Build Your Media Network Flywheel

RampUp 2023: Innovation Studio

Speakers

Austin Leonard

Head of Sales, Member Access Platform, Sam's Club

Evan Hovorka

Head of Product & Innovation Albertsons Media Collective, Albertsons

Lori O'Neal

Head of Retail / Brand Industry Strategist, LiveRamp

Parbinder Dhariwal

VP, Monetization at CVS Health, CVS Health

Austin Leonard

Head of Sales, Member Access Platform, Sam's Club

As the Head of Sales for Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP), Austin leads the partnership and sales team that supports advertisers, agencies, and ad tech partners. The Sam’s Club MAP Sales team is focused on building ad experiences that are additive to the member’s experience, while simultaneously accelerating growth for our partners. We do this by working closely with Sam’s Club Merchants, Marketing, and Operations to create meaningful business outcomes. Our goal is to be the partnership that adds the most value to our partners’ businesses.

With more than 20 years of advertising experience, Austin has an extensive background in traditional, digital, and retail media. After starting in radio in Atlanta, Austin made the jump to digital in 2008 with eBay. In his time there, Austin led several teams for eBay Enterprise and helped bring eBay’s first-party audience targeting programmatic platform to market. Most recently, Austin held sales leadership positions at Walmart Connect where he helped grow the media business to $1B+ for Walmart.

Austin is a proud graduate of the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business (Go Gators!), and he earned his MBA in Marketing from Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Evan Hovorka

Head of Product & Innovation Albertsons Media Collective, Albertsons

Evan Hovorka Leads Product development and Innovation for Albertsons Media Collective, building innovative and profitable marketing technology.

A deep understanding of Retail Media, Digital Identify and Ad Tech partnerships define his 20-year career. Evan designs and builds patented, industry-leading, Products. His experience with innovation, data, privacy and business needs is unique in the growing Retail Media sector.

He is a strong supporter of diversity and empowerment in the workforce, building high-functioning, progressive teams where all are welcome.

Evan holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

Lori O'Neal

Head of Retail / Brand Industry Strategist, LiveRamp

Parbinder Dhariwal

VP, Monetization at CVS Health, CVS Health

Parbinder has spent his career building and transforming world-class teams in the digital advertising ecosystem, with growth and consumers at the core. Before joining CVS in 2022, he has been leading and in-sourcing the media business for Walmart Connect. Joining Walmart in 2019, he oversaw everything Beauty, Personal Care, and Health and Wellness, leading a multi-disciplined team that helped grow Walmart Connect’s Supplier and Merchant partnerships across the category. From 2018-2019, he worked with leading media industry CEOs, consulting to drive strategic change, digital growth, and change management. From 2016 until he left at the end of 2017, he was the VP of Global Accounts at Spotify, working across the business’s largest Global advertisers to transform partnerships across the platform, building the discipline of deal-making with critical partners across the streaming giant. Between 2012 and 2015, he and his family resided in Barcelona, where he was the CRO, leading the global sales and operations for Softonic, a software download company. And previously to this, he worked on various businesses as VP and Director in London and New York for CBS Interactive. Parbinder resides in Brooklyn, New York.