Steven Hunter |Stage Stores | Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Hunter joined Stage Stores in June 2008 as Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer and was promoted to Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer in March 2010. From May 2003 to June 2008, he previously served as Senior Vice President of Information Technology at Belk, Inc.
In 2017, Mr. Hunter was appointed to the position of Chief Operating Officer.
Mr. Hunter has responsibility for Stage Stores, Supply Chain, Corporate Procurement, Facility Management, and Ancillary Revenue areas.
He received a BA Business from the University of Illinois, and a MS from St. Mary’s University.
Hunter has held senior management positions at Best Buy, Kmart, Belk, and Stage Stores over the past 20 years.
In addition, Hunter is on the Retail Advisory Board of Hewitt Packard and Governing Board of the Texas CIO Association.
Kelvin Sakai | CBRE | Director of Supply Chain Advisory for the U.S.
Mr. Sakai has over 30 years of supply chain, consulting, and customer management experience. He has specialized for more than 12 years in supply chain consulting in functional areas including strategy and business case development, supply chain network design, transportation analysis, inventory optimization, supply chain outsourcing, global supply chain solutions, strategic sourcing, visibility solutions, and organizational design.
Currently, Mr. Sakai is the Director of Supply Chain Advisory for the United States. He oversees a team of supply chain professionals, project managers, modelers, data scientists, engineers and business analysts to help clients solve business problems where supply chain intersects with real estate.
Prior to joining CBRE, Mr. Sakai led the supply chain consulting practice in the Americas, Asia and Europe for UTi Worldwide. Prior to that, Kelvin was a Senior Manager in the New Product Development and Strategy practice with Ernst & Young Management Consulting. Earlier in his career Kelvin was an aerospace engineer managing airline customers for Boeing.
Brian Gibson | Auburn University | Wilson Family Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Supply Chain Innovation
Dr. Brian Gibson serves as the Wilson Family Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Auburn University. His university roles are complimented by eight years of retail logistics management experience.
Active in industry-focused research, Gibson produces the annual State of the Retail Supply Chain Report. He is author of the Supply Chain Essentials e-textbook and co-author of two SCM textbooks. Gibson serves on the RILA Supply Chain Steering Committee, the CSCMP Board of Directors, and as NASSTRAC’s Education Advisor.
Jean-Pierre Asselin | Trans-Pro Logistics | Managing Partner
JP Asselin is 48 years of age, father 2 who lives in Montreal, Canada but traveled 207 days last year! He holds a degree in Commerce Marketing from the University of Concordia. JP is a guest speaker at many Logistics conference during the year.
Currently serves as a Managing Partner at Trans-Pro Logistics. JP has been with Trans-Pro for 20 years. Trans-Pro is a boutique 3PL and asset based carrier who employees 125 people. They are involved in Retail, Food grade and High Value goods distribution. JP managed a sales force of 35 traders and a team of 45 ops team leader in Mexico, Canada and Europe.
Bob Abbondanza | Office Depot | Senior Director or Supply Chain Engineering and Network Design
Bob Abbondanza is the Senior Director or Supply Chain Engineering and Network Design at Office Depot. His many years of experience range from Zulily, to Vistaprint and Amazon.
Andy Lockhart | Vice President, Sales | TGW Logistics Group
Experienced Sales & Marketing Executive bringing innovative solutions to the retail industry that improve the efficiency of distribution centers in a dynamically changing business environment. E-commerce is changing the retail landscape and having a flexible solution to your distribution needs is paramount. Highly experienced executive level sales professional with a background in delivering highly complex solution sales.
Andy is passionate about bringing flexible fulfillment solutions to the retail industry that allow retailers to more efficiently deliver their products to market.He has hands on experience of strategic solution selling from concept to successful implementation of major infrastructure projects.
Chad Duennes | Sr. Director of Supply Chain | JCPenney
Mr. Duennes attended Ohio University where he graduated with honors in 1999 from the school of business with a BA in Marketing.He is currently the Sr. Director of Supply Chain at JCPenney where he leads the eCommerce Supply Chain Facilities as well as the Strategy, Engineering, and Analytics organization, Chad joined JCPenney in May of 2012 as East Region Director of Supply Chain Operations where he lead the Field Operations organization. In May of 2015 he was appointed Sr. Director of Supply Chain Strategy, Engineering, and Analytics. Prior to joining JC Penney, he held several Director level positions at PepsiCo in Sales, Supply Chain, and Sales Operations, including Director of Sales Midwest for Gatorade, and National Director of Sales Operations for PepsiCo Chilled DSD. Chad began his career with the Naked Juice Company in Southern California where he progressed to the role of General Manager of the National Field Sales and Operations organization.
Rob Caucci | Co-Founder | Fillogic
Rob Caucci has spent the past nine years operating early-stage technology companies, and is co-founder and President of Fillogic. He started his career in Information Systems at The Dannon Company and became a Strategy Consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton before deciding to strike out on his own as an entrepreneur. Most notably, Rob ran PijonBox, a venture-back retail startup, as co-founder and CEO for 4.5 years, and he is also a Mentor to the NUMA New York accelerator program.
Austin Smith | Founder | Submetrics Data
Austin Smith has built a successful entrepreneurial career that blends together strategic marketing, technology-enabled efficiency, and supply chain management with his management skills. Moving into the tech sector, Austin studied bank data and financial modeling, learning tools that enabled him to enter subscription-based businesses with recurring monthly fees.
He has immersed himself in business intelligence, specifically machine learning, engineering, data analytics, and order management systems. Now serving on the Board of Directors for E-Commerce at FedEx, Austin is working with some of the world’s largest consumer products companies.
Jatin Lewis | Sr. Sales Consultant | SDI Systems
Industrial Engineer with 10 years’ experience in Warehouse Design and Automation; Design-Build Solutions, Data Analysis and Consulting. Jatin has worked at SDI Systems cumulatively for six years first in Consulting/Design and now in a Sales Engineering Role. Jatin has also worked at Amazon as an Innovation and Design Engineer for two years – where he designed a variety of fulfillment centers to include Amazon Robotics Non-Sortable, Fresh, Pantry, Hazmat and traditional sites. Jatin has his Masters in Industrial Engineering and Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University at Buffalo.
Peter Kok | VP Global Supply Chain Management | Carter’s
Peter has 25+ years International Supply Chain experience in apparel, footwear and accessories, with IT and Operational leadership roles at Bleckmann (European Fashion 3PL), Timberland, Manhattan Associates and Carter’s. 13+ years at Carter’s – Systems Architecture, design and implementation, Network strategy and optimization, $100M DC design, implementation and startup.