Advice for Growing and Supporting a Team Through a Screen

Deanna Morgan's professional life has spanned a variety of career paths. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2000 in music from Chapman University in Orange, California, Deanna began her career in education as a music teacher. She then began working in the media industry in local TV news, and in radio, and became a successful television reporter and anchor at affiliates in California, Arizona, and New England. After 12 years in television, Deanna learned to build-up and strengthen her abilities in speech and reporting. As a child, Deanna's family followed the Baha’i Faith. As a young adult, Deanna’s search led her to join the Roman Catholic Church, which led her to vocation in Chaplain ministry. Deanna attended Princeton Theological Seminary and graduated with a Master’s in Christian Education. During that time she pursued an Internship as a Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric hospital. Since then her career has pivoted to paths in the areas of Retail, Data Analytics, and Technology as a former Software Solutions Consultant for Zebra Technologies. It was during her time at Zebra that Deanna became heavily involved in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – helping to strategize global DEI frameworks and implement DEI programs for the Finance, Global Services, Supply Chain, and Sales business functions as well as leading and launching Employee Resource Groups company-wide.​​​​​​​ In addition to her unique professional background, Deanna is bilingual in English and Spanish, is one of four children, and has an identical twin.

Venita leads Trends & Insights and GM Seasonal Sourcing for Private Brands Sourcing at PDL. Her team is responsible for evaluating insights to drive data driven decisions and leveraging size and scale across ADUSA to optimize performance and savings opportunities. Venita began her career at Belk developing apparel for various private label brands. She continued her journey at Target, where she focused on sourcing and aligning design needs with the right partners to take product from concept to launch. Venita then transitioned to lead the private label product development team at Meijer. By establishing brand standards and through strategic use of color and design, she led these brands to become relevant for today’s target audience. Venita believes every brand has a voice. Her goal is to amplify it using data and design to show people what’s possible. She lives in Charlotte, NC. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her nephews, trying new restaurants, and is a proud plant parent.

First and foremost, I am a blessed wife and mom of 3 kids – Aidan (13), Micah (11), and Vera (9). I love music, spending time with my family, trying new foods, playing all kinds of games and sports, and serving in my church in Hickory, NC. I’m a proud 2-time graduate of Winston Salem State University with both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in Business Administration. After grad school, I took a few years off to stay at home and start my family. In 2012, I started my corporate career with Delhaize America as a Condiments Pricing Analyst supporting Hannaford, Sweet Bay, Bottom Dollar, Harvey’s and Reid’s. Later, when all of those brands except Hannaford were divested, I took over Pricing Analytics for Food Lion Condiments and then Health & Beauty Care. Food Lion Merchandising was my next destination where I learned to build the commercial selling plan for the organization. After a couple years in that role, I took a short hiatus and went to The Fresh Market to stand up their merchandising department before returning back to the recently merged Ahold Delhaize as a Food Lion Merchandising Specialist, leading the Thematic Planning Process by partnering with Marketing, Category, Merchandising and Operations to bring seasonal merchandising to life across the entire Food Lion footprint. Next, I was able to marry all my experiences together by moving to Peapod Digital Labs to become the first Food Lion Channel Planning Specialist, building and executing a Commercial E-Commerce Calendar to drive the omnichannel experience both from a selling and seasonal perspective. Now, I lead a team of 6 Channel Planners located in and supporting the 5 great local brand offices. My two passions at work are people and efficiency, and I am grateful to be able to operate in those passions every single day.

Nam has over 20 years of digital technology experience leading global cross-functional teams and programs. She spent the last 16 years as a key member of the Digital Transformation team in several different areas including loyalty, eCommerce, enterprise services, payments and fraud, revenue accounting and refunds, and billing. Some of her key achievements include creating offline payment methodology (which is patent pending), leveraging blockchain as a distributed ledger platform for enterprise data, and establishing the central services platform layer across large enterprises.