Stephanie Felton
Stephanie Felton is a seasoned consumer packaged goods (CPG) leader with more than 16 years of experience driving growth, strategy, and execution within complex retail environments. Currently serving as a Senior Customer Business Manager at Glanbia Performance Nutrition, she leads the Target account team, overseeing key relationships, business planning, and innovation strategy within the competitive performance nutrition space. Known for her grit, curiosity, and bias for action, Stephanie brings a results-driven mindset to every challenge, consistently delivering impactful outcomes through a balance of strategic thinking and operational excellence.
Throughout her career, Stephanie has built deep expertise within the Target ecosystem, holding influential roles at organizations such as Lume Deodorant, J.M. Smucker Company, and Chobani. She has managed multimillion-dollar businesses, led high-profile product launches, and navigated evolving market dynamics, including supply chain challenges and shifting consumer demand. Her ability to translate data into compelling selling stories, lead cross-functional collaboration, and build strong retail partnerships has made her a trusted leader in the industry. One of her proudest accomplishments includes co-founding a women’s employee resource group at Smucker, focused on empowering and developing female talent within the organization.
Stephanie’s career is rooted in a strong foundation of accountability, credibility, and continuous growth. She credits her entry into the CPG industry to an early internship opportunity sparked by attending an industry event, which opened the door to a career defined by learning and adaptability. Today, she continues to navigate challenges such as rising costs and increased demand within the protein category, while staying focused on delivering value for both her organization and retail partners. Passionate about leadership and team development, Stephanie remains committed to showing up authentically, executing with excellence, and building meaningful impact across the businesses and communities she serves.
• University of St. Thomas - Opus College of Business- B.A.
• Birkbeck, University of London
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to early industry connections that opened the door to my first opportunity, along with a consistent focus on excelling in the role in front of me rather than always looking ahead.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Early in my career, I was in a leadership program where I rotated through different segments every eight months for two years. After leaving that program, I got into a rhythm of always looking for what's next and not staying present or excelling in my current role before thinking about the next step. A few years later, someone gave me advice that really shifted my mindset: focus on what you're doing today, and the next steps will follow. If you excel in what you're doing today, that next step is going to happen. Obviously you have to apply for it and do other things, but it will transpire more organically. That advice helped me stop constantly anticipating change and instead commit to winning where I was.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My focus for women, even women on my team, is always to really lean into having confidence, because confidence emulates and that's how you can be a role model to other females within the industry. Never sell yourself short. I feel like females have the ability to look at a job description and say, 'Oh, well, I don't hit this one area, so I'm not going to apply for it,' whereas a male will be like, 'Yeah, I don't hit five of these areas, but I'm still gonna apply for it.' So really always know your worth, and know that your worth is much higher than sometimes females give themselves credit for. I was the co-founder of a women's ERG at Smucker, and we had all of this focus around confidence because a female's confidence is really determined very early on in her life. Confidence is something I'm passionate about helping women develop, because when you have it, you can inspire others.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now, I work with a performance nutrition company, and protein has popped up quite literally everywhere - protein Doritos, protein at Starbucks, protein everything. Because of the amount of demand that has been in the marketplace for protein or whey protein isolate, the supply has diminished significantly, and cost headwinds are incredibly challenging. The most challenging thing within my specific portion of the industry is navigating that. We're navigating having to pass on price increases, and knowing that every time we do that, while we're doing it for the betterment of our company, it hurts the relationship with our retail partners. They don't want to see us passing on headwinds to them, they want us to find solutions. Even though we've gone down various avenues to try to find solutions and try to diversify the type of whey that we use or the amount of whey products that we sell, at the end of the day, it is just a massive headwind that we have had to pass on to retail partners. That dynamic is a major challenge within what I'm navigating right now.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think credibility is most important to me. Credibility stems across a lot of different areas. If I think about the industry that I'm in, consumers want credible products, and I think that credible products and being credible in selling that product have to go kind of hand-in-hand. Credibility means doing what you say you're gonna do, showing up the way that you say you're gonna show up, providing authentic work, and knowing that someone can count on you. I think that stems into personal life, too - being accountable and credible with my kids, doing the same with family and friends, really showing up as that authentic person that people can trust and rely on. You're always that credible source when someone needs to turn to you when they're having a bad day or things like that.