retail-executive
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Jacob Hawkins Has Spent a Career Closing Retail’s Most Expensive Gap
The Five Below executive has spent more than two decades learning where shopping journeys break - and how product, data, creators and a faster checkout can put them back together.
Heather Gruccio
Heather Salvatore Gruccio is Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer for Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Factory, the KnitWell Group brands headquartered at 7 Times Square in New York. A Wake Forest communications graduate, she built her merchandising career over nine years at Coach, sharpened it in mid-luxury at Tory Burch, and joined Ann Taylor in 2016 as Senior Director of Merchandising for non-apparel. She moved up to Vice President of Merchandising in 2017, SVP and GMM in 2020, and was elevated to EVP and Chief Merchandising Officer in 2025 after leading a product-and-perception reset that turned a 70-year-old mall brand into a name fashion press started writing about again. Her thesis is unfussy: women still want to look pulled together, they just want to be comfortable while doing it, and heritage is an asset rather than a liability if you actually know how to cut a jacket.
Keith Colbourn
Keith Colbourn is a retail marketing executive who has spent his career turning shopping data into loyalty. He is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Total Wine & More, and previously ran loyalty and lifecycle marketing at Target, loyalty and analytics at Safeway, and retailer digital solutions at Quotient Technology (Coupons.com). Earlier roles at dunnhumby, FreshDirect, and The Loyalty Group (now LoyaltyOne) put him at the front of the shift from paper coupons to mobile-first, data-driven customer programs.
Mike Meyer
Mike Meyer is Chief Marketing Officer at Fleet Farm, the roughly 70-year-old Midwestern farm-and-home retail chain headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin. He arrived first as a consultant, embedded with the leadership team, and then stepped into the top marketing seat. A Baylor University graduate based near Fort Worth, Texas, he works at the intersection of rural retail heritage and modern digital marketing, writing publicly on topics like early-mover advantage and B2B intent data.
Michael Foss
Michael Foss is CEO and Chairman of RanMarine Technology, the Rotterdam-based maker of the WasteShark, an autonomous surface drone that eats floating trash out of harbours and canals. A veteran retail and technology CFO/CEO with prior top posts at Sports Authority, Petco and Circuit City, he joined RanMarine as an advisor in 2022, became board chair in 2023, and now leads the company as it pushes its water-cleaning fleet across ports, cities and marinas worldwide.