had budded from his love for individual sports and how these sports, which he started enjoying at a young age, had appealed to him tremendously and made him decide that this is what he wanted to do with his life. Joe also shares how he came to join the industry and his interesting beginnings. His journey in product development starting from gaining insights from

Our Guest Mina Aiken is the Director of Customer Experience at Taylor Stitch where she focuses on creating the most humanized online shopping experience possible. She oversees all e-commerce, customer service and logistics. She believes that educating your customer and telling your brand story in an inclusive way makes a happier individual and a lifetime value customer. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Mina and how much she loves what she is doing, her favorite hobby during her free time: designing wedding invitations, and how it was like growing up in sunny Florida. How she came to be an ambassador for customer experience and hospitality at a young age initially because of her first job being in the restaurant industry and how her love for talking to adults and working with this crowd grew naturally. She also shared how her passion for provenance and to share the story behind a product or service to gain someone’s trust and how that led her to the field of brand

Scott Emmons is the Head of Digital Innovation Lab for the Neiman Marcus Group. Scott built the Neiman Marcus Group Innovation Lab, also known as iLab, and is responsible for leading the organization in evaluating, designing, testing and piloting cutting-edge technologies and applications for luxury retail. Scott is working on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) initiatives, as well as Wi-Fi/Local and Wide Area Network infrastructures, mobility, and digital signage initiatives. These innovation projects include the amazing MemoMi Memory Mirror, beautiful 4K touch table look-books, beacon enabled holiday passes, intelligent mobile phone charging stations and gorgeous digital directories for Bergdorf Goodman. Here are the highlights of my conversation with our guest: Getting to know Scott --- what usually consumes his day and how a Harley Davison and a pool fills the little free time he has left from time to time. From starting out as a contractor, to becoming an associate and then an Enterprise Architect, Scott

Joanna Herrick started in the men’s clothing industry over 12 years ago, primarily in custom clothing. She joined Trunk Club in 2013, heading Operations in men’s custom clothing division. During that time, they have grown to be the 2nd largest custom retailer of men’s clothing in the country, using technology to combine a modern interactive experience with this old world craft. Here are the highlights of my conversation with our guest: How Joanna picked up tips and tricks through her early experience in the clothing retail industry which gave her knowledge on both frontend and back end processes in this field and bring this expertise to Trunk Club. From being a French horn player, Joanna shares how she got led to this industry through Craigslist and how she continues to hone her craft especially that the company continues to scale positively. With Trunk Club’s speedy expansion, the company grew from 3 people to 18 employees pretty quickly and Joanna tells us how Trunk Club was able to scale this fast, th

Our guest for this episode is Nick Shah, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Ampush. Prior to Ampush, Nick worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York and Mumbai advising a range of deals, from IPOs to mergers, in the media and telecom industries. Nick graduated from The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a dual concentration in Finance and Operations, and Information Management. Nick can be found playing basketball, participating in dance-offs, fearing bicycles, loving all things India, cheering for the Detroit Pistons, and always being positive. He was born and raised outside of Detroit, Michigan. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our Guest: - Getting to know Nick professionally and personally from his rich childhood, his interest in basketball, being a rebel, to becoming an eventual entrepreneur. - Nick shares details of his story on what led him to deviate from the family’s expectation of him becoming a doctor and how he pursued business and finance wi

Our guest for this episode is Dominique Essig, Chief Experience Office of Bonobos. Dominique is responsible for leading and overseeing the Product Management/UX, Technology (Engineering, IT, and Data Science), Customer Service (their Ninjas), and Ecommerce Operations teams in the company. She brings more than 16 years of online experience for both online and global product management, customer experience operations and software development. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our Guest: - From originally becoming a lawyer, Dominique shares at what point in her life she became interested in Customer Experience and how she became fascinated and fell in love with the art and science of the whole customer journey. - Where she first sank her teeth in e-commerce and what led her to become the Chief Experience Officer at Bonobos instead of anywhere else. - The things that make her great at what she does: her robust experience in e-commerce, her passion in this business, her desire to constantly learn an

Ali Wing is the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Digital Channels at Maurices. Ali started her career with NIKE in marketing (NIKE women and sport casual) and later moved into corporate development (NIKE and NIKE International). From creating brand, marketing and digital strategies for venture capital–backed multichannel retail concepts like Gazoontite to founding and launching Giggle, a multichannel retailer, wholesaler and licenser of baby products, Ali’s passion and legacy is brand building and innovation. Here are the highlights of the conversation with our Guest: - Ali gives us a peek of her life from getting used to a new city, growing up as a small-town kid among nine other siblings, how she accidently fell in love with brand, brand strategy and brand development, and how she got introduced to Nike. - The memory that fueled her passion for connecting with the customer and the strategies they had employed to arrive with the most effective first women’s campaign such as journey mapping and recognizi