The business world keeps shifting as shoppers move between screens, stores, and platforms without a second thought. Companies that once relied on traditional research now face audiences who expect speed, relevance, and real understanding. In this landscape, some leaders focus on data, some focus on creativity, and a rare few learn how to bridge both. This is where Cristina Marinucci stands out. Her work sits at the point where consumer behavior, brand clarity, and commerce come together, and her career has been shaped by a simple question she never stopped asking: What drives people’s choices?
Cristina’s curiosity started early and grew into a guiding force throughout her professional life. She often says, “I have always been fascinated by why people choose what they choose, on shelf, online, and in life.” That single interest pushed her into roles that placed her between marketing, sales, and the shopper at companies like PepsiCo, Reckitt, Mars, and Johnson & Johnson. She learned how each function sees growth differently and how real momentum happens when those views come together.
Her path took a sharp turn when she co-founded Better Life Ventures, a CBD and plant extract wholesale business. The company went on to become a top-three global wholesaler on Alibaba. Building that operation required her to understand algorithms, content, and conversion at a global scale. It also gave her a front-row seat to how fast marketplace behavior can change and how brands need to adapt in real time.
These combined experiences shaped her belief that the future belongs to leaders who listen to consumer, shopper, and customer signals as one connected truth. She explains that this unified view is what allows teams to turn insights into clear, confident action. It is the space she chose with intention, and it continues to define the kind of impact she aims to make.
Lessons from Global Brand Leadership
Cristina’s years inside major global companies shaped her approach in ways that still guide her work today. She often describes each organization as strengthening a different muscle of how she thinks. At PepsiCo, she developed a strong sense of commercial discipline and learned the value of flawless execution at the frontline. Reckitt and Mars pushed her to work with speed and clarity while keeping the category at the center. She notes that “if you grow the category, everyone wins,” a lesson that stayed with her long after those roles.
Her time at Johnson and Johnson marked a turning point. It fully immersed her in ecommerce and digital analytics, where classic ideas around product, price, promotion, and placement needed to be reimagined for an always on world that never switches off. This shift changed how she viewed brand building. She found that real impact comes when brand purpose, retailer economics, and shopper reality sit within one connected system that creates a win for everyone involved.
Leading Global Growth and Omni Commercial Insights at Mondelez
In her role at Mondelez International, Cristina leads a global team responsible for turning signals from the market into clear paths for growth. She focuses on connecting foresight, consumer and shopper insights, and commercial analytics so they work as one system. Her team builds integrated strategies that stretch from media planning all the way to the shelf, giving the business a unified view of how people discover, consider, and buy.
Cristina explains that a key part of this work involves shaping multiyear category visions and identifying the growth drivers that matter most. Her team also creates practical tools, including the company’s commercial growth planning tool and its digital shelf Flywheel diagnostics, which help markets and customers understand where they can win. She sees her remit as broader than just insights or strategy. It includes capability building and change leadership, ensuring that insights do more than inform reports. In her words, they must become “an engine that guides where we invest, how we innovate, and how we show up with retailers and consumers.”
Building Insight-Led Strategies That Deliver Real Growth
Cristina believes that an effective strategy begins with clarity, not charts. She starts with the outcome that matters and the decision that needs to be made. From there, she identifies what success should look like for the consumer or shopper, the customer, and the brand. She often describes this as a “triple win,” because growth only sticks when all three sides benefit.
Her team looks well beyond standard brand and category metrics. They study the functional and emotional needs behind real choices and track how those needs shift across occasions, channels, and contexts. This understanding becomes the base for integrating demand spaces, cultural and category trends, retail media signals, revenue growth levers, and execution constraints. The goal is to land a small number of clear “where to play” and “how to win” choices that teams can act on.
Cristina places equal weight on experimentation. She works closely with customers to test ideas, measure incrementality, and turn proven approaches into playbooks that scale rather than isolated success stories.
Balancing Art and Science in Understanding People
Cristina approaches consumer behavior with equal respect for numbers and human stories. She often says that science reveals the pattern while the art explains why it matters. Her team relies on advanced analytics, including both behavioral and purchase data, AI tools and retail media signals to understand what people are doing and which factors drive performance. These signals give a strong foundation, but she believes they are only half of the picture.
To bring meaning to the data, Cristina layers in qualitative work that captures context and emotion. This includes real-world observation, co-creation sessions, and cultural trend studies that show how people think, feel, and choose in everyday life. These methods help her teams see the person behind the pattern and understand what truly motivates behavior.
Cristina often reminds her teams that insight is a verb, not a dashboard. For her, the value lies in the decision that follows and the clear action taken in the marketplace. Insight must lead to movement, not just measurement.
The Mindset of a “Shaker Upper”
Cristina describes herself as a “Shaker Upper” because she is not hired to keep things as they are. She looks past the brief in front of her and pushes teams to uncover the real problem beneath the surface. She leans into the healthy tension that exists between global and local teams and across brand, category, shopper, media, and commerce. For her, this tension helps break silos and reshape how work gets done.
Her approach comes from sitting in many different roles throughout her career, including insights, marketing, sales, and category strategy. She also built a business as an entrepreneur. This range gives her a 360 view of how decisions land in customer meetings, on a P&L, and in a shopper’s mission. She leads with empathy and designs solutions people can act on.
At Mondelez, this mindset has helped unify category and shopper strategies, reframe their Growth Philosophy and strengthen Shopper Excellence as a global community.
How AI Is Reshaping Modern Consumer Engagement
Cristina sees artificial intelligence as a force that is shortening the distance between a signal in the market and the action a brand takes. Her teams already use AI to improve digital shelf content, personalize promotions, and understand retail media impact in ways that go far beyond last-click results. She believes the next phase will be true closed-loop systems where media, loyalty, and in-store data connect to predict missions, baskets, and next best actions across channels.
She also expects AI agents to play a larger role in everyday shopping. These agents will anticipate needs, curate options, and even handle routine purchases in the background. Brands will need to design for a world where they appeal to both people and the intelligent systems that filter choices for them.
As an AI advocate, she often speaks about AI as a copilot that strengthens human judgment. Her core belief is that AI should make experiences more human, more relevant, and less wasteful while respecting consent, context, and value exchange.
Milestones that Reflect Meaningful Impact
Cristina measures impact by how strategy, systems, and outcomes come together. One of her proudest contributions is co-leading the creation of the Growth Wheel, a unified framework that brings category, brand, shopper, and commercial strategies into one view. This framework, combined with global snacking growth drivers, enables markets to implement a consistent 6P approach (Proposition, Product, Package, Price, Promotion, Place) and collaborate with retailers in a way that fosters overall category growth.
She also led a major shift in how Mondelez thinks about innovation. Her multi-market research uncovered deep emotional and functional needs behind snacking, which she translated into seven consumption design targets with Global North Stars that articulate how to win in these key snacking moments across 6P. These now guide priorities across brands, categories, and R&D and have inspired more than 100 new concepts for icons like Cadbury and Oreo.
Earlier at Johnson and Johnson, she built a CRM strategy that evolved into a living insights and loyalty engine. She is equally proud of her entrepreneurial chapter with Better Life Ventures, which proved she could win in a fast, data-driven marketplace.
Her contributions have been recognized across the industry, including accolades such as the Women of Excellence Award from the Path to Purchase Institute for Industry Impact, as well as being listed on The Lead – Direct 60 list of digitally driven executives. Additionally, the Brandon Hall Group awarded her Silver Awards for RGM Certification and Capabilities, highlighting that her work brings about real change rather than just compelling ideas.
Looking Ahead: Building the Future of Unified Commerce
Cristina’s next chapter is shaped by a clear ambition. She wants to help design the operating system for unified commerce, where insights, media, retail media networks, and commercial planning sit inside one connected framework. Her vision depends on better measurement transparency and stronger data sharing between retailers and brands. She believes progress will come when both sides work from a common truth rather than competing frameworks. At the center of this goal is her commitment to triple win outcomes that create real value for shoppers, retailers, and brands.
She also plans to keep using platforms like her SHeCOMMERCE podcast, industry forums, and leadership roles to push these conversations forward and open opportunities for others. She hopes her impact reaches beyond growth charts. She wants to inspire future talent to ask hard questions, trust their worth, and build products and services that genuinely improve daily life. For Cristina, legacy is about the way the work is done: with transparency, shared value, and steady courage.
Finding Balance and Joy Beyond Work
Cristina is quick to say her work–life balance is not perfect. Instead, she thinks in seasons. Some phases of the year demand more from her at work, while others center on her daughters and their cheer, dance, and everyday milestones. What she protects most is boundaries and presence. When she is working, she is fully committed. When she is with her family, they have her full attention.
She tries to experience life with intention rather than moving through it on autopilot. At home, that means creating moments that her family will remember. They celebrate half birthdays, take part in scavenger hunts she meticulously designs, and often fall into spontaneous dance parties with her daughters. She enjoys date nights with her husband and always makes time for simple routines like hugs, snuggles and notes of encouragement for her “girlsquad”.
She also recharges through travel, mentoring women, and co-hosting SHeCOMMERCE with Jacqui Dynowski. Time spent in sunshine, around good food, and in curious conversations reminds her why the work matters.
A Message for Future Leaders
Cristina often says that ambition means little without opportunity, and sometimes the opportunity has to be created, not given. Her advice is simple: do not wait to feel ready. Step into the stretch role, take on the messy brief, raise your hand, and then put in the work to earn your seat. She believes leadership is defined not only by what someone achieves but also by how they get there and the legacy they leave behind.
For her, that legacy begins at home. She wants her daughters to remember her as someone who showed up, asked hard questions, and never settled. She hopes they look back and feel encouraged to use their voice, trust their ambition, and expect nothing less than what they deserve.
Her message to readers echoes the same spirit. She believes every person is capable and worthy of the dreams they carry. The path forward starts with backing yourself, doing the work, and leading in a way that helps the next person believe they can rise too.
To learn more about Cristina Marinucci, you can visit:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cristinamarinucci/
Website: www.cristinamarinucci.com
Podcast: www.shecommercepodcast.com
Quotes
“Don’t wait to be ‘ready.’ Raise your hand for the role, the stretch, the messy brief, and then do the work to earn your seat.”
“As you climb, remember that it is not just about what you achieve, it is about how you get there and the legacy you leave behind.”
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