Selected work
Growth systems, product pipelines, and new businesses that moved organizations forward
* * * * * * *
Building a Growth System
From scattered ideas to confident bets
The Problem
Target didn’t lack ideas—it lacked a shared way to decide. Similar growth concepts surfaced in different teams, leadership alignment took time, and teams often didn’t know why some initiatives advanced while others stalled. Growth risked becoming either chaotic experimentation or slow consensus-driven inaction.
The Approach
Helped architect and implement an enterprise Growth System—an operating model to accelerate how growth opportunities are surfaced, evaluated, funded, and governed. This included establishing a standing executive Growth Board, defining common expectations for business cases and learning plans, and clarifying decision paths to advance, pause, or pivot initiatives.
What was missing wasn’t creativity or effort. It was shared clarity and decision discipline.
The Outcome
The Growth System changed how Target makes bets on the future.
Established a standing Growth Board to align growth decisions with enterprise strategy
Created shared cadence, language, and expectations for prioritizing growth investments
Helped leadership align capital, attention, and accountability
Gave teams clearer signals about what mattered and why
The system allowed Target to move faster with confidence — aligning culture, capability, and capital around long-term growth.
Fast Apparel & Accessories Model
Proving speed and discipline can coexist
The Problem
Consumers expect relevance in real time, while competitors were capturing culture-driven demand. Target’s apparel model was built for seasonality and predictability—long planning cycles and rigid handoffs meant products often arrived after demand peaked, increasing forecast error and inventory risk.
The Approach
Co-led design of a new operating model using AI trend sensing, small-batch manufacturing, creator-led commerce, and direct-from-factory fulfillment:
AI-enabled trend sensing to spot early cultural signals
Small-batch, ultra-fast manufacturing with digital-native vendors
Hybrid 1P / 3P economics to reduce inventory risk and improve profitability
International DTC fulfillment to bypass slow domestic constraints
New vendor and legal agreements designed for learning, not just scale
Equally important: behavior change. Merchants learned to trust evidence over instinct. Vendors became co-creators. Legal and logistics shifted from gatekeepers to enablers.
The Outcome
Proved that Target could operate at the pace of culture, while protecting its brand promise.
Time-to-market cut 80–90% (to ~5–8 weeks)
3–5× higher engagement in social and paid media
20% higher profitability than the existing digital apparel model
Validated a $250M–$500M+ annual growth opportunity
The new operating model showed large organizations can move at the speed of culture—without sacrificing profitability, sourcing standards, or discipline—and created a blueprint for scaling fast, evidence-based innovation.
Article - Inside Target’s Trend Machine
Services Team & Businesses
Designing services to simplify everyday life
The Problem
Consumers wanted fewer errands and simpler lives. Target wanted new growth engines beyond retail. The risk wasn’t demand—it was chasing too many ideas without a disciplined way to decide what should scale and what should stop.
The Approach
As a founding member of the Services team, helped build the capability from zero and treat services as a managed portfolio, not a collection of pilots:
Identified high-friction everyday moments worth solving
Partnered with best-in-class operators instead of building everything in-house
Ran fast tests in real homes and real stores
Paired every experiment with business cases, success criteria, and exit thresholds
Over 40 in-market experiments at-home and in-store services, including product installation/assembly, self-care, ear piercing, pet care, laundry, same-day fulfillment and returns, and more.
The Outcome
An intentional portfolio of services:
20+ service concepts tested
Average NPS: 82–84 across pilots
Advanced Ear Piercing and Easy Install to commercialization
Paused or exited 7 concepts, protecting capital, teams, and focus
Target learned where services genuinely deepen engagement—and where restraint creates more value than scale.
Loyalty & Relationships
From rewards to relationships
The Problem
Consumers were investing time, data, and emotional energy into loyalty programs, yet most programs felt transactional and extractive. Target’s highest-value consumers were showing signs of flattening retention and weakened emotional connection threatening lifetime value. Optimizing rewards alone wouldn’t fix a relationship problem.
The Approach
Led the design and testing of progressive loyalty value propositions that reframed loyalty as a relationship system, not a benefits grid, by blending:
Financial rewards
Emotional recognition
Behavioral reinforcement
Ran dozens of experiments across digital and in-store environments, partnering closely with marketing, stores, finance, legal, privacy, and installed a repeatable experimentation ecosystem.
The Outcome
As a result, loyalty stopped feeling one-sided.
Piloted progressive benefits in Dallas
Scaled to 200K+ active members
NPS exceeded projections
Experimentation frameworks expanded to 48 stores
The work launched what would become Circle, Target’s award winning loyalty program, proving loyalty performs best when it feels mutual.
Food & Beverage Innovation Pipeline
Making F&B a reason to choose Target
The Problem
Families are forced to shop multiple grocers to satisfy different needs. Target’s assortment offered a little of everything, concepts competed for attention, prioritization was unclear, and food & beverage rarely anchored store choice. This was a pipeline problem, not a product problem.
The Approach
Co-led a system redesign focused on creating shared clarity around where to innovate and how to decide:
10 cross-functional workshops
60+ leaders aligned across merchandising, design, sourcing, supply chain, marketing
Anchored innovation around 3 need states: Easy Meals, Gatherings, Snacking
In-home interviews + 32 dscout missions
Built a Business Case Bootcamp and portfolio management system
The goal wasn’t to generate more ideas — it was to help teams make better decisions together.
The Outcome
The system delivered both momentum and focus.
400+ ideas generated → 27 viable concepts
Clear F&B innovation strategy
Supported growth of Good & Gather from $2B → nearly $4B (~40% penetration)
Teams left with tools they still use today
Food & Beverage moved from episodic innovation toward a more intentional and repeatable pipeline.
Article - On Target: Our Food & Beverage Journey
