Dr. Brent D. Williams serves as the Dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and holder of the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair. With a deep commitment to fostering excellence in business education and thought leadership, Dr. Williams brings a wealth of experience to his role, shaping the future of the college and its impact on students and the business community.

A native Arkansan, Dr. Williams earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Arkansas, specializing in supply chain management.

Before assuming the deanship, Dr. Williams held key leadership roles at Walton College, including Senior Associate Dean, Associate Dean for Executive Education and Outreach and Chair of the Department of Supply Chain Management. Through these roles, he spearheaded initiatives that enhanced the college's reputation for innovation and industry engagement.

As the Dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business, Dr. Williams is focused on advancing the college toward its vision of being a catalyst for transforming the lives of its students and a thought leader in business.

Andy Murray is a recognized leader at the intersection of retail, consumer goods, and the future of commerce. With more than 30 years of global experience spanning P&G, Walmart, and Asda, Andy has consistently driven transformation in how companies engage with customers and build brands.

He has held senior leadership roles including SVP/Chief Customer Officer at Asda U.K., SVP/Marketing for Walmart U.S., and Founder & CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi X, a global shopper marketing agency that helped pioneer the field of shopper marketing.

Today, Andy serves as Founder & Executive Chair of the Customer-Centric Leadership Initiative at the University of Arkansas’s Walton College of Business, where he helps prepare the next generation of leaders to navigate the rapidly evolving retail landscape. He is also Founder & CEO of bigQUEST Advisory, Inc., guiding executives through transformative challenges in retail and CPG, and a strategic advisor and board member across ventures in retail technology and innovation.

Through his roles in business, academia, and advisory work, Andy is helping shape the future of commerce—bringing together technology, customer-centric innovation, and leadership to ensure organizations thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Damon Bratcher leads Walmart’s organization focused on product catalog and item file initiatives. He and his teams are responsible for ensuring that the company has a complete and accurate record of everything it offers customers and that it is easy for the supplier community to provide Walmart with their complete assortments. Damon started his career as a merchant with Walmart and then held leadership roles on Amazon’s Fashion, Fresh, and Devices teams in Seattle and Tokyo. The common thread throughout his career has been “in-trapranuership,” bringing an innovation focus to very large companies.

Damon holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas, where he studied management and economics. He is passionate about the intersection of retail fundamentals and futurism and believes that AI – if executed correctly – will create more space for creativity in the workplace.

Damon and his family live in Northwest Arkansas. He enjoys playing instruments with his children and keeping up with his (rapidly degrading) Japanese language skills.

DISCUSSION TOPICS: Walmart is using data and AI to build a best-in-class catalog. As the only truly Omni retailer at scale, our catalog plays a significant role in shaping customer experience – impacting assortment, search, online pickup and delivery, in-store experience, supply chain and our ability to deliver our commitment to EDLC and EDLP. We feel good about where our catalog is today, and we feel great about where it’s going.

Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg is the Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Groupe and a fourth-generation retailer who has been shaping the e-commerce landscape for nearly 30 years. After pioneering Blockbuster Entertainment’s first online venture in 1995, Jason went on to partner with over 100 of the Internet Top 500 retailers, helping them navigate the challenges of omni-channel commerce and driving billions in online revenue. Today, he serves as a trusted advisor to leadership teams at the world’s largest retailers and brands.

Widely recognized under his social media handle @retailgeek, Jason has cultivated one of the largest followings of e-commerce professionals. He has served as Executive Chairman of shop.org and on the National Retail Federation’s Digital Advisory Board, influencing the strategic direction of the retail industry. A sought-after thought leader, Jason co-hosts “The Jason & Scot Show,” contributes to Forbes, and was inducted into the NRF’s “The List” in 2017 for his groundbreaking achievements.

Tobaccowala was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him one of five “Marketing Innovators. He is one of only 300 people elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame since 1948.

He is the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in The Age of Data” which helps people think, feel, and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves to remain relevant in transformational time and “Rethinking Work” which helps people thrive amidst the seismic changes that will occur at work due a combination of changing demographics, new mindsets, the rise of distributed work, and the spread of AI.

Rishad is also the host of the What Next? podcast and publishes a thought letter called “The Future Does Not Fit into the Containers of the Past” which is read by 30,000 every week.

He remains a Senior Advisor to the Publicis Groupe where he has spent his entire 37 career, most recently serving as the Chief Growth Officer and Chief Strategist of the 100,000+ person firm. Prior to those roles Rishad was the Chairman of Digitas and Razorfish.

Rishad serves as a board director or advisor to a host of firms including LoopMe, Journey, Growth Catalyst Partners, Dumbstruck, Shift Paradigm, Quilt. Ai and Qualsights.

Rishad is also the Chairman of the Tobaccowala Foundation which helps over 10,000+ people in India.

Rishad has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School and a BS in Mathematics from the University of Bombay.

Widely recognized as a financial technology and digital retail pioneer, Daniel Eckert has driven transformative growth through innovation at some of the most respected companies in the world. Presently, Daniel serves both as a Venture Partner to Commerce Ventures and as the lead Operating Partner to Corsair Capital, working on investment and buyout opportunities in the fin-tech, retail-tech, and business infrastructure markets. Daniel also serves on the Boards of Soda Health, Viva Armenia, Aurora Payments, and IDIQ; is the Lead Director HungerRush; and serves as a Board Observer at TreviPay.

Prior to his investment, advisory, and board service work, Daniel served as the Chief Product, Strategy & Development Officer at Green Dot Corporation. Before Green Dot, Daniel spent the last decade in progressive levels of responsibility as a senior executive at Walmart Inc., where he served as a key member of the U.S. leadership team responsible for Walmart’s retail- and omni-channel business transformation.

During his Walmart tenure, Daniel and his team built and deployed over a dozen industry-leading Omnichannel shopping tools that moved the Walmart App from 685th to 2nd in popularity in iOS the App Store, including WalmartPay, which the Walton Family awarded Daniel the company’s highest honor: The Sam M. Walton Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Prior to Walmart, Daniel served as senior vice president of card and retail services for HSBC, where he founded and led HSBC’s venture development and payment products group. He also previously held positions at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Accenture Ltd, and was the founder and president of an early-stage investment banking company.

Daniel holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan (Class Honors) and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (High Honors). Daniel is also a proud military veteran, having served as a Logistics Officer in the United States Marine Corps.

Dr. Remko van Hoek is a professor at the Sam M Walton College of Business where he teaches procurement, including to experienced procurement professional from Walmart and other companies, around the world. As a researcher he features in the top 2% of business and management scholars globally and is in the top 1500 list of global business scholars. He also coaches and advises and worked as Chief Procurement Officer and supply chain executive in a number of industries, countries and companies, including Disney and Nike. He serves as executive director of the CSCMP Supply Chain Hall of Fame and is receiving CSCMP’s highest award, its Distinguished Service Award in October 2025.

Throughout his career, Mark has held several senior executive roles in omni-channel retail, consistently bringing a clear focus on objectives and goals to each position. In every instance, he has led teams to achieve outstanding results through well-defined strategies, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to delivering measurable success before moving on to new challenges.

His leadership approach is centered around two core values: driving continuous company growth and fostering a constructive, cohesive working environment that enables employees to excel amidst disruption and change.

With a particular passion for turnarounds in large businesses, especially those navigating model disruptions, Mark recognizes innovation as essential to sustaining long-term growth. A dedicated lifelong learner, he actively seeks out new methodologies, technologies, and process improvements to boost productivity, enhance service quality, and reduce costs. This proactive mindset is something he actively cultivates among all associates, ensuring that clear communication, customer-centric approaches, and collaborative efforts with colleagues remain central to the organization's success.

Dr. Anne Velliquette received her undergraduate and Master's degrees from the College of Business Administration at Missouri State University. In between receiving her undergrad and Master's degrees, she worked in Marketing and Sales for Cargill in the B2B arena within the food industry. While working on her MBA, she worked with the Small Business Development Center and a joint venture with Wal-Mart titled The Wal-Mart Innovation Network program; An entrepreneurial program where small businesses and inventors received business and marketing support in their endeavors to introduce new products into the marketplace. After completing her MBA, she attended the University of Arkansas where she received her doctorate in Marketing at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, and was the recipient of the Walton College of Business Graduate Student Teaching Award.

Upon completing her degree, Dr. Velliquette taught Marketing at the University of Utah for 4 years where she was the recipient of the Marvin Ashton College of Business Teaching Excellence Award. She then returned to the University of Arkansas and is currently serving as a Teaching Associate Professor of Marketing and the Strategic Retail Program Director. Dr. Velliquette currently teaches Integrated Marketing Communications at the undergraduate level.  She has also taught Retail Strategy at the undergraduate level and the Marketing class in the Executive MBA program. She is passionate about teaching the Integrated Marketing Communications course with the unique approach of having her students work with a community partner/company to develop a creative brief and tactical solutions to help launch local and national brands and solve real-world marketing challenges. In 2019, she received the Alumni Association Rising teaching award, a University-wide award for outstanding teaching and was also inducted as a Fellow into the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy. In 2024, Dr. Velliquette received the Walton College Teaching Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award. She also serves as a Thesis Advisor to Walton College of Business undergraduate Honors students.

Dr. Velliquette served as a Faculty Advisor for an RSO on campus, ROAR or Razorbacks Offering Accountability Resources (2018 - 2024), which was the direct result of a $30,000 grant awarded to the University by the NCAA and Budweiser. She partnered with Dr. Stokowski, a professor in sports marketing to apply for the grant in 2018. Dr. Velliquette was the Honors Director for the Walton College Honors Program from 2020-2024, and she is currently the Retail Program Director.  Her research has been published in the Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, Research in Consumer Behavior, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Business Research, and others.