NACS Innovation Leadership Program at MIT

The NACS Master of Convenience designation acknowledges the hard work and investment NACS members have made in their personal leadership development. It is awarded to convenience retailers who have attended 3 or more of the 5 NACS Executive Education programs. For questions, contact Brandi Mauro, NACS Education Program Manager: bmauro@convenience.org or (703) 518-4223.

Court Chilton is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has helped large organizations produce business results from learning, coaching, and enterprise-wide change efforts for the last 20 years. His clients have included GE Capital, Deloitte, Fidelity, MIT, Bank of America, Ixis Asset Management, Novartis, Merck, Genzyme, Shire, TJX, Home Depot, Clifford Chance, and Baker McKenzie.

Court has worked internationally on a wide variety of business-building initiatives: creating “branded client experiences;” relationship management and service improvement; sales training and leadership development; executive education and coaching; implementing Six Sigma; professional practice management, and re-engineering the learning function. In the course of these initiatives, he has also developed computer simulations, on-line 360 feedback, and process-embedded e-learning. He is an effective facilitator and coach for senior management teams.Prior to working for MIT’s Sloan School, Court was a senior vice president of The Forum Corporation, based in New York and Boston. In the course of 14 years at Forum, he was responsible for the firm’s core leadership, teaming, and total quality offerings. He also managed the $20M+ mid-Atlantic region for the firm and several strategic client relationships.

Court has worked with a number of educational institutions to design advanced courses, coach faculty, and develop tools that help link learning with work. He has also served as part of a “coaching faculty” for MBA candidates. In addition, through the District Management Council, he has consulted with educational institutions such as the Montclair (NJ) and Lancaster (PA) Public Schools to raise student achievement, decrease costs, and improve operations.

Between college and graduate school Court worked in book and magazine publishing in a variety of marketing roles. He lives outside Boston with his family. He has served on his town’s Finance Committee and recently completed four years of service on the town’s School Committee.

Court received a BA ( magna cum laude with high honors) from Middlebury College and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Steven D. Eppinger is the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Professor, a Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems, and the Co-Director of the System Design and Management Program at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Eppinger served as deputy dean of MIT Sloan from 2004 to 2009; as faculty co-director of the Leaders for Global Operations (formerly MIT Leaders for Manufacturing) and the System Design and Management programs from 2001 to 2003; and as co-director of the Center for Innovation in Product Development from 1999 to 2001. Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1988, he worked as a machinist, manufacturing engineer, product designer, and consultant in both prototype and production operations.

His research efforts are applied to improving product design and development practices. Conducted within MIT’s Center for Innovation in Product Development, his work focuses on organizing complex design processes in order to accelerate industrial practices, and has been applied primarily in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, and equipment industries. At MIT Sloan, Eppinger has created an interdisciplinary product development course in which graduate students from engineering, management, and industrial design programs collaborate to develop new products. He also teaches MIT’s executive programs in the area of product development.

In 1993, he received both MIT’s Graduate Student Council Teaching Award and the MIT Sloan Award for Innovation and Excellence in Management Education. Eppinger has co-authored a widely used textbook entitled, Product Design and Development, Fifth Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2008). The author of more than 40 articles in refereed academic journals and conferences, he received the ASME Best Paper Award in Design Theory and Methodology in 1995 and again in 2001. Eppinger lectures regularly for international corporations and in executive education programs, and has consulted for or conducted research with more than 50 firms. He serves on the Research Advisory Council of the Design Management Institute and on the Advisory Board of Directors of the Society of Concurrent Product Development.

Eppinger holds SB, SM, and ScD degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.

James Rhee is an impact investor, founder, CEO and educator who empowers people, brands and organizations to fulfill their true potential by marrying capital with purpose and truth across multiple systems. The acclaimed story of the remarkable transformation and re-imagination of Ashley Stewart, one of the country’s largest brands serving Black women, under his leadership as chairman, CEO and investor (2013-2020) has served as proof to millions of people, as well as the world’s leading businesses and organizations, that one can do better by being better. The reinvention of Ashley Stewart, which was facing almost certain liquidation in 2013, is proof of how trust and joy, grounded in math and amplified through digital excellence, can overcome impossible odds and fuel individual and enterprise-wide innovation. It is a tangible example of the power of diverse ecosystems, as well as a commentary on a potential way forward for achieving multi-stakeholder goals. At its core, it is also the story of an unlikely friendship between a son of Korean immigrants (who raised his hand to become the self-described “least qualified CEO”) and a predominantly Black female employee group who placed their mutual trust in each other, learned from one another, and then proceeded to quietly shock the world.

As a client of United Talent Agencies, he is a frequent speaker on impact and ESG investing, multidimensional transformation, DEI operationalization through Kindness & Math™, principled leadership, and the future co-existence of capitalism, humanism, and technology. As a senior leader of two Boston-based private equity firms, Rhee helped manage billions of dollars of growth and distressed capital before ultimately founding FirePine Group, a platform that has stewarded the capital of some of the world’s most sophisticated investors.

Rhee is at the vanguard of making knowledge, opportunity, and capital accessible to all. He holds appointments at both MIT Sloan School of Management and Duke Law School as a Senior Lecturer, where he teaches future leaders about organizational systems and deconstructed investment principles relating to money, life and joy. On March 31, 2021, Howard University announced that James would serve a three-year term as the Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship as well as Senior Adviser to the newly endowed Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership, beginning with the 2021-22 academic year. Rhee is exploring the intersection of impact investing, ESG, and financial literacy through a new venture called Red Helicopter.

Rhee connects seemingly disparate leaders and organizations that are unified in their goal to make investments and forge relationships that catalyze purposeful growth. He serves alongside global difference makers as an Advisory Council member of JPMorgan Chase’s Advancing Black Pathways, a member of the Governing Committee of the CEO Action for Racial Equity, and a Board Director of Conscious Capitalism. He is also a former member of the board of the National Retail Federation, where he served as chairman of the Innovation Advisory Committee.

His inspirational story has been featured in media outlets such as the Good Business Issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Thrive Global, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Women’s Wear Daily, Morgan Stanley’s Access and Opportunity Podcast, ABC News, National Urban League’s State of Black America, and the Huffington Post.

Rhee is a regional winner of the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the winner of one of five 2016 Power Player Awards granted by the National Retail Federation, and the recipient of the 2017 Black Retail Action Group Business Achievement Award, the 2018 Temple Fox School of Business Information Technology Innovator Award, the 2018 Essex County Urban League Centennial William M. Ashby Award for community building, and a 2019 One To World Fulbright Award.

Rhee received his AB with honors from Harvard College and his JD with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He lives outside Boston with his wife and three children. He is a former high school teacher. He is working on a book.

David Robertson is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he teaches Innovation and Product Management. Over the course of his career, Dave has been a consultant at McKinsey, a senior executive at small and large technology companies, a radio show host, and a business school professor.

From 2010 through 2017, Dave was a Professor of Practice at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Wharton, he was the host of Innovation Navigation, a weekly radio show and podcast about innovation management (www.innonavi.com). From 2002 through 2009 Dave was the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at Switzerland’s Institute for Management Development (IMD). While at IMD, David was given inside access to The LEGO Group, and wrote his award-winning book Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. David’s new book, The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation was published in May of 2017 by Harvard Business School Press.

David currently runs MIT’s largest and highest-rated executive program, the Executive Program in General Management. He also teaches in other MIT executive programs, consults with global Fortune 1000 companies, and is a frequent speaker at corporate events and industry trade shows.

Lori Buss Stillman is the Vice President, Research and Education for NACS, the National Association of Convenience Stores. Joining NACS in 2019, Lori leads the association’s industry-leading research portfolio, which includes the NACS State of the Industry suite of products and events, the Convenience Voices Shopper Insights solution that provides moment-of-truth insights into shopping behavior, monthly data insights from the CSX database and other research and insights programs critical to the convenience and fuel retail industry. She assumed responsibility for NACS Education programs in 2022, including event content, online learning and Executive Education programs available at Harvard, Yale, Kellogg, MIT and Wharton.

Stillman has a deep background in data analytics, decision support, business development and consulting. Most recently, she served as executive vice president of analytics, insights and business intelligence for Advantage Solutions. Leveraging 30+ years in the FMCG industry, she also has served as senior vice president of new client acquisition for Information Resources Inc., vice president of marketing and business development for WEBCO General Partnership, and senior vice president of strategic business development for Nielsen.

Lori earned a B.A. in business communications from Maryville University. She is active in the advancement of our industry, holding board level positions with the NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council, Conexxus, Stewart’s Enterprises, Inc., and with the Western Michigan University Food and CPG Marketing Program Industry Advisory Board. She is also a frequent speaker on the disruption taking place across the retail landscape. Lori makes her home in Northern Virginia, with her husband and daughter.

Dr. Stephanie L. Woerner is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research. Stephanie studies how companies manage organizational change caused by the digitization of the economy. Her research centers on enterprise digitization and the associated governance and strategy implications. Three current studies include i. the amount, allocation, and impact of enterprise-wide digital investments, ii. how digitization is influencing the next-generation enterprise, and iii. the impact of the Internet of Things on company business models and the competitive landscape. In previous National Science Foundation-funded work, she studied distributed work teams and their use of multiple media, electronic communication technologies, and coordination mechanisms to get work done; she was also project manager for the 5-year grant.

Zeynep Ton is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Zeynep is currently examining how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her earlier research focused on the critical role of store operations in retail supply chains. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, and the Harvard Business Review. In addition, she has written numerous cases that explore different approaches to managing retail stores and labor.

In 2014, Zeynep published her findings in a book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. The book draws on 15 years of research to show that the key to offering good jobs to employees, great service to customers, and superior returns to investors is combining investment in employees with specific operational choices that increase employees’ productivity, contribution, and motivation.

After her book was released, retail leaders started reaching out to Zeynep to understand how to implement the Good Jobs Strategy in their organizations, or to describe how they were already adopting the strategy. Zeynep cofounded the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute to help them transform through assessments, workshops, and longer term partnerships.

Prior to MIT Sloan, Zeynep spent seven years as an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management area at Harvard Business School. She has received several awards for teaching excellence both at HBS and MIT Sloan.

Zeynep lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. A native of Turkey, she first came to the US on a volleyball scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University. She received her BS in industrial and manufacturing engineering there and her DBA from the Harvard Business School.