NACS Financial Leadership Program at Wharton

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: [email protected] or (703) 518-4223.

David Charles, Sr. bio

Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His expertise centers around the analysis of behavioral data to understand and forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities. He works with firms from a wide range of industries, such as telecommunications, financial services, gaming/entertainment, retailing, and pharmaceuticals. Managerial applications focus on topics such as customer relationship management, lifetime value of the customer, and sales forecasting for new products. Much of his research highlights the consistent (but often surprising) behavioral patterns that exist across these industries and other seemingly different domains.

In addition to his various roles and responsibilities at Wharton, Professor Fader co-founded a predictive analytics firm (Zodiac) in 2015, which was sold to Nike in 2018. He then co-founded (and continues to run) Theta to commercialize his more recent work on “customer-based corporate valuation.”

Beyond his focus on customer-oriented activities, Professor Fader has expanded his interests in “quantifying the qualitative” to include employee assessment/management as well. He recently co-founded Incompass Labs to popularize an innovative “incentive-compatible peer assessment system” to bring the same kind of rigor and accountability to human resources that he has brought to marketing for many years.

Fader is the author of three books: “Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage” (2020), “The Customer Centricity Playbook” with Sarah Toms (2018), and “The Customer-Base Audit” with Bruce Hardie and Michael Ross (2022).

He has won many awards for his research and teaching accomplishments. Among these achievements, he was named by Advertising Age as one of its inaugural “25 Marketing Technology Trailblazers” in 2017 (and was the only academic on the list).

Frank Gleeson became NACS president and CEO on January 1, 2026. He has deep experience in foodservice and convenience retailing. As president & CEO of Aramark Northern Europe from 2017–2024, he oversaw a team of over 20,000 employees across 2,800-plus locations in the United Kingdom, Ireland and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), which served an estimated 1 million meals a day. Before Aramark, Gleeson was retail director at Topaz Energy Group and vice president retail of Statoil Ireland (now Equinor), where he led the development of the first American-style convenience store in Ireland. Most recently, he served as chairman of the National Oil Reserve Agency in Ireland.

Gleeson was on the NACS Board of Directors for 11 years, including his term as 2018-19 NACS Chairman. In addition, he was a board member and chairman of Retail Ireland, a board member and president of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation and a board member of the Irish Transport Authority.

Kathy Pearson is a strategist, systems thinking expert, and authority in decision making. She is president and founder of Enterprise Learning Solutions, an adjunct senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and has served as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations, Information and Decisions Department at the Wharton School, both at the University of Pennsylvania. An award-winning educator, Kathy works extensively with mid- to senior-level executives, including high potentials and executive teams, teaching on a variety of topics including critical thinking, strategic agility, change management, and strategic execution. Kathy received her BS degree in theoretical mathematics from Auburn University, her MS degree in decision sciences from Georgia State University, and her PhD in industrial engineering (concentration in statistics) from Northwestern University.

Harbir Singh is the Mack Professor of Management; co-director, Mack Institute for Innovation Management; and faculty director of the Huntsman Program for International Studies and Business at the Wharton School. Committed to global business research and education, he has served as vice dean for Global Initiatives at the Wharton School. He focuses on the development of world-class capabilities and of sustainable competitive advantage. His main interests in research and teaching lie in three areas: strategic leadership, growth and innovation via alliances and acquisitions, and the evolution of competitive strategy.

Harbir has won multiple awards for outstanding research in strategic management at the Academy of Management in addition to awards for teaching. He received the Academy of International Business Decade Award for his co-authored work on determinants of modes of entry by multinational firms into new country markets. He was chair of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management and is the former dean of the fellows of the Strategic Management Society. He is the author of several books on strategy and leadership in a global setting.

Harbir received his PhD at the University of Michigan. He is the academic director for several of Wharton’s open enrollment executive programs, including Creating and Implementing Strategy for Competitive Advantage and Driving Growth through Strategic Partnerships, and is a lead faculty member in the Mergers and Acquisitions program. Additionally, he teaches and directs numerous customized programs for companies and associations around the world.

Harbir has been a visiting faculty member at London Business School; Bocconi University in Milan; and the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, as well as a founding faculty member of the Indian School of Business. He has also conducted executive seminars on competitive advantage, globalization, acquisitions, and alliances for many companies including IBM Corporation, Pfizer, Verizon, AT&T, and Daimler.

David Wessels is an Adjunct Professor of Finance, a Director of Executive Education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as the Academic Director for Wharton’s CFO Program on Strategic Leadership.  David teaches courses on corporate valuation, venture capital, and performance management to undergraduates and MBA’s in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and executive audiences globally.

Professor Wessels has been recognized by his students with the school’s MBA excellence in teaching award, and has been acknowledged nationally for his research on organizational structure and financial performance. His co-authored book, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, is accepted as the seminal text for students of corporate valuation and investment banking.

Before joining the Wharton School, David served on finance faculty of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Prior to Emory, he was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and a technology analyst for Boston-based Harbourvest Venture Partners. David holds a PhD in finance from UCLA Anderson School of Management, a BS in economics and a BAS in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lyle Ungar is a professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a BS from Stanford University and a PhD from MIT. Professor Ungar directed Penn's Executive Master’sof Technology Management (EMTM) Program for a decade, and served as associate director of the Institute for Biomedical Informatics (IBI). He has published over 400 articles and holds 11 patents. His current research focuses on statistical natural-languageprocessing, deep learning, and the use of social media to understand the psychology of individuals and communities.

Professor Ungar has consulted for companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies on the strategic use of information technology in areas including data mining, recommender systems, chatbots, e-commerce,and artificial intelligence.