Omnichannel Leadership Program 2025

4:00pm – Check-in at The Graduate Hotel

4:30pm – 5:00pm – Program Welcome and Kickoff

• Dan Hooker, Program Director, Cornell University
• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University

5:00pm – 6:00pm – Keynote: Customer First

• Carrie Sander, Chief Customer Officer at Kellanova
• Why putting customers at the center of an enterprise, embracing innovation, and rethinking priorities can improve business performance, strengthen employees’ capabilities, and catalyze sustainability.

6:00pm – 8:30pm – Cocktails, Hors d’oeuvres and Networking – The Panorama Room

Strategy and Technology

8:00am – 8:15am – Welcome Program Overview

• Dan Hooker, Program Director, Cornell University

8:15am – 9:15am – The Big Picture. Retailer

• Parbinder Dharjwal, VP, GM at CVS Media Exchange (CMX)
• Peter Bond, Co-Founder & Co-Host, The CPG Guys Podcast

9:15am – 10:15am – The Big Picture. Brand

• Ajay Sharma, VP eCommerce & OmniChannel, North America at Bayer Consumer Health
• Peter Bond, Co-Founder & Co-Host, The CPG Guys Podcast

10:15am – 10:45am – Break

10:45am – 12:30pm – AI: Where We Stand? What’s Next?

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• The year 2024 will be reshaped by a potent confluence of disruptive forces— AI, geopolitics and macroeconomics. This session will assess the current state of AI— the current capabilities and the compromises made to unlock these capabilities. We will use this understanding to assess where these technologies go next — we will identify new capabilities that are likely to arise, and other capabilities where the future is uncertain. Time permitting, we will also discuss the state of play in 5G, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT), technologies, etc.

12:30pm – 1:30pm – Lunch

1:30pm – 2:30pm – AI: Opportunities and Failure Modes

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• We extrapolate the patterns from past general-purpose technologies to see the promise and peril of AI— how AI may create opportunities for new products, services, productivity improvement and enable new business models— and how it may fail to live up to its promise, lead to unintended consequences, and cause harm to society. We will apply these patterns to retail.

2:30pm – 3:00pm – Break

3:00pm – 4:00pm – Artificial Intelligence. The Productivity Frontier

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• AI and digital technologies provide large, untapped opportunities for increasing productivity. In this session, we will identify some typical patterns in which digital technology and AI can be deployed to augment our capabilities. We will start with managerial productivity and then discuss operational or organizational productivity. We will learn some typical ways in which AI will increase productivity— cheaper instrumentation, tighter monitoring and control, analysis and causal inference, spatial distribution, work modularization, and automation. Participants will then apply these templates to their retail organizations to identify promising AI ventures.

4:00pm – 5:00pm – Learning Lab

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• In this “Learning Lab”, participants work together like problem-solving architects, ready to tackle the challenges and changes in retail and technology with confidence. It provides opportunities for students to engage intellectually, creatively, and emotionally, and is designed to encourage collaboration, creativity, and innovation.

Business Models, Experimentation and Validation

8:30am – 9:30am – Connections Through Tech-Powered Delivery

• Ethan Grob, VP of Product Management at Shipt
• Dan Hooker, Program Director, Cornell University
• Discuss one of the hottest topics in retail tech today: how the company is leveraging the latest technology advancements to enable even more relevant, engaging, and personal experiences.

9:30am – 11:00am – New Business Models

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• Advances in AI enable new business models. Technology changes the economics and operational trade-offs of a business. Entrepreneurial leaders respond by reinventing their business models—rethinking the scope of their business, the price structures, the timing of decisions, the employment model, and their operations strategy, among other elements. Participants will apply templates to define their AI strategy.

11:00am – 11:30am – Break

11:30am – 12:30pm – New Business Models continued

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University

12:30pm – 1:30pm – Lunch

1:30pm – 2:30pm – Industry Speaker Session

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University

2:30pm – 3:00pm – Break

3:00pm – 5:00pm – Agile Leadership and Experimentation

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• Agile leadership is about being nimble, adaptable, and responsive to change. It’s about creating a culture of innovation and experimentation, where failure is embraced as a learning opportunity. In this agile leadership session, executives learn how to lead with agility, how to create a culture of experimentation, and how to drive change in their organizations.

5:00pm – 6:00pm – Upshop AI Driven

• Alex Ross, Senior VP of Global Sales at Upshop
• Dan Hooker, Program Director, Cornell University

6:00pm – 6:30pm – Free Time and Walk to Dinner

6:30pm – 9:00pm – Cocktail Hour and Dinner at The Sanctuary, Roosevelt Island, NYC

Bold Transformation

8:30am  -10:00am – Learning Lab Presentations

• Karan Girotra, Professor, Cornell University
• The final presentations are an opportunity for the team(s) to showcase their collective efforts and present their findings and recommendations.

10:00am – 11:00am – Sustainable Success: ESG as a Business Imperative

• Nicholas Bertram, CEO and President, Flashfood
• Mark Milstein, Clinical Professor, Cornell University

11:00am – 11:30am – Break and Hotel Checkout
11:30am – 12:30pm – Pivot with Purpose

• Tonya Herring, SVP of Omnichannel Development, Peapod Digital Labs
• Risa Mish, Professor of Practice, Cornell University

12:30pm – 1:30pm – Lunch
1:30pm – 3:00pm – Agile Leadership Transformation: Creating a Culture of Innovation and Experimentation

• Risa Mish, Professor of Practice, Cornell University

3:00pm – 3:30pm – Program concludes, certificate presentations