Kate Gorman

Highly motivated leader with proven experience in delivering business value

Kate Gorman is Managing Partner with Columbus Consulting. Kate is a senior level executive with over 30 years of experience in the retail industry. She has extensive leadership and practical experience in retail management, consulting and retail software development. She is a proven executive delivering bottom line growth through hands on management of core disciplines including  sales operations, marketing, merchandising, inventory control, business intelligence, logistics and business process development.

Prior to joining Columbus, Kate was most recently Executive General Manager of JR/Duty Free in Australia/New Zealand. In this role she was responsible for the growth of the organization from a start up to the leading Duty-Free retailer in the region and was directly accountable for the EBIT results. 

Experience

• M&M Retail – Interim Leadership and Strategic Advisory Roles
  • Interim Head of Global Marketing – developed first party data strategy to create connect customer experience from customer acquisition through engagement to conversion to drive increase in lifetime value
  • Interim Head Merchant – created cohesive merchandise strategy, anchored in analysis and informed by voice of consumer , to refresh entire product line delivering highest sell through rates
  • Developed business operating calendar to shorten lead times and drive efficiency gains from design to on-shelf
  • Developed future state omni-channel  merchandise planning & OTB process
• J.Crew – Program Executive
  • Led business design for future state merchandise financial planning, OTB and Item Planning
  • Led implementation of Blue Yonder Planning to support future state business process
  • Led  Strategic Roadmap initiative to define business and technology priorities and blueprint for implementation for Merchandise Planning and Allocation
• DFS – Strategic Consultant
  • Led definition of future state business process for Merchandise Planning,  Item Planning, Forecasting, Allocation, Replenishment and Assortment Planning
  • Led Organization Design initiative for Merchandising function