Career Sliding Doors: The Pivotal Moments That Changed These 4 Ecomm Leaders' Careers

Everyone's path into retail media is different. There's no traditional career ladder, no standard playbook to follow. Instead, our industry is filled with professionals who stumbled, pivoted, or took unexpected leaps that completely transformed their trajectories.

I recently asked several brand-side Ecommerce leaders to share their "sliding doors moments" - those pivotal instances when they look back and realize that single decision or opportunity changed everything. Their stories reveal the power of persistence, curiosity, and sometimes just being willing to take on the unglamorous work that others avoid.

The Power of Formal Mentorship

Julie Liu, Director of Digital Commerce at Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, traces her sliding doors moment to 2022 when she participated in the Adweek mentorship program. She was paired with Sarah Hofstetter from Profitero, a connection that fundamentally shifted her career approach.

"Before I met Sarah, my previous approach was making sure that I was well-rounded in everything," Julie explains. "Do I have experience in operations? Do I have experience in marketing and account management? But Sarah really taught me that I don't necessarily need a year in a certain role to get hands-on experience, but I can learn so much just through reading and listening and doing a lot of independent research and learning myself."

The mentorship introduced Julie to a framework that helped her leverage her strengths while managing weaknesses. More importantly, it shifted her focus from developing hard skills to cultivating soft skills like presenting to large groups, influencing through others, and storytelling. "Once I was able to focus on those things, I just saw the career opportunities and external opportunities just continued to come my way," she reflects.

Strategic Persistence Pays Off

Josh Clarkson, Global Lead for Retail Media at Mars and Chief Consultant at Edify Digital Commerce Consulting, demonstrates how strategic persistence can open unexpected doors. While working at Lindt in the UK, focusing on drug channel customers and department stores, he had a different approach to career advancement.

"I would just go and annoy our head of e-commerce and ask for guidance and advice on things all the time," Josh admits. "And this meant he knew I had an interest and that I was vaguely capable."

When the head of e-commerce was forming a new Amazon team just before the pandemic, Josh's persistence paid off - he was asked to interview for the role. His advice for others seeking their own sliding doors moment? "Show your enthusiasm and your interest upfront, even if you're in a different role or you don't yet have the technical know-how. Upskill yourself, listen to podcasts, follow people on LinkedIn, get involved with key stakeholders."

From Startup Crash to Amazon Pioneer

Todd Weagent, Director of Sales at Massimo, experienced perhaps the most dramatic career pivot. Working as a project manager at a consumer electronics retail chain, managing new store buildouts, he reached a breaking point with the mundane work.

"I just decided at one point that I was going to just quit and didn't have a job and didn't have a really long runway," Todd recalls. "But then I saw an ad in a local paper for a .com startup."

The startup, called 800.com, eventually became recognized by Forbes Magazine as "best of the web." As employee number 12, Todd learned e-commerce from the ground up, literally inventing tools as they went. When the dot-com bubble burst, his connections from the startup led him to Amazon - a relationship that has lasted over 20 years.

What's particularly telling about Todd's story is his willingness to embrace the unglamorous aspects of early Amazon work. While other sales reps avoided Amazon because "that's not glamorous. I'm not going golfing to go get a PO. I'm actually having to do things like resize images and find keywords," Todd didn't mind the hands-on technical work. That attitude positioned him perfectly for the e-commerce revolution that followed.

Front Row Seats to the Grocery Revolution

Jace Rhee, National Account Manager for E-Commerce at Red Bull, faced a classic career crossroads moment about 10 years ago. Working as a shopper marketer on the Kroger customer team at Coca-Cola in Cincinnati, he was looking to move back to Atlanta to be closer to his wife's family before their son was born.

Initially pursuing traditional marketing roles, Jace's trajectory changed when a former colleague told him about a role calling on Amazon, specifically Amazon Fresh. The position had been open for months with no suitable candidates, partly because it was classified as a sales role rather than marketing.

"I really had to think about this. What was I going to pursue? Was it these marketing roles that I'd been pursuing for a little while, or this Amazon role?" Jace explains. "I couldn't get the thought of working with Amazon out of my mind. Just my curiosity was raised, thinking about what they were doing in the grocery space."

That curiosity proved prescient. Jace got a front-row seat to Amazon's grocery evolution, watching them expand from four markets to launching Prime Now, Amazon Go stores, and Amazon Fresh grocery stores. "I just got a front seat working with them and really just seeing how they changed grocery, both online and offline."

The experience fundamentally changed his career trajectory, and he notes an interesting evolution in the industry: "Back when I started, like 10 years ago, the people who came into e-comm roles at that time at Coke, none of them had e-comm experience because it was so new. You kind of fast forward now, and everyone on our e-comm team at Red Bull has a plethora of e-comm experience."

The Common Thread

What unites these stories isn't luck or perfect timing, but rather the willingness to embrace uncertainty and follow curiosity over comfort. Whether it was Julie investing in mentorship, Josh persistently building relationships, Todd taking on unglamorous technical work, or Jace choosing curiosity over the familiar path, each professional made choices that positioned them for opportunities they couldn't have anticipated.

In an industry where tomorrow's challenges are unknown and the landscape shifts monthly, perhaps the most valuable skill is simply being comfortable with the unexpected doors that open along the way.