Gale Blank

Background

Gale is an imaginative, results oriented technology executive who is passionate about the creation of value using information and technology for enterprises. Her skills include IT strategy, architecture, aligning IT and the enterprise, communications, building high performance teams, innovation and execution.

Gale has been a technology executive for 40 years, thirty of those in the retail sector. As the VP of technology for Loblaw East, she lead the implementation of an IT strategy that reduced IT costs, increased the speed to market of technology and support the company’s growth strategy.   The key merchandising systems were replaced to enable the transition from product focus to category management. The supply chain was reengineered to compete with the then standard created by Walmart.

Gale entered the digital world early. As the SVP for supply chain and CIO at Indigo Books, Music and more, she and her team were key in the launch of Canada’s second online retailer.

There was a ten-year hiatus from retail to work in the Canadian Federal Government where Gale brought IT fiscal maturity, strategy and performance to the Department of Canadian Heritage. Taking her private sector skills to the public sector gave her the opportunity to learn how to create results in large complex organizations, how to create change by influence. This skill was sharpened when she took the lead product role for the government’s IT shared service working at the Department of Public Works and Government Services. In this role she was charged to create and execute a data center and network strategy, product dentitions and roadmap for the infrastructure that would service all departments. The results are still under construction.

Taking her IT acumen plus the experience and knowledge of creating value in large complex organizations she returned to retail as the CIO for Walmart Canada. In this role she and her team had Canada, a small market, lead in many key global initiatives including apparel supply chain optimization, ubiquitous high performance networks to the stores, the use of big data and advanced analytics for the optimization of promotion management and a new POS system designed for omini-channel.

Gale then took the role of Global Chief Architect for Walmart Stores Inc. The design and roadmap for the transition of the world’s largest retailer from a multi-channel enterprise to one whose assets and customer experience integrated all channels was the deliverable. Ownership of this direction and definition by all stakeholders, 28 markets and all corporate functions, was critical to their success.

Back from south of the border she held the positions of CIO, Holt Renfrew and is currently the CIO at Reitmans.

Gale has an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario and a MBA from the Schulich School of Business, Toronto, Ontario. She is currently living in Toronto.

Role

Chief Information Officer

Reitmans Canada Ltée/Ltd