How do you build a career that spans CPG giants, Crown corporations, fashion retail and one of Canada's largest grocery empires? In this episode, host and former CMA President and CEO Alison Simpson sits down with Sandra Sanderson, CMO of Empire Company Limited and 2025 CMA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Sandra unpacks the career pivots, leadership lessons and the principle she calls confident humility that have defined one of Canadian marketing's most remarkable careers.

00:00:00.920 — 00:00:19.680 · Presenter Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host, newly-retired CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:24.200 — 00:02:58.890 · Alison A successful career in marketing requires embracing change, agility and reinvention. However, the most successful marketers go beyond this and really recognize emerging patterns, often before others even see them coming. My guest today is a terrific example. Sandra Sanderson has built her career on a deep understanding of consumers, very strong business acumen, strategic thinking and perhaps most importantly, the courage to act quickly and take measured risks. As the very deserving 2025 recipient of the Canadian Marketing Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, Sandra's career really demonstrates how marketing can transform organizations, and how measured risks can really open up amazing new career opportunities. Early in her career, Sandra recognized the power that was shifting from CPG to retail and made quite an unconventional pivot to Canada Post, using it as a strategic investment to learn retail fundamentals through their retail network of 6000 post offices and B2B partnerships with major retailers.

This is just one great example of many that led to tremendous success for the brands that Sandra has led. From starting her career with Procter and Gamble to transformational leadership roles at Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart Canada, White House Black Market, which is a leading U.S. fashion retailer, and now the Empire Company Limited, Sandra has consistently led marketing that creates competitive advantage and delivers significant business results. Sandra joined Empire in November of 2018 as their Senior Vice President of marketing, and was promoted to Chief Marketing Officer in July of 2023. Empire is the second largest grocery retailer in Canada, with brands like Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Thrifty Foods, Foodland and Fresh Co.

In her time with Empire, Sandra has orchestrated complex transformations, including relaunching their long-standing approach to loyalty. She received the CMA's Marketer of the Year award in 2020. She has been recognized as Strategy's Marketer of the year twice, and most recently, Sandra was honoured with the Retail Council of Canada's Grand Prix Lifetime Achievement Award this year.

Sandra has also been great about giving back to our profession. She served on the CMA Board for four years, including as Vice Chair, and Sandra currently serves as a Board Director for Special Olympics Canada and Scene Plus. Perhaps most remarkably, despite an enviable career track record of success, Sandra really does embody confident humility, leading change and reinvention across diverse industries while nurturing and building many future CMOs and a well-deserved legion of fans. Welcome, Sandra, I am really looking forward to our conversation today.

00:02:58.970 — 00:03:03.690 · Sandra Thank you so much, Alison. It's great to be here with you on CMA connect.

00:03:03.930 — 00:03:28.210 · Alison Sandra, congratulations again on your CMA Lifetime Achievement Award. And you knew very early in life that marketing was a career for you. In fact, you wrote about the ambition in your high school yearbook. That's pretty rare in our profession. So to say that you achieved your goal is definitely an understatement, as your many amazing contributions and awards really demonstrate.

But what was it that attracted you at such a young age to marketing?

00:03:28.250 — 00:04:24.140 · Sandra Well, thinking back to high school, it's a bit surreal to think that early ambition has turned into a decades-long career journey. What drew me to marketing was a unique intersection of art and science. I was intrigued by the idea of using data to decode human behaviour and using creativity to build emotional connections, and that curiosity led me to business school.

Once I started taking marketing courses at Ivey, there was no turning back. I knew that's what I wanted to pursue, and after graduating, I was fortunate enough to land a role at Procter and Gamble. I started out as at brand assistant on Ivory, along with 26 other new graduates. P&G was a very big on-campus recruiter that year, and it was great to be able to work on such an iconic brand right out of the gate.

Looking back, that high school ambition really did set the stage for everything that followed.

00:04:24.220 — 00:04:34.660 · Alison Now, you have recently announced your retirement for the summer, so you've definitely been in marketing for a few decades. What has kept you so engaged in our profession throughout your career?

00:04:34.900 — 00:06:12.740 · Sandra I think what has kept me engaged for so many years is that marketing as a profession keeps evolving. It's in a constant state of reinvention, which has given me a never ending stream of challenges and opportunities to learn and grow. I've always been drawn to business transformations, but the most significant one by far has been my journey with Empire.

My role today has fundamentally changed from what it was when I first joined the company, which was in 2018. I was actually working in the U.S. when I got a call about Empire, and at the time the company was in deep crisis. The Safeway acquisition had not gone as planned. The company had lost $4 billion in market cap, and investor confidence was at an all time low.

Michael Medline had been hired the previous year as President and CEO, coming from Canadian Tire to lead this massive transformation of the business. And so I was intrigued. I flew to Toronto to have lunch with Michael, and at that lunch he was very transparent. He shared with me all the challenges on the business and the changes that would be required in marketing to achieve his vision, and he didn't sugarcoat a thing.

And so at the end of the meal, I remember he looked at me and he said, you're either going to be very energized by a challenge this big, or you're going to walk away and we won't see each other again. Well, Alison, I didn't walk away. I was all in because it was clear that marketing would have an instrumental role to play in the transformation, and I was genuinely excited.

00:06:13.300 — 00:06:34.300 · Alison I love Michael's candour with you in the interview process. He clearly understood how important it was for the CMO, choosing to step into the role to really understand the unvarnished reality. His partner needed to be energized by the rare career opportunity to help lead a massive transformation. And you clearly were.

So I'd love you to share some highlights of the transformation and what's kept you engaged.

00:06:34.620 — 00:09:04.230 · Sandra Looking back, what has kept me so deeply engaged is the sheer scale of the marketing transformation within a broader business transformation. We moved from having separate Quebec and English Canada marketing teams started to a unified national organization. That gave us the scale we needed to stand up a Centre of excellence in marketing, technology and digital, which modernized our entire marketing engine. A big turning point was the transformation of our loyalty program. For over 20 years we had been part of a coalition program, so the stakes were really high when we decided to pivot, and I had the privilege of serving as the executive lead on the loyalty transformation.

We made a bold decision to become the co-owners of Scene Plus, together with two other iconic Canadian companies, Scotiabank and Cineplex. And today, we scale that program from 10 million to over 15 million members. And the level of personalization we can offer today is just light years ahead of where we were.

And, you know, the Scene First party data also became the bedrock for another venture, which was Empire Media Plus, our new retail media business. It's an example of how transforming one part of the business creates the fuel for the next. And it was super exciting to have the opportunity to launch a new media start-up within a $32 billion grocery retailer.

It's a completely different business model, and honestly, I have learned so much over the past year, which has been energizing. We also launched an in-house agency called Atelier, and having that creative engine embedded directly in our business and our culture allows us to move at the speed of the market.

In retail today, as you know, there's simply no room to stand still. And lastly, within all of these changes, there's one that's particularly rewarding for me personally, and that's the reinvention of our community investment strategy. We shifted from having over 200 fragmented partnerships where our impact was diffused to one focused national strategy, where we could truly make an impact.

And since making that pivot, we've been able to raise and donate more than $130 million for our communities. It's a powerful reminder that at the end of the day, we're not just selling groceries. We're serving a greater purpose. And because of all of these opportunities to learn and grow, it's not at all difficult to remain engaged, and energized every single day.

00:09:04.350 — 00:10:00.080 · Alison That is a very impressive transformation. And you've accomplished an incredible amount in seven and a half years. I also love that Michael was completely transparent in that lunch conversation, because he was absolutely right that this was going to be a role that the right candidate saw as a once in a lifetime opportunity to come in, make big bets, have marketing at the centre of leading much needed change, or it was going to scare the bejesus out of them and they were going to be like politely thanking for the lunch and going on their merry way.

So kudos to him for recognizing that. And kudos for you for raising your hand for a challenge and most importantly, clearly delivering on it too. In talking about how much transformation you've led, it also highlights just how much the role of marketing is evolving, certainly from when we were both in high school and thinking you were thinking about it as a career.

So if you were in high school today, do you think marketing would still be your dream career?

00:10:00.360 — 00:10:34.200 · Sandra It's an interesting question. I'd say yes, absolutely. In fact, I think I'd be even more excited today because back then, marketing was largely about brand-building. And today our profession has become so much more complex and multidimensional. The dream hasn't changed for me, but the job would be so much bigger and more impactful than I had anticipated.

So if I was writing in my yearbook today, I'd still say marketing, but I'd do it knowing I was signing up for a career of constant change and transformation. And it's exactly why I would choose it all over again.

00:10:34.240 — 00:10:44.320 · Alison So building on that, what are the two or three skills that have made you so successful and would make that high school student today who is aspiring to follow in your footsteps successful as well?

00:10:44.440 — 00:11:37.060 · Sandra I've been fortunate to join several iconic organizations and brands with deep legacies at exactly the moment they hit a critical crossroads. So being in those pivot moments has really forced me to sharpen two specific skills. The first one is taking on the role of a change agent, and the second is having a growth mindset.

Throughout my career, I've been asked to lead initiatives where I had zero previous experience, whether that was launching a B2B loyalty program at Canada Post or launching a marketing technology team at Shoppers Drug Mart, or even recently, you know, building a national sports sponsorship portfolio at Empire.

These opportunities forced me to embrace the idea that my abilities are not fixed. There are muscles that can get stronger if I make the effort to learn, and that has served me well in a profession where there is so much change.

00:11:37.380 — 00:11:58.000 · Alison So building on how quickly our profession is changing and if anything, it's only getting faster, that means embracing change and being open to a less traditional career path can be very important to success and longevity, and you very much embody this. So what is the most unconventional career pivot you've made so far, and what did it teach you?

00:11:58.200 — 00:15:10.400 · Sandra Well, I had spent the first 12 years of my career in consumer packaged goods, starting at P&G, then Kraft, and eventually becoming Vice President of Marketing for Minute Maid at Coca-Cola. And I knew how incredibly fortunate I was to hold a senior leadership role at such an iconic global brand. But I craved a new challenge.

I wanted to be in retail, but pivoting to retail was not easy. It turns out retail companies weren't exactly lining up to hire a Vice President of Marketing with zero retail experience. And Alison, I spent months trying to land a job with no success. And at the time it was incredibly discouraging. But I kept at it.

And eventually a recruiter called and he said, Sandra, I have an amazing retail opportunity for you. It's a Canadian company with thousands of retail outlets. And I was like, I can't figure out which retailer has thousands of stores across Canada. Well, the mystery retailer turned out to be Canada Post, and they did, in fact, have the largest retail network in Canada at the time with over 6000 post offices.

And it was not quite the retail opportunity I had in mind. But I didn't have other options and I was intrigued. The role was for General Manager of Marketing, and it would report to an executive from Pepsi and I thought, hey, we'll speak the same language. The role included areas of marketing I knew very well, but it also threw me into entirely new territory.

Leading a retail marketing team, running their e-commerce site, and driving B2B marketing. And I decided to take the leap. And I can tell you plenty of people, including my colleagues, my friends, thought I had lost my mind. They said, you're giving up a VP role at a global powerhouse like Coca-Cola to go to work for a Crown corporation. To the outside world it didn't make any sense, but I trusted my gut, and that decision turned out to be transformative. It felt like I was getting a masterclass in retail, and I had the opportunity to co-lead the creation of an award winning flagship post office. I collaborated with retailers like Amazon and Indigo and others, and I learned how to lead an e-commerce team.

I launched a small business loyalty program, and so taking that seemingly off course detour turned out to be exactly the springboard I needed. It gave me the foundational experience to eventually land a job as Chief Marketing Officer at Danier, where I learned all about speciality retail. I was then hired as Senior Vice President of Marketing at Shoppers Drug Mart, then Chief Marketing Officer at Walmart, and ultimately led me to my role today.

My advice to others is this - don't assume your career has to be a straight ladder. The most rewarding paths rarely are. Don't be afraid of making a detour, sometimes taking a step sideways, or maybe making a move that other people think is crazy. It may be exactly the experience that you need to grow.

00:15:10.960 — 00:15:19.040 · Alison That's such a great example. Also, kudos to the recruiter who knew his prospect well enough to know how to pitch it and pitch it in a very compelling way.

00:15:19.080 — 00:15:19.840 · Sandra He certainly did.

00:15:19.840 — 00:15:43.380 · Alison It takes a lot of courage to, like, go against what people that you respect, whether your friends, people you're working with, people in your professional network, if they're all saying, what are you thinking? And to be true to yourself and really trust that gut. That takes courage. Now with any change brings challenges.

So when you did make the move to retail, What challenges did you experience working in such a new industry?

00:15:43.500 — 00:17:22.839 · Sandra Alison. Moving from CPG to retail was a huge culture shock. I quickly realized why companies hesitate to hire senior marketers without retail experience. It was a completely different beast. If CPG is a marathon, retail's a series of high stakes sprints that's happening simultaneously and sometimes the track is on fire.

A big lesson for me was agility over perfection. In the CPG world, we were strategic, deliberate, meticulous. In retail, perfection is often the enemy of progress. If you wait for the perfect data set, the season is over and you're sitting on millions of dollars in unsold inventory. I had to learn very quickly to make decisions with incomplete information.

I remember a Monday morning meeting where weekend sales had slumped. Our CEO looked across the table and said to me, we need an incremental promotion live by Friday. Well, coming from CPG or we plan for months and years, I was like a deer in headlights. I had no idea how to move that fast. Fortunately, my team was great.

They knew the ropes and eventually I did learn to be more nimble. And it was great for me that I started my retail chapter at Danier Leather, which was a smaller business with a tight knit executive team. It allowed me to see the full picture from supply chain to the storefront, and it gave me a holistic view that's often hard to get at in a very large business enterprise.

And so that was great. Eventually I figured it out and I found out that I love the fast pace and the complexity of retail.

00:17:23.160 — 00:17:47.250 · Alison Now, there is such an adrenaline piece to it and just the momentum behind it. I love it as well. So your career definitely demonstrates quite a remarkable ability to recognize patterns that others often miss. And seeing how the Canadian CPG industry was evolving when you were at Coke is one great example of many.

What signals were you seeing that made you realize the power was shifting and inspired your move?

00:17:47.450 — 00:18:44.590 · Sandra Back when I was VP of Minute Maid at Coke, manufacturers told the stories. We built the brands, the retailers provided the shelf space. But I started to notice some shifts that were reported. I saw retailers becoming so much more sophisticated. Brands in their own right. Their private label wasn't just generic.

They were becoming genuine competitors with real customer equity. And I realized that while we in CPG knew who bought our brand, the retailers knew what else was in that basket. They had that direct relationship with a human being behind the transaction. I could see that whoever owned the data and the last mile was eventually going to hold the cards, and we saw consumers becoming more demanding and retailers were in the best position to react to that in real time.

And I wanted to beware. The actual moment of truth happened between the customer and the shelf.

00:18:44.710 — 00:18:54.470 · Alison So what advice do you have to help our listeners recognize shifting market dynamics so that they also know when to pivot, both for their businesses but also for their careers?

00:18:54.550 — 00:19:57.480 · Sandra Well, it's incredibly easy to become insular in your own industry, but the biggest shifts usually start as whispers and not shouts. And to hear them, it's helpful to look outside your industry. For a number of years, as you know, I was on the CMA Board and something that I found so helpful was working with leaders across diverse sectors that provided insights that brought me important perspectives that I would never have found on my own.

And so that was great. I would also say watch the friction. Power almost always shifts to whoever is removing friction for the consumer. Think about Ubers versus taxis or Airbnbs versus hotels. If you see another player solving a problem more elegantly, then your company is, that's something to look into.

And perhaps even more importantly, don't wait for 100% certainty. Don't wait for the perfect data to prove the market is shifting, because by then you're already behind. There needs to be a willingness to start moving even without full data.

00:19:57.840 — 00:20:11.400 · Alison Getting to market is such an important and increasingly competitive advantage as well. So great advice. Now looking ahead, what trends are you tracking now that are shaping your strategic thinking about the future of marketing? Just a simple little question for you to answer.

00:20:11.960 — 00:21:41.440 · Sandra Well, I'll try to keep it simple. And when I look at the horizon, I see the marketers' role shifting from being creators of content to being orchestrators of intelligence. And there's a few key shifts that are shaping my thinking. We're moving towards a world where marketing isn't just hyper-personalized, it's anticipatory.

It's the ability to use data to anticipate a customer's need before they even articulate it. Allowing for every digital touchpoint to be uniquely generated in real time, to be relevant to that specific person. I think the real challenge for marketers now is mastering that high tech efficiency without losing the soul of the brand, and there's such a fascinating tension right now between the explosion of AI and a growing hunger for the human dimension.

We're entering into an era where technology can definitely handle the scale, but humans have to provide the heart. And if a brand loses its authenticity in pursuit of automation, that's a big risk. And at Empire, we're predominantly a full service retailer, right? At like Sobeys and Safeway and Foodland, we have service counters and it's one of our strengths.

And at those counters, we offer the expertise of a master butcher or a baker who knows your name. And that local expertise provides a level of trust that no algorithm can replicate. The shift here is using digital innovation to protect it, enhance those human moments and not to automate them away.

00:21:41.480 — 00:22:01.360 · Alison It's very wise counsel, and it's also a great way that you're continue to be part of your communities across Canada with every store that you're in. Now, I've personally learned some of the most impactful lessons the hard way. Definitely through mistakes, failure. So before we talk about some of your many successes, I would love you to share a mistake and a lesson that you learned the hard way.

Wow!

00:22:01.360 — 00:25:09.770 · Sandra I made a rather big mistake when I was promoted from manager to director, and it almost cost me my job. I had spent almost six years at P&G, and then I took a role at Kraft as Senior Product Manager on salad dressings. After just a year in the role, I was surprised to be offered a promotion to Marketing Director for the enhanced risk category, and I knew I had performed well as a Senior Product Manager, but I wasn't sure if I was ready for the next big leap, because with that promotion, I had to go from managing just one category to leading a portfolio of five categories, and I was responsible for a much larger team.

It was pretty daunting. At the time, I was the youngest Marketing Director in the company, and I felt a lot of pressure to prove myself. But instead of stepping up to the challenge and seizing the opportunity to grow, I made the mistake of falling back on my strengths as a Product Manager, sticking to what had made me successful in the past.

I just kept operating like I was still a senior product manager, except on five categories, and I was micromanaging my team to the ground. My VP at the time saw this train wreck coming and he tried to help me, but I was stubborn and frankly, uncoachable. I think I was just scared to leave what had made me successful.

And I'll never forget the turning point. We were actually at a marketing offsite, I think it was at Hockley Valley, and I remember my VP asked me to step out to have a chat with him in the lobby lounge and he was very direct, he said. Sandra, I promoted you because I believe in you, but you can't be a director if you don't learn how to step back and delegate.

You're drowning in the details. And then he said, I'm going to take a gamble. I'm working on a restructuring of the marketing team, and I plan to expand your portfolio from 5 to 10 brands. He said, I'm going to try to make it impossible for you to keep managing the way that you have been. So you're either going to rise to the challenge and become a leader, or you're going to fail.

It's up to you. So it was sink or swim. And when the restructuring announcement came out, I actually had colleagues come up to me and say, that's crazy. You're not going to be able to manage ten brands. Well, their doubt turned into my fuel and I was determined to prove them wrong. And I realized I had to either delegate or I was going to drown.

So overnight I had to transform my leadership style. And I was forced to trust and empower my team. And I had to let go. And the moment I did, everything did change. I focused on becoming a coach versus a doer. I stepped back, I let them shine. And you know, it took some time, but I ultimately discovered a new sense of fulfilment in watching my team succeed.

And I realized that true leadership isn't about doing everything. It's about creating an environment where people can thrive and grow. I was fortunate that my VP saw my potential, but more importantly, he pushed me off the dock so I could finally learn to swim.

00:25:09.930 — 00:25:39.860 · Alison That's a great example. And you're absolutely right. You're fortunate to have the right VP who took a bet on you and continued to take a bet on you and put you in a situation where you had to let go of your old way of working. But there's also the fact that you were scared of taking on five new brands, very reasonably, and then that doubled. And how did your team, because sometimes when people are micromanaged, you teach them to work a certain way too. And now suddenly they're not being micromanaged. So how did your team around you perform?

00:25:39.900 — 00:25:47.620 · Sandra They flourished. They thrived. I don't think I was going to have the success if I had not changed.

00:25:47.700 — 00:25:58.580 · Alison It would have been hard to learn at a director level. But thank God you learned that because that absolutely gave you the foundation you needed to step into bigger roles and to have the success that you've enjoyed since.

00:25:59.100 — 00:26:00.180 · Sandra That was the turning point.

00:26:00.220 — 00:26:10.540 · Alison Now, we often talk about the standard path to success involving a mentor who opens doors, and your VP, in some ways was certainly an example of that. What's your experience been like with mentorship?

00:26:10.660 — 00:28:03.530 · Sandra Well, when we hear the word mentorship, we usually picture that traditional model like the one I was just describing, right? A senior executive pulling a junior person under their wing. And I was so fortunate to have had several of them. But there was also a different type of mentorship that has profoundly shaped my career, and that's a peer mentorship.

Years ago, I was nominated to participate in a women's leadership program at the Rotman School of Management. It's called the Judy Project. You might have heard of it. It's an intensive one week immersion for women in senior roles, and at the end of that week, they place us into what they call personal advisory groups - small circles, 8 to 10 women.

And the core idea was to give us a personal board of directors. It was designed to be highly confidential, completely safe space made up of smart women from entirely different industries. And the goal was to have a sounding board where we could bring our most difficult leadership challenges and get objective, unfiltered advice from people who have no political stake in the outcome.

That was over 20 years ago, and seven of the original nine women my group are still together and we're still meeting, although less regularly now than the monthly meetings we had in the past. And over the last two decades we have been through thick and thin. We've navigated career setbacks, relocations, promotions, health challenges and all the beautiful, messy realities of raising families while building demanding careers.

They know my blind spots. They challenge my thinking, and they're not afraid of hurting my feelings to save my career. So when people ask me about finding a mentor, my biggest piece of advice is this - don't only look up the corporate ladder, also look across the table, find your peers, build your own advisory council and surround yourself with a circle of trusted peers who understand your ambition and have your back.

00:28:03.730 — 00:28:09.770 · Alison That is such a spectacular example. I'm also a Judy Project graduate.

00:28:09.810 — 00:28:10.530 · Sandra I thought so! Wasn't it great?

00:28:10.570 — 00:28:31.350 · Alison It was a phenomenal week, but they hadn't put the advisory board into place yet, so I wish I'd been a later year. But the fact that you have stayed in touch and they continue to advise you, and you're advising and supporting their careers three decades later. I can only imagine the friendships and how each of you have flourished as a result of having that advisory council and resource to leverage.

00:28:31.390 — 00:28:32.910 · Sandra It's been very rewarding.

00:28:33.190 — 00:28:42.950 · Alison Now you have an incredible amount to be proud of. So this next question might actually be the hardest one to ask. Of all of your successes, which one are you most proud of and why?

00:28:43.310 — 00:31:00.140 · Sandra I feel the most proud when I achieve something that requires a lot of dedication, something that really challenges me and scares me. And this is true both in my personal life and my professional life. So can I share one for each?

Alison: I would love that.

Sandra: The personal one is something that I know you can relate to, Alison. For years I was a runner. I ran five km every morning. Predictable, easy. And honestly, it was in my comfort zone. And if you'd asked me back then, could I run a marathon? I would have said like, absolutely not. But that changed when a friend of mine, someone who wasn't even a runner, decided to train for a marathon.

So watching her resolve inspired me to sign up for a marathon as well. And I started small. I went from 5 to 7 km, then nine and 11. I spent months training - hot, humid days, cold rainy days, and I just kept pushing those physical limits. And as I did so, I realized I was actually building mental confidence. And when race day came, my mantra was pain is temporary, pride is forever.

And I felt such a sense of pride when I crossed that finish line. And it wasn't just about the 42.2km, it was proof to myself that I could do something that I had thought impossible in the past. Now, I don't know if I'm going to go and do 65 marathons like you have, Alison, but that for me was a proud moment. And then on the professional front, the toughest challenge and one that I'm most proud of, is the transformation of our loyalty program.

As I mentioned before, we had been part of a coalition program for over 20 years, and there was a lot of different opinions at the time on what our course of action should be. We had many options, which we evaluated, but in the end we decided to become the co-owner of Scene Plus along with Scotia and Cineplex, and to launch it across our 1200 stores from coast to coast.

Scene Plus was at the time the biggest, most complex and most cross-functional high stakes project at the company. And one of the most rewarding parts of the experience was a collaboration across my entire marketing team, and across all different functions in the company. I feel such a sense of pride about what we've been able to accomplish together.

00:31:00.180 — 00:32:09.120 · Alison Those are both big bets, and I love the fact that, thank you for sharing personal and professional, because there's such an interconnection between how we spend our personal time, what personal goals we set for ourselves, and the mental connection and the way that that can really empower our professional lives as well.

That's certainly been my experience, and with running, you take on a big, hairy, audacious goal that you didn't think you could do. You achieve it. And it opens up possibilities not just in your personal life, but in what you think you can accomplish in your professional life. And then to have the equivalent of that professionally being taking what was an incredibly massive debt and taking an ownership stake in Scene Plus and fundamentally evolving that program, as well as Empire and Sobeys approach to loyalty is such a great example.

So thank you. Now at Empire Sobeys you have led massive transformation, certainly like the new approach to loyalty that you shared. And this obviously requires a significant amount of change management as well as really strong internal support from across the organization. It's so much broader than marketing.

So what advice do you have for listeners who are leading a transformation and navigating that sort of complex challenge?

00:32:09.560 — 00:34:25.929 · Sandra Transformation is rarely just a technical challenge. It's almost always also a people challenge. And one of the biggest challenges we had was the confidentiality around this project. Because it included several publicly traded companies we could not risk a media leak. We had to keep everything under wraps and share information on a need to know basis.

At its height, we had over 2000 people under NDA, so ifsomeone worked on the project for a day, they had to be NDAed. And it worked for security, but it backfired for engagement. Our leaders felt like they were holding a single puzzle piece without ever seeing the picture on the box. And the reality is people don't buy into what they can't see.

And we had reached a tipping point. I realized that the risk of a leak was smaller than the risk of an uninspired team. So we brought our Vice Presidents together and we showed them everything. We spent a day, you know, showing them the consumer research, the financial rationale, the why behind the transformation.

We let them weigh in on critical decisions, like whether to go big bang launch or regional rollout. And the moment they started shaping the plan, they stopped being observers and they started being advocates. But a transformation of the scale at a grocery retailer is not won in the boardroom, it's won in the aisles.

You can have perfect technology, great value proposition. But if the person at the checkout is not excited, the customer won't be either. So to engage our frontline employees, we launched in-store program where we traded boring manuals for these challenge kits that we shipped to every store. We had teams dressing up like movie characters competing to build the best displays.

We leveraged gamification to engage digitally with all of the teams, and what we did, really, is we turned a corporate mandate into a shared celebration. And the launch of Scene Plus was highly successful, not only from a commercial perspective, but also the engagement of our team. My advice to anyone leading a complex change is this. Your most valuable asset isn't your data or your technology. It's the collective energy of your people. Show your team the whole picture. Tell them why it's important. Give them the trust they deserve to make it happen.

00:34:26.010 — 00:34:44.290 · Alison That is so well said and your line about the risk of a leak was smaller than the risk of an unengaged team, and then how you involve the people who needed to involve, how you gave them a voice, and how they helped refine and improve and make the new program even better is a masterclass. So, thank you.

00:34:44.330 — 00:34:51.970 · Sandra And you know, we never had a media leak. It did not happen. So we trusted them. And, uh, it worked.

00:34:52.010 — 00:35:07.530 · Alison They rewarded your trust. That's another great and important lesson for sure. Now Sandra, in our earlier conversations you talked about confident humility. And that really resonated with me. So I would love you to share more about the concept and how it has really shaped your approach in leadership.

00:35:07.530 — 00:35:44.070 · Sandra There's a common misconception that leadership authority is built on having all the answers, but in reality, true authority comes from confident humility, which is the ability to be secure enough to be unsure. You can have total faith in your capacity to solve a problem, but the humility to admit you don't have the solution yet.

And when a leader makes that shift, they stop worrying about being right and they start obsessing over getting it right with the help of others. This is something that I had to learn over time, but I think it's a powerful concept.

00:35:44.310 — 00:36:12.470 · Alison It's a very powerful concept, and especially for some younger listeners or for people that are in a leadership role for the first time. You can feel so much pressure to have all the answers. And when you step back from that statement and think about, it's like there's no one alive that has all of the answers.

Yet we put this ridiculous pressure on ourselves, which sets us up for failure. So the whole concept is such an important one for, I think, leaders at every level, but especially people that are new to a leadership role.

00:36:12.840 — 00:36:14.000 · Sandra Absolutely.

00:36:14.040 — 00:36:26.520 · Alison Sandra, I'm really lucky to host senior leaders like you on this podcast. So I always end each episode by asking my guest to share one piece of career advice that they have for listeners who want to follow in your very illustrious footsteps.

00:36:26.800 — 00:37:55.700 · Sandra At the start of our conversation, we talked about my early ambition to be in marketing. And while it's true that I knew my northstar early on, I think it's important to distinguish between having a compass and having a map. A map implies a fixed, predictable path, but in an industry that's changing as fast as ours, a career map isn't necessarily realistic.

My own path went from CPG to Crown Corporation to entertainment, a fashion retailer to pharmacy, mass merchandiser to grocery. I didn't foresee that. And if I had stuck strictly to a map, I would have missed the very opportunities that have defined my career. My advice would be this follow your compass, your North Star would be open to taking an unconventional route.

Maybe it's a different industry for a few years or another function to open up your aperture and build a broader business perspective. Whenever I'm at a crossroads and I need to make an important career decision, I always ask myself, what would I do if I wasn't afraid? And usually that question cuts right through the noise, and it can help you to confront your fears, whether it's fear of the unknown or fear of failure.

And it can point you towards the path that you actually want to take. So don't wait for that perfect map to appear. Adopt a growth mindset. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and choose that path that requires courage.

00:37:55.860 — 00:38:17.870 · Alison Thank you so much, Sandra. I knew going into this conversation it was going to be insight rich, highly informative and a lot of fun. And you have absolutely delivered in spades. So a huge thank you. A wonderful congratulations on your outstanding career. Thank you throughout for your support of the CMA, and I wish you every success as you embark on retirement.

00:38:18.110 — 00:38:33.750 · Sandra Thank you, Alison, for inviting me to be a part of CMA connect. It's been fun and I want to also take the opportunity to thank you for your leadership of the CMA and everything you have done to future proof and to elevate our marketing profession in Canada.

00:38:33.790 — 00:38:40.150 · Alison Oh, thank you. It was definitely a team effort, and with members like you, it's helped make us a lot more scalable and a lot more successful.

00:38:40.190 — 00:38:41.030 · Sandra Thank you.

00:38:43.590 — 00:38:56.510 · Presenter Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free my CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership, news, and industry trends.