Smita Katakwar

Smita Katakwar serves as CIO at Wegmans Food Market, a $14 billion retail supermarket company focused on the Mid-Atlantic area. In this role, she leads a team of 460 people directly and supports the digital transformation for the company's 50,000 to 55,000 employees overall. Her responsibilities encompass customer experience, employee experience, enterprise capabilities, cybersecurity, and infrastructure, guided by the pillars of grow, simplify, and people through purposeful application of technology. Prior to Wegmans, Katakwar spent four years at BJ's, where she launched the company's first app as it prepared for an IPO and established digital engagement and omnichannel customer experience as cornerstones of growth strategy. Earlier, she worked at Sears, now Transform Co, starting as an intern after graduating from Carnegie Mellon and contributing to home delivery innovations, including co-owning a patent on concepts now common in services like Amazon garage deliveries. Throughout her 17-year career, Katakwar emphasizes leading with clarity, creating trust-based environments, and building momentum through small wins that compound over time. Her formal education includes a degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering from India and a master's in information systems from Carnegie Mellon, where she graduated with highest distinction. She was part of the first cohort of the Growing as a Purposeful Leader program at Harvard Business School and recently completed a Frontier Firm certification through a collaboration between Microsoft and Harvard. She has also served on MIT's AIO judging committee. Katakwar maintains professional associations with FMI Food Market Association, Indian American tech communities, and serves as a board of governors member for GS1, a nonprofit setting standards for UPC barcodes.