heritage-brand
(3)
Dave Schneider
Dave Schneider is Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Red Wing Shoe Company, the family-owned, Minnesota-based maker of iconic American work boots founded in 1905. He leads the company's global marketing practice, spanning brand management, digital and traditional communications, ecommerce, retail experience, brand protection, and corporate communications, reporting directly to the CEO. After years in senior roles at leading agencies including Digitas, Tribal DDB, and BBDO, he brought an agency creative sensibility to an operator's job, championing a marketing model that balances long-term brand equity with performance-driven revenue while putting the skilled-trades workers who wear the boots at the center of the brand's story.
Matthew Pantoja
Matthew Pantoja is the Chief Brand Officer of Alpha Industries, the outerwear label famous for the MA-1 bomber and M-65 field jacket. Over two decades he has moved through New Era, Reebok, Palladium Boots and Triple 5 Soul, building a career on turning heritage product and youth culture into commercial energy. Since joining Alpha in 2016, he has helped steer the 60-year-old military supplier from surplus-store staple to global lifestyle brand, overseeing product, marketing and brand experiences across every region and channel.
Rajendra Soni
Rajendra Soni runs the United States arm of PNG Jewellers, the 190-plus-year-old Pune house famous for gold, diamonds and old-school karigari. He turned a single Sunnyvale storefront into the Bay Area's go-to address for South Asian wedding jewellery, then helped open Fremont, and keeps showing up at every ribbon cutting with the same line: customer first, then employees, then the bling.