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Thursday, July 23

8:30am - 9:15am

Main level, Rocky Mountain AB

Disruption is no longer a moment – it’s the operating environment. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how consumers discover, evaluate, and buy, forcing retail leaders to rethink marketing, pricing, loyalty, and inventory in real time. As AI enables “one-to-X” engagement – deeply personalized experiences delivered at scale – the rules of retail are changing. Static pricing gives way to dynamic models. At the same time, consumer trust is under pressure as pricing, personalization, and value become increasingly opaque. In this always forward-looking session, Mitch Joel will introduce his P.A.C.E. framework to help retail leaders navigate this disruption. Attendees will gain a strategic roadmap to compete in an AI-mediated economy where adaptability, trust, and intelligent systems define competitive advantage.

9:30am - 10:00am

Agentic commerce is no longer just a futuristic idea, and AI and AI agents are rapidly reshaping the ecommerce landscape. As autonomous agents start to shop and purchase on behalf of humans, the fundamental relationship between merchants and their customers is being rewritten. Agentic commerce introduces a myriad of risks for merchants – not being able to identify returning loyal customers, an inability to distinguish good agents from bad bots, and more. In this executive panel, Tapestry and Forter will share how to prepare for an agentic commerce future, while maintaining customer loyalty and mitigating the risks of fraud and abuse. 

AI assistants are rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for store associates -- helping them locate products, answer customer questions, execute tasks faster and deliver more personalized service. This panel session of retail technology leaders will provide attendees with lessons from deploying in-store AI assistants that drive real operational and business impact and highlight future priorities, based on their practical experiences with deployment over the past several years.

11:30am - 12:00pm

Main level, Rocky Mountain AB

As AI, data, and digital platforms reshape retail, retail executives are increasingly responsible not just for digital and technology strategy, but for driving measurable business growth. In this candid discussion, senior executives from leading retailers will share how they’re using AI, data, and modern platforms to unlock new revenue opportunities, optimize omnichannel performance, personalize customer engagement, and accelerate digital commerce. They’ll also explore how their leadership roles are interdependent across marketing, ecommerce, merchandising, and operations – aligning digital and technology investments directly with revenue performance.

12:00pm - 12:30pm

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Retailers are investing heavily in AI—but many are discovering that the biggest barriers aren’t necessarily technical. They’re structural.

As agentic systems reshape content creation, forecasting, fulfillment, and personalization, traditional boundaries between marketing, digital, IT, and strategy are blurring even further. Simultaneously, the underlying skill sets are changing—requiring AI fluency, data literacy, model oversight, and new forms of cross-functional orchestration. Without clear ownership and redesigned capabilities, AI initiatives stall or introduce new structural friction.

In this session, Dr. Janet Sherlock, Founder & CEO of Org.Works and former Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Ralph Lauren, will share her proven AI organizational framework together with new research findings on the future evolution of marketing, digital, and IT teams in the era of agentic commerce.

What happens when a customer asks an LLM which retailer to buy from — and your brand isn't mentioned? As LLMs and answer engines reshape product discovery, retailers must optimize not just for search – but for AI-generated answers. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) require brands to publish precise, high-volume, structured content that AI trusts and cites.

Increasingly, models rely on sources like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Quora – where a single outdated or negative post can disproportionately influence brand perception. Retailers are facing new risks: AI hallucinations, reliance on outdated or paywalled information, and shrinking first-mover advantage windows. This session explores how brands can audit AI responses, scale and syndicate authoritative product and policy content, and prepare for emerging monetization models. Learn how to ensure your brand is recommended – not misrepresented – when AI becomes the primary interface for product discovery and purchase decisions.

Friday, July 24

8:30am - 9:15am

Main level, Rocky Mountain AB

Efficiency in content creation has dominated the AI conversation, but the real stakes lie in the total rewiring of an organization’s operating model. Few know this better than Wesley ter Haar, Chief AI & Revenue Officer at Monks, who steered Monks through a radical reinvention that treated AI not as a looming threat, but as a mandate for aggressive self-disruption. In this session, Wesley shows how this radical shift manifests in the post-agency era, moving from agencies to agents and collapsing the content supply chain from months to days. Success hinges on the internal readiness to scrap the old org chart and rewire for an agent-first reality. Stop chasing incremental gains and start engineering a business that survives by disrupting itself from the inside out.

9:30am - 10:00am

Consumers aren’t just searching anymore; they’re asking. As product discovery shifts from traditional search engines to AI-powered chat environments, brands face a critical question: will you show up when customers ask for recommendations? This forward-looking session explores how conversational discovery is reshaping visibility, influence, and conversion. Retail and digital leaders will unpack how AI-generated answers differ from traditional search results, what it means to “write for AI,” and why structured, enriched product data is now a growth lever. We’ll also examine the emerging landscape of paid placements within AI chat and what it takes to compete. If discovery has moved, your strategy must move with it.

Retailers are under pressure to deliver personalized, frictionless experiences at increasingly rapid speeds. This session explores how combining AI with nearshore delivery models can help retailers accelerate transformation and scale innovation across the enterprise. Learn how AI can enhance customer service, enable faster decision-making, and power more seamless omnichannel experiences – from digital engagement to store operations. Through practical examples and real-world lessons, this session will outline how retailers can move beyond experimentation with AI to operational impact – while building the delivery model required to sustain innovation, improve customer outcomes, and drive measurable business results.

11:30am - 12:00pm

Main level, Rocky Mountain AB

Based on her upcoming book Chief Impact Officer, Julie Averill, former CIO of lululemon, shares why most AI transformations fail. For NRF Nexus leaders navigating enterprise-wide AI adoption, this session cuts through the hype to reveal what actually drives impact: psychological safety, authentic leadership and influence without authority. Drawing on lessons from her leadership roles at lululemon, Nordstrom and REI, Julie offers a practical blueprint for building global tech teams, leading through disruption, and making culture your competitive infrastructure. The takeaway: sustainable AI transformation requires human intelligence first – and courageous, vulnerable leadership to make it stick.

12:00pm - 12:30pm

Twice a year, Benedict Evans publishes his definitive macro trends presentation to answer a simple question: what’s actually changing, and what does it mean? His latest analysis argues that AI is becoming a foundational computing layer, reshaping discovery, advertising, commerce architecture, and enterprise operations across every industry. For retailers, this shift extends far beyond chatbots. AI agents will transform how consumers discover products, how media and advertising drive demand, and how commerce platforms must evolve to become machine-readable and composable. In this data-driven session, Benedict will separate signal from noise, helping retail leaders understand which AI trends will matter most – and how to position their organizations for the next wave of platform and commerce transformation.