
NACS Innovation Leadership Class of 2019
Building on MIT’s prestigious reputation and innovative culture, this program combines research-based management frameworks with practical hands-on experiences, and offers networking opportunities for top-tier convenience industry leaders. Attendees (from retail companies only) will directly apply methods and frameworks to their own businesses – to build innovation capability and improve business results.
The NACS Innovation Leadership Program offers convenience leaders the opportunity to:
- Learn how to build an innovation culture – focused on skills, desire, freedom of action, high commitment and high integrity
- Recognize and overcome mental models that inhibit innovation
- Leverage the principles and processes of design thinking
- Identify choices for responding to disruptive competition
- Develop digital business models
- Apply innovative methods for designing work and operating models that engage employees/create competitive advantage
- Experience first-hand MIT’s entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem
The power of innovation at MIT can’t be denied. A 2015 research study determined that MIT alumni have created over 30,000 companies with over 4.6 million employees and nearly $2 trillion in annual revenues – which would be the world’s 10th largest GDP if measured as a country.
For any questions, or to request more information, please contact:
Brandi Mauro
Education Program Manager
bmauro@convenience.org
(703) 518-4223

Support provided by

“It was a wonderful experience. Mentally powerful and rewarding, also exhausting. Thanks to NACS for staying focused on our industry and helping raise the tide with education courses like this.”
-Joey Hobson, VP Marketing, Maverik, Inc.
“As a life-long learner, and someone who desires to constantly sharpen the saw, I see tremendous value in this program. I plan on attending Cornell next, and will send several more of my team members to these courses.”
-Gary Price, VP of Operations, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores
Not sure which program to attend?
Please contact NACS Education to schedule an advising session.
Schedule Consultation >
(703) 518-4223
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.
Presidents, CEOs and VPs within forward-thinking, innovation-seeking retail companies that are leading the convenience and fuel retailing industry.
Participant Roles

Participating Companies Include
- Core-Mark International, Inc.
- Esmax Limitada
- Maverik, Inc.
- Pilot Travel Centers LLC
- Sheetz, Inc.
The NACS Innovation Leadership Program at MIT is designed to be relevant, engaging and useful to senior level executives who are interested in driving innovation across their firms, particularly in the areas of:
- Customer experience
- Operating models
- Supply Chain
- People engagement and culture change
The program integrates lessons and tools drawn from the worlds of strategy, design thinking, digitalization, machine learning, ecosystems, neuroscience and organizational psychology. This is a program not just about creativity, ideation, or managing the product development process. Other elements of the program include: Exposure to the MIT Ecosystem and Exposure to NACS Program Endowers.
Participants leave with a change plan focused on implementing selected innovation opportunities in their organizations.
To get a better understanding of what the program offers, take a look at a previous program’s curriculum (PDF). The 2021 curriculum and schedule will be posted here as soon as it is confirmed.
The NACS Innovation Leadership Program is administered by faculty of the Sloan School of Management. See below for the speakers who presented at the 2020 NACS Innovation Leadership Program. Check back periodically to meet the 2021 speakers.

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Pierre Azoulay is the International Programs Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
His current research focuses on empirical studies of the supply of biomedical innovators, particularly at the interface of academia and the biopharmaceutical industry. He also is interested in the topic of academic entrepreneurship, having recently concluded a major study of the antecedents and consequences of academic patenting. In the past, he has investigated the impact of superstar researchers on the research productivity of their colleagues, and the outsourcing strategies of pharmaceutical firms, in particular the role played by contract research organizations in the clinical trials process.
At MIT Sloan, he teaches courses on competitive strategy and innovation strategy to the EMBA students and Sloan Fellows, as well as a PhD class on the economics of ideas, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
He holds a Diplôme d’Études Supérieures de Gestion from the Institut National des Télécommunications, an MA from Michigan State University, and a PhD in management from MIT.

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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.

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Roberto M. Fernandez is the William F. Pounds Professor in Management and a Professor of Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Fernandez currently serves as the co-director of the Economic Sociology PhD Program and served as the head of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences area from 2008-2010. His research focuses on the areas of organizations, social networks, and race and gender stratification. Fernandez has extensive experience doing field research in organizations, including an exhaustive five-year case study of a plant retooling and relocation. His current research focuses on the organizational processes surrounding the hiring of new talent using data collected in 14 organizations. He is the author of more than 50 articles and research papers published in top academic journals in his field.
Fernandez holds a BA in sociology from Harvard University and an MA and a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago.

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Renée Richardson Gosline is a Senior Lecturer in the Management Science group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Initiative on The Digital Economy.
She is a 2020 honoree on the Thinkers50 Radar List of thinkers who are “putting a dent in the universe,” and has been named one of the World’s Top 40 Professors under 40 by Poets and Quants. Gosline is an expert on the intersection between behavioral science and technology, and the implications for cognitive bias in human decision-making. She is a leading thinker on the science of digital brand strategy and her research and expertise have been published in various academic and trade publications.
Renée’s research examines how social structure and technology (e.g., Digital Customer Experience, Status, Social Media) affect performance and self-perception (as featured in her Tedx talk, “The Outsourced Mind”). Her projects have examined: how cognitive style predicts preference for AI versus human input; the interaction of brand status and placebo effects in performance; how consumers determine “real” from “fake” products; the circumstances under which customers perceive value in platforms; and the effects of storytelling in social media on trust and persuasion. In order to address these issues rigorously, Gosline employs experimental methodology, both in the field and the laboratory.
Renée enjoys teaching MBA and Executive Education classes on CX (Customer Experience), Brand strategy, Nudge Strategy, and Experimentation. She has also collaborated with a variety of firms on CX, Digital Media Strategy, and Leadership. Prior to academia, she was a marketing practitioner at LVMH Moet Hennessy and Leo Burnett.
Renée conducted her Undergraduate, Master’s, and Doctoral education at Harvard University.

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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.

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Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. She is also Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program.
Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law.
She has received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy, the Erin Anderson Award for an Emerging Female Marketing Scholar and Mentor, the Garfield Economic Impact Award for her work on electronic medical records, the Paul E. Green Award for contributions to the practice of Marketing Research, the William F. O'Dell Award for most significant, long-term contribution to Marketing, and the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award for long-run impact on marketing.
She is a cofounder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab which studies the applications of blockchain and also a co-organizer of the Economics of Artificial Intelligence initiative sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has testified to Congress regarding her work on digital privacy and algorithms, and presented her research to the OECD and the ECJ.
Tucker is coeditor at Quantitative Marketing and Economics, associate editor at Management Science, Marketing Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She teaches MIT Sloan's course on Pricing and the EMBA course "Marketing Management for the Senior Executive." She has received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching as well as being voted "Teacher of the Year" at MIT Sloan.
She holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Oxford.

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Dr. George Westerman works at the dynamic intersection of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 17 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other top journals. He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world.
George is co-chair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and faculty director for two executive courses at MIT Sloan. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.
Registration for the 2021 Innovation Leadership Program is now open!
Registration Pricing:
NACS Retail Member - $4,295
A tuition endowment from Gilbarco, Mondelez, PDI, and Shell makes this program most affordable for all participants. Program tuition is $4,295 which includes classroom instruction, course materials, and scheduled meals.
Please note: Registration is limited to retailer, distributor, and state association member companies only. State Associations, please contact Brandi Mauro at bmauro@convenience.org to register.
Scheduled meals are included in the total cost of the program, but lodging and travel are not included. Participants are responsible for their own hotel accommodations and travel. NACS has reserved a block of rooms at the Boston Marriott Cambridge at a special rate for NACS Innovation Leadership Program attendees from Saturday, October 30 through Saturday, November 6th: $319 per night, plus all applicable taxes/fees. The last day to receive the discounted rate is Friday, October 1st, 2021.
Boston Marriott Cambridge
50 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02142
(617) 494-6600
To make a reservation, please follow the link below or call Marriott Central Reservations at 1-800-228-9290 and say you are with the NACS Innovation Leadership Program room block. Each individual guest will be responsible for all room, tax and incidental charges and will be asked for a credit card when making the reservations. Guests will also need to present a credit card upon check-in. If any guests are Marriott Bonvoy members, please remember to include your account number when making your reservation.
Book your group rate for NACS Innovation Leadership Program Room Block
For any questions regarding hotel accommodations, please contact Erin Garay, Meetings & Registration Coordinator, at (703) 518-4244 or egaray@convenience.org.