How AI Technology Will Drive Greater Efficiency, Better Personalization, and Superior Customer Experiences – Kensington A

Jim Yates is a Retail Strategist who spent almost four decades working with Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada’s largest grocery retailer. During his tenure with Loblaw, Jim held a number of different roles, with responsibilities that encompassed category management, space planning, in-store merchandising, procurement, and private label development.

Jim currently serves as an advisor to several organizations, including Optimum Retailing, where he uses his extensive knowledge of retail operations and go-to-market strategies to help companies better understand the retail industry from an insider’s perspective and develop programs to maximize their success in-store.

David Pullara serves as the Chief Marketing Officer for Optimum Retailing, a retail intelligence platform that provides intuitive, scalable software solutions to help consumer-driven brands like Verizon, Sephora, McDonald’s, and Adidas easily, efficiently, and profitably manage their complex businesses.

David has over 20 years of experience in business management, brand strategy, integrated marketing communications, and product innovation. He’s spent over a decade working with world-renowned, consumer-centric, Fortune 500 organizations like Starbucks, Yum! Brands, Coca-Cola, and Google.

David earned both his Honors B.B.A. and M.B.A. from York University’s Schulich School of Business, where he now serves as a part-time Marketing Instructor and teaches a “Retail Marketing Strategies” course to undergraduate, Master of Marketing, and M.B.A. students.

David is also the Principal of dp Ventures – a company offering consulting, advising, training, and Fractional CMO services to B2C and B2B businesses that understand effective marketing is the key to accelerated growth – and regularly shares his thoughts on business, marketing, and brand-building via his blog at dpthoughts.ca.

Lia Grimberg is the Principal of Radicle Loyalty, a personalization and loyalty consulting firm. Radicle Loyalty helps you find the root of the issue, the radicle. We analyze your data, gather insights, and use it to personalize your communications with your customers. Radicle Loyalty creates marketing strategies and designs loyalty programs to correct customer behaviour and drive emotional loyalty.

With 20+ years in loyalty both as a practitioner and a consultant, Lia honed her loyalty and marketing skills during her corporate career at companies such as The Bay, Loblaw,

LoyaltyOne, The Home Depot, and American Express. 

Lia holds an MBA from The Schulich School of Business at York University.