Kris Zanuldin, various roles at Amazon, previously spent over 10 years at American Express, where he held roles including Director, Commerce Innovation and Director, Digital Marketing.
Who is your ecommerce hero?
Ben Thompson of Stratechery.
What has he done to win hero status in your eyes?
There’s constantly a lot of change and key events happening in the tech industry, especially ecommerce.
Ben is like a new-age economist, giving insightful analysis and predictions on these events and forces of change. He does it in a way that is not only insightful but also digestible and easy to understand for any layman reader.
I believe just like understanding economic trends helps any average person no matter your interest (investor, builder, customer), better understand what is happening in the tech space and what some of these events means for the players can only be a benefit no matter your interest.
How has his heroism helped drive ecommerce?
I can’t tell you how many strategy meetings and discussions I’ve been in when Ben’s stuff gets referenced. He’s definitely influenced the thinking on some level for many of us in the heart of ecommerce world.
What the biggest challenges in ecommerce we need another hero to solve?
The world is becoming more dependent on ecommerce, technology and automation as part of their daily lives. However, as with any space that grows, there will always be bad actors.
We can only move as fast as our trust in the system and that everyone has good intentions.
Since this is not necessarily the case, we definitely need heroes that can help continue to build trust in the system and keep those bad actors at bay to help accelerate the pace of positive development.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in ecommerce?
Every decade or so, we see some major leap in terms of customer behavior technology or products. Getting to work on technology and initiatives that are trying to chart the course of commerce for the next decade and beyond — that’s exciting to be part of.
Is there a diversity problem in ecommerce and how can we best address it if so?
My perspective is that in any space, our people should be as reflective of the customers we are trying to serve and sadly there’s still work to be done to close the gap between those that work in the space vs the general makeup of our customers (gender, ethnic and even thought diversity).
Some of this will be generational in terms of change so supporting grassroots level efforts to bring in more diversity — especially at the youth level — is super important.
My Ecommerce Hero is a series celebrating brilliance in ecommerce, in association with eCommerce-speakers.com, an initiative from Entropy‘s Alex Tait to encourage more female speakers at industry events.
