CA-FOCAL-SYSTEMS
24.3.2022 13:54:08 CET | Business Wire | Press release
In order to better serve the retail industry with state of the art AI and to couple that with optimal operations and processes, Focal Systems is proud to announce the hiring of Suzy Monford, former Kroger executive, as Chief Strategy and Marketplace Officer.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220324005148/en/
With more than 30 years’ experience in the grocery and restaurant industries, Monford brings a passion for innovating go-to-market strategies and employing cutting edge technologies that can transform the global food and retail sectors. She will be based in Austin, TX, heading the company’s office there.
“Since 2015 our team has worked with Suzy as a customer, advisor and friend to guide our product roadmap and strategy. Her advice has gotten us to where we are today. She is the smartest person in retail we have had the pleasure of working with. We are thrilled she has elected to join us at this pivotal moment in our company’s growth,” said Francois Chaubard, Focal Systems Founder and CEO. “Her leadership experience as a retailer who’s led e-commerce and technology innovations in the U.S., U. K., and Australia are hugely valuable to us and our customers as we grow around the world.”
“Throughout my career as an operator, marketer and customer experience innovator, I’ve been fortunate to work with best-in-class leaders, so I’m thrilled to join Francois and the Focal team at this moment in our industry’s evolution,” said Monford. “The need to reimagine and rebuild the world’s food economy has never been more vital—to the stores and communities we serve, and more broadly, to the environment.”
After a brief stint with PCC, Monford joins Focal following three years with Kroger. As Group Vice President of eCommerce, she helped create and lead go-to-market strategies for Kroger’s e-commerce partnership with Ocado into new markets across the U.S. During her tenure with Kroger, Monford also served as Group Vice President of Fresh, and President of QFC.
Monford began her supermarket career working for a decade in leadership roles for H-E-B. After H-E-B, she gained international experience with senior executive roles with both Woolworths and Coles, and returned to the U.S. to become CEO of Andronico’s in San Francisco, a company she is credited for turning around as she led its successful acquisition by Albertson’s Safeway.
About Focal Systems
Founded in 2015 in San Francisco out of Stanford’s Computer Vision Lab, Focal Systems is the industry leader in retail automation. Our mission is to automate and optimize brick and mortar retail with state-of-the-art deep learning and AI. We have pioneered the world’s first “Self-Driving Store”- OS that revolutionizes how stores are run. Focal has raised more than $40m to date and scaled solutions on three continents in hundreds of stores, with thousands of cameras deployed. Learn more at: https://focal.systems
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220324005148/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Philip Morris International’s Moira Gilchrist Positions Human Judgment as a Critical Leadership Advantage Amid Rapid AI Adoption at Wall Street Journal Forum8.5.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
PMI’s Chief Global Communications Officer says companies that safeguard human judgment will gain a competitive edge as AI automates routine knowledge work Philip Morris International’s (PMI) (NYSE:PM) Chief Global Communications Officer, Moira Gilchrist, joined global thought leaders at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference in New York to examine why human cognition—judgment, context, creativity, and ethical reasoning—is becoming the most valuable asset in an age of artificial intelligence. “The AI boom is putting a premium on distinctly human capabilities,” said Gilchrist, who took part in the session “Cognition: The New Currency – Why Human Judgment Matters More Than Ever.” Speaking to attendees, she emphasized that, “As knowledge is getting democratized, human judgment, intuition, and creativity become the true differentiators that leaders need to nurture across all levels of their organizations.” Philip Morris International is today a different company, built wi
Fortegra Appoints Iwan Röpcke as Chief Executive Officer, Belgium8.5.2026 09:30:00 CEST | Press release
The Fortegra Group, Inc., a global specialty insurer, today announced the appointment of Iwan Röpcke as Chief Executive Officer, Belgium. Mr. Röpcke brings more than 25 years of insurance industry experience to the role, spanning broking, commercial leadership, and executive management across the Benelux and broader European markets. He joins Fortegra from Lloyd’s Insurance Company S.A., where he served as Country Manager for Belgium and the Netherlands, building out the operation from its early stages and overseeing both business strategy and development. Prior to Lloyd's, Mr. Röpcke held senior leadership positions at Willis Towers Watson (via Gras Savoye), where he served as Head of Sales and Head of the Competence Center. His career also includes roles at Inter Partner Assistance (AXA Assistance) as Commercial Director Benelux, Winterthur Europe Assurances, AIG Europe, Aon Belgium, and Marsh. Mr. Röpcke’s industry expertise spans a range of specialty risk areas, with deep relations
KAYTUS Launches All-QLC Flash Storage at AI EXPO 2026 for 10,000-GPU Clusters8.5.2026 09:02:00 CEST | Press release
KAYTUS’s next-generation all-QLC flash solution delivers fully linear performance scaling for massive GPU clusters, while reducing TCO by 70%, enabling ultra-large-scale computing for the era of agentic AI. At AI EXPO KOREA 2026, KAYTUS officially launched its All-QLC Flash Storage Solution, engineered to deliver high performance, massive scalability, and cost efficiency for 10,000-GPU clusters. The solution addresses data-delivery bottlenecks in ultra-large-scale AI training, helping maximize GPU resource utilization. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260508313130/en/ Based on the KR2280 and KR1180 server platforms, the solution is deeply integrated with industry-leading AI-native parallel file systems to eliminate data silos inherent in traditional tiered storage. Purpose-built for read-intensive AI workloads, it overcomes the horizontal scaling limitations of massive clusters. Verified test-data shows that, a
Beneq Appoints Dr. Jason Harrison as Chief Executive Officer8.5.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Semiconductor industry leader takes the helm to accelerate Beneq’s next phase of growth in atomic layer deposition Beneq Oy, the home of atomic layer deposition (ALD), today announced the appointment of Dr. Jason Harrison as Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Harrison succeeds Dr. Tommi Vainio and will lead Beneq into its next phase of growth across semiconductor, optical, and emerging technology markets. A Strategic Leadership Transition Beneq enters its next phase of growth from a position of strong commercial momentum. Recent milestones include the qualification of the Beneq Transform® cluster tool for volume production of GaN power and RF filter devices; the introduction of Beneq Transmute™ and Beneq Transform® XP, both engineered for high-volume manufacturing (HVM) of specialty semiconductors; growing adoption of the P-Series for coating critical chamber parts in advanced node devices; and selection of the C2R™ for AR waveguide production in next-generation XR optics. Against this backd
World Employment Confederation’s 59th Annual Conference to Address Critical Global Labour Market Concerns8.5.2026 07:12:00 CEST | Press release
Senior leaders from policy, business and international institutions are set to discuss critical labour market concerns at the World Employment Confederation’s Annual Conference, during an era of global transformation and disruption never-before-seen. Taking place on 12-13 May in Toronto and entitled ‘Grow With Talent’, this year’s World Employment Conference – co-organised with ACSESS – arrives at a time of profound economic uncertainty. This gathering of leaders and experts will help define the path forward for the global labour market and set the stage for discussions at the 114th Session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) in June. Bettina Schaller, President of World Employment Confederation (WEC) says: “The question at the heart of this year’s World Employment Conference is: how will we mobilise the world’s talent to drive growth in an era of disruption?At a time of accelerating AI adoption, rapid demographic change and an uncertain global economic outlook, pressure on la
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom