The AI Advantage in Retail 

Samir Kulkarni is CEO of Showcase, a national 150-store retailer spanning the USA and Canada.  Known for its hashtag #ShowcaseMadeMeBuyIt with 300 million views on TikTok, Showcase is “The Home of the Hottest Trends”, specializing in emerging social media trends across health, beauty, home, toys, tech, and food – all joyfully retailed in a “fun and interactive” environment in major shopping malls where you can “try it before you buy it”.  Showcase’s proprietary trend-identification technology (increasingly fueled by AI) and social media marketing savvy has propelled it to win Deloitte’s Best Managed Companies Award for 4 years running, as well as the YPO Top 10 Global Innovators Award and the Omnichannel Excellence in Retailing Awards.  Beyond leading Showcase for the last 25 years, Samir appears regularly in national media speaking about the trend retailing industry, including Bloomberg, Inc. Magazine, The Globe and Mail, New York Business Journal, CTV, Retail Insider, Authority Magazine, The Playground Podcast, and more.  Samir also serves on the Board of Directors of Retail Council of Canada to promote retail advocacy and sound public policy.  Samir holds an MBA from Yale University and lives near Toronto with his wife Divya and two kids.

Sharon Gai is an expert in AI and innovation. She helps organizations become agile disruptors in their industries so they can increase revenue and retain users. In her tenure at Alibaba, she advised brands and heads of state in crafting their digital strategy with programmatic marketing and AI. She has worked with TEDx, Singularity University, UBS, Deloitte, Walmart, LVMH, Nestle, Tetra Pak, Twilio and many others. She is in the AAE list of Top Keynote Speakers in 2023. She is a RETHINK Retail’s Top Retail Expert and a LinkedIn Community Top Voice in 2024. She has appeared on Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC, CBC, CCTV, TechCrunch, Retail Asia, Wired, and The Next Web. She is the author of the book, Ecommerce Reimagined. Sharon has an Honors Bachelor’s degree in International Development from McGill and a Masters in Information Management from Columbia University. When she is not globetrotting (thank you, speaking gigs!), she is jamming on the keyboards or chatting up cool entrepreneurs for Alibaba’s podcast, B2B Breakthrough. 

As the Head of AI and Emerging Technology at Canadian Tire, Cari is responsible for using AI as a lever to drive both cultural and digital transformation.  With a human centered approach Cari has a successful track record of leading the development and execution of strategy, roadmaps and operating models for Automation and Artificial Intelligence resulting in revenue growth, increased employee engagement and operating efficiencies.  Cari is passionate about developing innovative partnerships with start-up communities, research and academic institutions.  These partnerships have led to the ideation, shared learnings, research, and development of novel AI products, education development and best practices on the operationalization of building and developing AI responsibly.  Her approach to balancing the macro change required for successful adoption of AI with the value that it can generate has resulted in many international speaking engagements and advisory discussions.