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.

Seth Dallaire is executive vice president and chief growth officer for Walmart Inc. He is responsible for global enterprise platforms, including Walmart Connect/digital advertising, Walmart+, Walmart Data Ventures, VIZIO, Sam’s Club MAP, as well as the global Marketplace platform.

From 2024 to 2026, Seth served as executive vice president and chief growth officer of Walmart U.S. In this role, he helped scale Walmart U.S.’s newer growth businesses across media, membership, marketing and data. From 2021 to 2024, Seth served as executive vice president and chief revenue officer of Walmart U.S., where the Revenue organization contributed to Walmart’s expansion beyond retail sales and created financial flexibility to fuel new innovations.

Prior to joining Walmart, Seth served as Instacart’s chief revenue officer, where he built the advertising business from the ground up and partnered with more than 2,500 brands. He previously held leadership roles at Amazon, including vice president of global advertising sales and marketing, helping grow its retail media business. Earlier in his career, Seth led sales teams at Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Seth received his Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College and his Master of Business Administration from New York University. He resides in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg is Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Groupe and a fourth-generation retailer who has spent 30-plus years inside the e-commerce business — not just writing about it. He launched online retail at Blockbuster in 1995, then Best Buy, then Target, before moving into agency leadership. Today he advises Walmart, Amazon, and dozens of the world's largest retailers and brands.

Jason co-hosts the top-ranked Jason & Scot Show podcast, writes a regular column for Forbes, and has built one of commerce's largest practitioner followings as @retailgeek. He served as Executive Chairman of Shop.org and on the National Retail Federation's Digital Advisory Board, and currently sits on the board of directors of publicly traded retailer VGL Group. In 2017, the National Retail Federation inducted Jason into "The List" — its honor for the 25 individuals who have shaped the future of retail. He has also been named a Top 100 Global Retail Influencer by Rethink Retail for six consecutive years.

As a Vice President and General Manager in Ads & Commerce, Ashish Gupta leads the Merchant Shopping organization. His product, engineering, and user experience teams focus on a dual mission: ensuring businesses of all sizes succeed on Google, and partnering with the company's consumer-facing teams (including Search, YouTube, Maps, Discover, and Ads) to help deliver the best possible commercial experiences for billions of users. Central to this mission is Google's Shopping Graph, which holds more than 50 billion product listings and refreshes over 2 billion of them every hour.

Ashish and his team are at the forefront of the next evolution of commerce, recently leading the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). This open standard for agentic commerce establishes a common language for agents and systems to operate seamlessly across consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers. Co-developed with industry leaders like Shopify, Etsy, Target and Walmart, UCP serves as a foundational building block for the entire shopping journey - from discovery to post-purchase support.

Ashish is also a Google Fellow, and founded and leads the Ads & Commerce Area Tech Lead team, made up of senior technical leaders across Ads & Commerce working together to accelerate business growth through high-quality, sustainable architecture and technology innovations.

As a 20-year Google veteran, Ashish has been a driving force in several of Google's core technology areas. Before taking on his current role, he hepled critical teams across YouTube Ads Engineering, You Tube Ads Infrastructure & Quality, and Data Infrastructure and Analysis. He extends his passion for technology and mentorship through his role as a member of the Computer Science Advisory Council at the University of Texas at Austin.

Blake Woolsey is the chief strategy and communications officer for the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Since the beginning of her career in public relations, she has dedicated herself to building relationships and enhancing the reputations of others. Whether it’s helping leaders rise to their potential, working with non-profits to raise capital or counseling businesses on how to elevate their brand, she has played an instrumental role in the success of those around her.

Prior to joining the Walton College, her 30-year career has included serving as Chief Communications and Development Officer for Heartland Forward, working as a consultant, holding the role of Executive Vice President at Mitchell Communications, a public relations agency, and serving as Senior Director of Development at the University of Arkansas. Blake is a sustaining member and former president of the Junior League of Northwest Arkansas, a member of the Delta Dental Foundation and serves in numerous other community service roles. She earned a B.A. from the University of Dallas, a private Catholic liberal arts university.

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.