2025 Speakers

Michael Chao has been a marketing leader in the retail and CPG industries for over 15 years. He is passionate about the customer, building marketing strategies, and developing talent. Michael brings a wealth of experience from various organizations such as AB InBev, Walmart, Dollar General, and Lidl.

Currently Michael is the VP of Marketing for Lidl US. Michael is currently leading the brand relaunch for Lidl (4th largest grocer in the world) in the US and building out the organization’s personalization, loyalty and Retail Media capabilities.

Previously at Dollar General Michael led enterprise marketing efforts across paid and owned channels. Michael was also responsible for leading the company’s personalization and loyalty/incentives programs.

Michael was vice president of marketing for Joann Stores where he led marketing planning, in-store signage, digital marketing, paid/organic social, CRM, loyalty, customer insights, and business analytics. Michael emphasized efforts on data capture to increase lifetime value and incrementality of customers.

Prior to Joann Stores, Michael was the director of omnichannel marketing where he headed Walmart’s brand pivot from brick and mortar to omnichannel retail. His focus was to increase adoption and usage of Walmart’s digital offerings such as grocery pickup, item finder, and mobile pay. As the director of brand reputation, Michael led the development of Walmart’s strategy to increase its Net Promoter Score. He also created the agile natural disaster response plan which engaged customers to raise over $70 Million in Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

A fluent Mandarin-Chinese speaker, Michael lived in Shenzhen where he was the director of marketing for Walmart China. He built the organization’s category marketing teams, led the circular team, and grew mobile marketing efforts. Michael’s category marketing experience is centered on grocery. He created the Fight Hunger Campaign which is the largest supplier funded grocery campaign outside of Back to School and Holiday. Lastly, as a local marketer, Michael headed grand opening marketing for new Walmart stores and remodels. He also ran basket pricing campaigns against grocery and convenience channel retailers.

Michael earned his MBA from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt and holds his BS in communications from the University of Texas