Hi, this is Greg Kielstrom. Welcome to season three of the Agile World, where we discuss customer

employee experience, organizational and workforce transformation, and how business can adapt and

continually improve in an Agile age. The Agile World podcast is brought to you by tech systems,

an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services, and real world application.

For more information, go to techsystems.com. To read more about the topics discussed in the show,

you can go to my website at theagile.world and read my latest articles or get a copy of my latest

book, The Agile Workforce, now available on Amazon and other retailers. My name is Greg Kielstrom,

and I'm the host of the Agile World podcast. Every industry has its unique challenges and opportunities

in delivering great customer experience. Today we're going to talk about customer experience and retail.

To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Erica James, global head of retail practice at

Medallion. Erica, welcome to the show. Thanks, thanks for having me, Greg. Yeah, looking forward to

talking with you. So when do we start by give us a little background on yourself and as well as

what you do at Medallion? Yeah, absolutely. So interesting background, I actually started out my

career post undergrad in public health. Very different from where I am today in retail and customer

experience. But interestingly enough, I had an opportunity through some real strong mentorship

and some opportunistic moments to find myself in a role focused on consumer insights and market

research in that space. That led me to thinking, okay, let's try out potentially marketing

as as a next play. Went to Thunderbird School of Global Management to get my MBA. And after

an internship in brand management that summer with Nestle, I realized, you know, there's

there's an element of marketing and brand that I really like and it isn't necessarily the, you

know, colors that you're putting on packaging or the words that you're using. But it's more the

feeling that someone gets when they interact with a brand, right? Like operationally when they

...