Influential Woman · E-commerce and Digital Marketing

Katie Galano

Vice President, Acadaca

Tinton Falls, NJ

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Providence College Degree Rhode Island Degree Psychology major Degree FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) Degree Night school classes in merchandising and fashion marketing

Her Story

About Katie

I've been in the e-commerce and digital marketing industry for about 13 years, and it's been a really interesting and fun journey. E-commerce and digital marketing has changed so much over the years - every year is like a brand new career, a new journey, reinventing whatever you're doing. I'm currently the vice president of two agencies under the same company: one is an e-commerce development agency, and the other is an e-commerce digital marketing agency. In my role, I manage both teams and I'm responsible for delivery for both, making sure that my teams have all the tools and resources they need to efficiently and effectively manage their clients. I ensure that our teams are hitting client goals and that clients are happy, and I handle all escalations with clients. On top of that, I'm involved in all of our sales conversations - I do all of our intro calls, pull in the right team members, make sure all of our audits or proposal materials are correct and have been properly and thoroughly researched before we're sending them over to clients, and then I present and I'm responsible for closing leads as well. One of my most notable professional achievements has been working with our CTO to develop an AI tool for the agency called My Digital BFF, which is actually another company that we're adding to the mix. I did the initial concepting for the tool. The idea is that our clients have so much access to data - years ago, everybody wanted more access to data, but now no one knows what to do with it. So we're creating a tool that provides actionable next steps to impact performance across essentially a direct-to-consumer e-commerce ecosystem, with real dollar amounts associated to the opportunities, so our team or clients who are using it know what the big opportunity or the big issues on the site might be. Outside of my agency work, my sister and I actually just started a hobby that's work-adjacent - a website called ShopFemaleFounded.com. All of my clients that are female-founded, which is turning out to be the majority of them honestly (we primarily work with women's apparel and beauty brands), our female founder clients where the founders are involved are just so smart. They communicate better, they tell me when they're frustrated earlier, they listen to my team's expertise, and they make really good strategic decisions moving forward. We started talking about how we should try to only buy products from female founders, and we're starting this website to really highlight these amazing women, why they started what they're doing, and some of the setbacks and ways they've been told not to move forward and how they overcame them. It's really fun - my sister's friend is a professional photographer, so we have this grand vision for what we're doing, and I have all the experience on the web and digital marketing, so we launched the website and we're just starting to get a visual identity going.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Katie

01What do you attribute your success to?

I think that I read people very well. In my entire career, I think that being able to understand - whether you're right or wrong - if what you're saying isn't having the impact, isn't well received, you're not winning either. When I was younger, it was easy to be a little bit more combative - 'No, this is the right way, this is why your revenue is down because of XYZ.' But it doesn't actually accomplish what you're looking for. So I think being really receptive to other people has helped me a lot, and allowed me to use what I would consider being very pushy in a way that is well received and isn't thought of as being pushy.

02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

I think the best advice I've ever been given is to use your strengths and the things that are well received to help understand how your unique personality can work to your advantage. A lot of times, especially as women in male-dominated industries, it's easy to feel like you need to kind of dull your edge or fit in. But obviously, if you're not getting well received in some of the things you're doing or the way you're saying things, whether it's right or wrong, you're not getting the intended outcome that you're looking for. So it's really about using your personality to your advantage, but being super aware of how people are receiving you, and then leaning into the things that you're doing that are well received and get your anticipated outcome - you know, prove what you want accomplished.

03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I would say that AI is your superpower. You can use it to amplify your expertise. It's never going to replace the unique value that you bring to the table, so make sure that you're using it as a sounding board. We almost all have access to a personal assistant now, or someone to proofread. Even if you don't take AI's advice, if you give it a deck or a speech or something, at least it's giving you something to think about. And you're still the most important piece of the puzzle. My CTO always says, your job won't be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by somebody using AI if you are hesitant to adopt it. So really use it to your advantage. Get comfortable being uncomfortable - everything changes every day, and that is not going to change. I think that would be my advice.

04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

I think the challenge is restructuring companies in a way that embraces AI and allows us to use it to our advantage. There are so many people who are so scared of AI taking their jobs. I hear it all the time - 'What are our children's jobs going to be like? They're going to have no opportunities.' But I truly don't think that's the future. It's just that the jobs are going to look different. It's a different world than we entered when we left college. So I think the biggest challenge is organizing in a way that doesn't replace people, that lets us use brilliant people or lets brilliant people use AI in a way that just amplifies, organizes, makes what they're doing maybe more scalable. The way that we're thinking about AI, we're adding a lot of automation to the agency, and the way we're thinking about it is much more thought leadership, mentoring our more junior employees on strategy. It's never going to replace really great client relationships. Our clients want to talk to us, they want to trust the people that they're working with, they want the people they're working with to be using tools efficiently to manage the work. We're eliminating errors in a lot of ways with some of the tools that we're bringing on. So I think the biggest challenge is just reorganizing our companies or processes and workflows to really emphasize people and assist people with AI, as opposed to the thought of replacing people with AI.

05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

I think flexibility and resilience are most important, especially with AI entering all of our careers in such an impactful way. It's easy to be scared, but it's actually just another hurdle. We get thrown hurdles all the time. There are different things happening in the economy. The tariffs are a big hurdle for a lot of our clients. We're experiencing more hurdles at a more rapid pace, so being really resilient and flexible, and just saying, 'This is not a hurdle, this is my life, my career, this is what it is. We are overcoming obstacles every single day, and we're better for it on the other side.'

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