NACS Convenience Summit Europe

Mr. Arenas began his career at FEMSA in 1984 and joined FEMSA Comercio in 2001 as Strategic Planning Manager. In 2007, he was promoted to the head of FEMSA Comercio’s Planning and Information Technology Department, followed by the Supply Chain Department for OXXO, and later the Commercial Department of OXXO. In January 2016, he was appointed Director General of OXXO Mexico and assumed his current role as of January 1, 2022. Up until 2020, he participated in the National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores (ANTAD) in Mexico and continues to be a member of the International Council and the Latin American Council of the Association For Convenience & Fuel Retailing (NACS). He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León.

Henry Armour is the president and CEO of NACS. He grew up working in his family’s retail businesses, Armour Oil Company, rising to the position of vice president and COO in 1977. In 1980, he joined The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, where he served as manager of development strategies. He later founded West Star Corporation, which grew to include 59 NOW! convenience stores, truck stops and quick-service restaurants in the Pacific Northwest until he sold the company in 2004. In 1988, Armour founded Epoch Corporation, which operated retail enterprises in California.

He became president and CEO of NACS in July 2005, having also served as the association’s chairman in 2002 and 2003. Armour earned a BA in economics from Stanford University, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, and an MBA and PhD in economics from Stanford University.

With more than 30 years of experience in the energy sector, José has spent almost his professional career in the Commercial Area. He began his career at Repsol in 1991 in different sales and management positions. He continued his professional growth by leading teams in lubricants, asphalts, specialties, and service stations until he reached his current position as Executive Director of Mobility Iberia, where, together with a great team, he works hard to provide Customers with products and services wherever, whenever and however they need them.

An advocate of a fair energy transition, which ensures the promotion of efficient and sustainable mobility, from technological neutrality to excellence in customer experience, José believes in empowering an informed, demanding, digitally and environmentally conscious Customer to whom we must always listen. He is convinced that a company's success is directly proportional to the talent of the people who make it up.

Over the last few years, he has promoted and led the transformation of service stations in the Repsol group, market leaders in Spain with more than 3,300 points of sale with significant projects such as:

• The launch and consolidation of the Waylet loyalty and payment application, which allows more than six million users to more easily refuel and recharge at the largest network of service stations and electric recharging points in Spain without having to go to the cash register.
• Creation of a new model of semi-proximity store, SuperCor Stop and Go. For the past four years, one store has opened every two days, reaching nearly 600 SuperCor Stop and Go franchises in operation today.
• The creation of nearly 200 Repsol Klin areas. The largest network of carwashes in Spain, a fully digital network in activating machines and purchasing any carwash service.
• Agreements with leading partners in the sector that bring new products and services to Repsol customers, an excellent example of which is the deal with Nespresso and Starbucks, which has allowed the sale of more than 7 million coffees in 2022, or the agreement with Amazon, which already has more than 550 lockers and 3 million packages delivered last year.

With a degree in Economics, Galician by origin and passionate about traveling, José has lived in several countries such as Switzerland, Belgium, and France. This experience has helped him in his professional development, and he applies it both in his day-to-day work and with his team.

He currently lives in Madrid with his family.

Carlo Caldi is a highly accomplished professional in the hospitality industry. Currently serving as the founder and managing director of CAMPO GmbH since 2020, Carlo has held several leadership positions throughout his career.

His journey began in 1993 at Hyatt International in Madrid, Spain, where he worked on special projects in the Food & Beverage Department. Carlo then joined prestigious hotel brands such as Hilton International, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, and Mövenpick Gastronomy International, assuming roles such as Food & Beverage Manager and Regional Director. From 2014 to 2019, Carlo served as the Chief Commercial Officer of Autobahn Tank & Rast Management GmbH & Co.KG, contributing to its impressive turnover of €3.65 billion. He also held positions at Autobahn Tank & Rast GmbH and successfully managed large-scale operations and budgets.

Carlo's educational background includes executive training at the London Business School and diplomas from the School of International Hotel Business Management "Kaiserhof" and the Economy Institute "Max Bliem." He is fluent in Italian, German, and English, with a good command of Spanish and basic knowledge of French and Indonesian.

In addition to his professional accomplishments, Carlo is actively involved in the industry as the Vice President of the Institute of Culinary Art since 2005. His career is a testament to his passion, expertise, and dedication to the hospitality sector. Carlo is an Italian national and is married and is the proud founder and managing director of CAMPO GmbH. He is currently residing in Sankt Augustin, Germany.

Laure Charpentier is a Principal in in Oliver Wyman’s Retail & Consumer and People and Organisational performance practices. Laure has spent the past 16 years consulting in strategy, organization and performance assignments.

Mr. Brian Donaldson was appointed Chief Executive of The Maxol Group in 2016, having formerly served as the Group’s Chief Operating Officer. He joined Maxol Oil Limited in September 1986 as a graduate trainee and quickly progressed to Area Manager, then to Retail Manager and was appointed General Sales Manager for Northern Ireland in 1995 and was actively involved in the development of Maxol’s retail network in the region. A year later he was promoted to the position of Group Marketing Manager for all Ireland. 

Commencing 2002, he served as a General Manager of Marketing and Retail at The Maxol Group and was responsible for developing its extensive retail network, maximizing.non-fuel income streams, the development of food partner alliances with Mace/Spar and coordinating its marketing, sponsorship and PR activities throughout Ireland. From June 2004 to September 2011, he served as the Managing Director of the ·Group's Northern Ireland Home Heat Division, Maxol Direct while retaining his then retail responsibilities. He serves as a Founder Director and member of the Northern Ireland Oil Federation. He has been instrumental in raising the standards and profile of the local oil distributor and retail market, together with lobbying local politicians and Westminster on retail service station. matters relating to fuel duty tax and planning. Since 2006 he served as the Chairman of PLATO Belfast, a voluntary body of blue-chip companies which provide top executives to assist and mentor SME's on specific business requirements. He is a former Co-Chair of Efficient Consumer Response Ireland and also a former Chairman of Retail Ireland. Brian is a member of the International Board of NACS and Chair of Irish Petroleum Industry Association, a member of the CBI NI Council and Chair of the CBI EV Infrastructure working group. He received an Honours Degree in Business Studies at the University of Bradford.

Dr. Alister French is a Partner in Oliver Wyman’s Retail & Consumer and Digital practices. Since joining the firm’s London office in 2009 he has built his career applying advanced analytics and process transformation to drive better commercial decisions in customer-oriented businesses.

Alongside direct client delivery work, Alister now also leads Oliver Wyman’s Retail Solutions business – supporting our clients with SaaS solutions for sustained excellence in decisions.

The core of Alister’s work is focused on helping clients anticipate customer responses to different aspects of offer and value at scale – with strategy work, advanced analytics, revised processes and OW tooling.

• Since 2016, building innovative merchandising capabilities across pricing, promotions, and assortment for a major European retailing group. Now in multi-year, multi country deployment.
• Developed and built out Oliver Wyman’s latest generation pricing approach for grocers with accompanying software to drive process and analytics.
• Integrated value and offer strategy projects to feed guidance to the commercial capabilities deployed across offer and value levers – including recent responses to inflation and crisis.
• Assortment management and promotions forecasting with a Chinese e-commerce major.
• Mark-down and promotions processes, tools, and strategies for a European DIY group.
• Clustering and assortment optimisation in a Nordic cooperative grocery group.
• Application of machine vision and natural language processing analysis of products to demand forecasting in a sports apparel leader and in Chinese e-commerce.
• Transformation of joint purchasing between Italian hypermarket and supermarket.
• Category-strategy and offer programmes with three major UK grocers.
• Fresh produce quality and availability initiatives in Switzerland and Germany.
• Behavioural segmentation and promotional effectiveness in sports betting and racing.

Alister holds a Doctorate in Chemical Biology from Oxford University and masters and bachelor’s degrees in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University. He is fluent in English and Italian. Prior to Oliver Wyman he researched the development of antibody-based therapeutics.

Frank Gleeson is President and CEO of Aramark Northern Europe. Aramark is one of the largest integrated providers of food services, facilities management, retail operations, and property services in the region. In his current role, Frank serves as a member of the Executive Leadership Council of Aramark Corporation. He is responsible for operations that span Ireland, the UK, and a Global Offshore business in the North Sea, Middle East, and Mexican Gulf – encompassing a workforce in excess of 15,000 people at any one time.

Frank joined Aramark in 2013 from Topaz Energy Group where he was Retail Director. Prior to that, he served in senior leadership positions for Statoil, O’Brien’s Off-Licenses, and began his retail operations career in Xtra-Vision Ireland. Since starting out as a teenager in family restaurant and cafés, Frank has always placed a significant focus on the hospitality and customer-service side of business. He truly believes in the power of terrific customer experience, as well as the importance of on-the-job learning and development.

A graduate of the Irish Management Institute, Frank has long been a board member of IBEC and was elected President in September 2021, and earlier this year was re-appointed to Government’s Labour Market Advisory Council, chairing its employers’ sub-group. He is a former Chairman of Retail Ireland; a former board member of the National Transport Authority, and was elected Chairman of NACS, the international trade association of convenience stores. In 2019 Frank won the NACS European Convenience leader of the year.

As Chief Economist at CMSPI, the go-to payment advisor for leading retailers, Callum is a payments industry expert whose 10+ years’ experience at the forefront of payments is a guiding force in CMSPI’s thought leadership and merchant advocacy. He provides strategic consultancy to CMSPI’s fuel and convenience industry clients, helping to drive C-suite decisioning on customer loyalty, revenue generation, and margin improvement strategies.

Mark is a well-networked entrepreneurial and innovative senior commercial leader with “hands-on” practical experience in global solution innovation including:

• A.I. (real-time machine learning technologies for preventing fraud and for valuable market insight). First to create and launch a fully automated fraud solution (endorsed by Gartner) and a country-wide fuel pricing system.
• Alternative payments methods (closed loop fuel cards/ post and pre-pay wallets).
• Universal merchant commerce technologies (paperless direct debits).
• Adopting new secure cloud services for scaling.

Being described as an "ambidextrous leader" and an "out of the box" forward-thinking executive demonstrates that Mark is not afraid to take risks and demonstrates his willingness to think creatively to achieve success.

He has a proven track record of driving profitable growth and building talented teams demonstrates his ability to lead and manage effectively, regardless of the size of the organisation. His knowledge of regulations and industry best practices within the financial and mobility sectors also highlight Mark’s ability to navigate complex regulatory environments and ensure compliance.

Mark’s involvement in the Institute of Corporate Resilience and advisory roles with fintech organizations demonstrate his commitment to staying at the forefront of industry trends and contributing to the broader financial and mobility sectors. Most recently he has been invited to sit as a board member on the society for storytellers.

Not only is Mark passionate about his work but also his family. He has four children, several of whom are now are also involved in the payment and mobility sectors. He is a big rugby fan (Harlequin’s ticket holder), a keen golfer and someone who is happy to sing for his supper!

Hilmar Hübers, born in 1973, is Chief Operating Officer of Lekkerland SE. In this position he is responsible for the areas of Supply Chain Management/Logistics, Category Management/Buying, Digitalization and Information Technology.

He joined the company in 2020 from REWE Group after Lekkerland became part of REWE Group. He started his career at REWE Group as a member of the Management Board of REWE Markt GmbH before being appointed as a member of the Divisional Board for Retail Germany. In this function, he was most recently responsible for the Customer & Analytics division.

Hilmar holds a degree in industrial engineering and worked for a business consultancy for ten years after completing his studies.

Can joined Philp Morris International (PMI) in 2020 to lead the strategy function in Europe Region. His primary responsibilities include developing mid-term strategy aligned to PMI’s smoke-free vision, executing missing-critical growth initiatives that have multi-year implementation horizon, and managing Region’s strategic programs portfolio. During Can’s tenure, PMI’s Europe Region tripled the number of its IQOS users that switched from combustible products to Heat-not-Burn propositions, launched additional smoke-free alternatives such as e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and snus across various markets and, as a result, delivered sustained double-digit growth for the last 3 years on both the top-line and bottom-line of the business.

Prior to PMI, Can worked at Samsung, initially at company’s Chairman’s Office in Seoul, South Korea, then for Samsung Electronics Turkey to manage two business lines in Istanbul, Turkey. Following this assignment, Can become the Regional Head of Samsung Electronics Mobile Device business at Middle East and North Africa HQ in Dubai, UAE. In this last role at Samsung, Can was responsible for the sales and marketing of smartphones, tablets, wearables, accessories, and IoT / SmartHome product across 23 countries, representing a turn-over of $9 billion.

Before Samsung, Can worked at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in their New York office as a member of the Corporate Development Practice covering consumer goods, technology, and financial services industries. Prior to BCG, Can worked at an engineering company in North Carolina, leading international projects primarily in Europe for renewable energy development.

Can holds an MBA degree from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, a master’s degree in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Middle East Technical University. He currently lives in Lausanne, Switzerland with his family.

After beginning her career in the industry (Nestlé, Unilever), Anne-Laure joined Carrefour in 2004.

She has been in charged of many different positions since:

• Commercial and merchandise responsibilities (national brand negotiations, private label development, operational marketing, category management)
• Strategic and organisation projects
• Supermarkets operations director for integrated and franchised stores

She is now Executive Director in charge of developing Convenience stores all over Europe.

Anne-Laure has almost 20 years of experience in retail and was graduated from ESSEC Business School.

Regan Leggett drives foresight work for NIQ’s Global markets. He has a Postgraduate in Strategic Foresight and has worked as a Foresight consultant with a number of Fortune 500 companies prior to joining NIQ. Regan has over 20 years of experience in Futures and Foresight practices. He is passionate about encouraging forward focused conversations with clients and colleagues. Regan is a member of NIQ's thought leadership council and spends a great deal of time understanding emerging change and the implications to consumers, consumer behavior and the broader business environment. He has lived and worked in the Pacific, Europe, North America and Asia.

NIQ, the world's leading consumer intelligence company, reveals new pathways to growth for retailers and consumer goods manufacturers. NIQ has offices in over 90 countries.

KPMG is one of the Big Four global professional services firms. Having been established over 150 years ago, KPMG today is a global network of professional firms providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services with over 250,000 employees and partners. 

Paul is KPMG’s Global Retail Lead & UK Head of Retail. He previously held the role of Managing Director at global retail analyst firm Planet Retail as well as having worked for the Economist Intelligence Unit and T-Mobile Stores.   

Paul has a MA in Modern European History and Foreign Affairs from the University of Augsburg in Germany. He spends his spare time with the family or watching Fulham FC.

Florian Nägele is a Partner in McKinsey’s Zurich Office. Since joining the firm in 2010, he has been serving clients in the automotive, industrial and high tech sector. Florian founded and leads McKinsey’s EV Charging Infrastructure group and is a core member of the Advanced Industries and Product Development practices. He works intensively with OEMs, suppliers and technology ventures. Besides his industry focus, he has experience in strategy, operations, technology development and large scale performance transformations.

Marielle Romeijn has leveraged her 25 years of brand, consumer and retail marketing experience as a co-founder and Chief Brand Officer at ONE HUNDRED restrooms. In this role she is responsible for building the brand, steering the innovation agenda and taking the lead in sustainability, enabling the company to maintain profitable, lifelong relationships with consumers and strategic partners. 

Previously Marielle worked in senior marketing and brand management positions for global retailers such as IKEA, HEMA and 2theloo and her work has been awarded several times. As an independent consultant Marielle advises on and provides coaching in the strategic and operational aspects of corporate branding, brand positioning and strategic communication.

Marielle earned her master’s degree in leisure management from the Tilburg University after she completed her Bachelor of Commerce in Rotterdam. 
Currently Marielle lives in Rotterdam with her partner and bonus family. 

Others describe Marielle as an independent mind, obsessed with finding ‘the why’, interested in people’s behavior and always looking for fun and kind persons to hang out with, both in work and private situations. Innovative concepts, Steet art, modern spirituality, personal development and traveling make her tick.

Gray literally grew up in the convenience store industry with the opening of the family’s first convenience store in 1963. Involved in the family business, comprised of 87 stores, he gained experience in all phases of convenience store and chain retail operations.

Gray has been involved on a variety of projects, including heading global product management for three of the world’s largest retail petroleum equipment and systems suppliers and Vice President of Research & Technology for the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). Gray managed product portfolios that included payment platforms for EMV migration markets from Malaysia to Canada, as well as mobile/RFID payments initiatives. Gray also established NACS’ card payments program which saved the industry $60M in its first year of operations, and currently serves over 1,500 stores, doing 100m transactions annually. He currently resides in Georgetown, TX.

In his current role, Mark Wohltmann is responsible for the strategic development of NACS Global, the exclusive, worldwide network, supporting its members’ businesses and their careers within the convenience- and fuel-retailing industry.

Mark has more than 20 years of experience in research & consulting, with a focus on FMCG/CPG and Retail. Prior to joining NACS in late 2016 Mark worked in Strategic Product Development with the Nielsen Company in Europe, developing solutions for clients from the Convenience Retail, HoReCa, eCommerce and Tobacco industry. Prior to this Mark worked with the start-up USP Market Intelligence, setting up Germany's largest convenience retail panel, as well as with Combera (Advantage Smollan), developing Marketing- and sales strategies for FMCG companies, entering the convenience retail sector.

Mark started his career in the advertising industry, focusing on trade marketing and sales advertising in impulse retail channels, working with Dorland in Berlin and with Grey and BBDO in Duesseldorf after studying business administration at the University of Siegen and being trained in advertising consulting.