Leader | Speaker

Jody Wasbro

SVP, Strategy & Experience Design, WD Partners

Jody Wasbro is Senior Vice President of Strategy & Experience Design at WD Partners. She leads WD’s strategy team, which partners with Creative and Operations to turn insight into integrated solutions, from audience research and brand positioning to the design of the customer experience. Jody joined WD in 2018 as Vice President of Strategy & Insights and was later named Senior Vice President. She brings more than 20 years of experience across agencies, retailers, and corporate brand management.

Her work spans retail, food service, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and health and wellness, from brick-and-mortar transformation to new concept development. At WD, Jody has:

• Codified WD’s strategy frameworks, giving teams a consistent approach to defining audiences, positioning, and experience.
• Launched an in-house consumer research offering, so clients get primary research and design under one roof.

She has led strategy for brands including Purina, Hershey, Nestlé Coffee Partners, Anheuser-Busch, Walmart Canada, Meijer, Nike, Shake Shack, sweetgreen, Popeyes, and Sheetz. Her work elevating pet care destinations for Purina helped drive double-digit growth, and WD’s work for Culto earned multiple recognitions from VMSD including first place in the International Visual competition and first place in the Retail Renovation competition.

Before WD, Jody was Vice President and Brand Strategy Director at GSW (2014–2018), Integrated Marketing Manager at Abbott Nutrition (2012–2014), Director of Brand Marketing at Evenflo (2010–2012), Client Director at Nielsen (2008–2010) and Marketing Director at Kaz, now part of Helen of Troy (2001–2008).

Jody earned an MBA in marketing management from Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from The Ohio State University.

Jody speaks on customer experience, innovation, and experience-led growth at industry events, including Shop! Marketplace (2024), P2PI Live (2024), the International Retail Design Conference (IRDC, 2023), GroceryShop (2023), and Shop! Ideation (2022).

One thing on my bucket list is to live part of the year in Italy where I could develop fluency speaking Italian, and enjoy the best coffee, food and weather.