Fireside Chat: New Tech is Evolving Fast, and Customer Adoption is Even Faster

  • Exploring the world’s largest retailer’s approach to innovation and emerging tech
  • A “how we built this” look into latest innovations
  • Why quick, cost-effective, and intelligent experimentation is key to unlocking innovation at scale

Cheryl Ainoa
EVP, New Business & Emerging Tech
Walmart Global Tech

An accomplished and results driven technology executive, Cheryl has built high performing, global product and technology teams that have created some of the web’s most innovative, popular and award-winning consumer experiences, and has spearheaded transformational change within organizations to drive business results at-scale.

As SVP New Businesses & Emerging Tech for Walmart Global Tech, Cheryl leads a team of technologists with a mission to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts by delivering value, speed, efficiencies and operational excellence for retail and emerging tech capabilities.

Prior to Walmart, Cheryl was COO of D2L, a software-as-a-service organization that works with schools and businesses to help transform the way the world learns. There, she was responsible for all product management, development, delivery and support functions for the company’s industry leading Brightspace cloud-based learning management system.

Previously, Cheryl was SVP of Product Development at Intuit, where she led the development of the company’s platforms and core services for four years. Before joining Intuit, Cheryl spent eight years at Yahoo! where she was SVP for global service engineering, leading the teams that managed the company’s applications in production worldwide. In addition, she led the teams that developed and managed the media products reaching more than 70 million people worldwide. She also spent 15 years in technical leadership positions at companies including Broderbund Software, Genealogy.com, Healtheon/WebMD, Informix Software and Impac Medical Systems.

Cheryl is a recipient of the YMCA Tribute to Women and Industry (TWIN) Award, which recognizes women who have excelled in their fields and made significant contributions to industry in executive, managerial and professional roles. Cheryl was also a recipient of the 2013 Intuit CEO Leadership Award. She has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University – Leavey School of Business.