Management Team
chief executive officer
Michael Osborne
Michael Osborne is the chief executive officer for Appriss Retail. He has more than 20 years of experience bringing disruptive and innovative solutions to market in B2B eCommerce, marketing technology, and enterprise software segments. His experience spans the range of co-founding and leading seed-stage companies to growing scaled businesses to nearly one thousand employees. He’s a people-first leader who works with investors and directors, employees and partners, to achieve growth and results quickly and efficiently.
Prior to joining Appriss Retail, Osborne served as the president of Wunderkind where he oversaw all commercial functions ranging from sales and marketing to strategic alliances and international partnerships. He has served as CEO, President, CRO, SVP of Sales, member of the Board of Directors, and Advisor for more than a dozen companies, including SmarterHQ, which was purchased by Wunderkind.
Michael holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
chief technology officer
Vishal Patel, PhD
Dr. Vishal Patel is the chief technology officer for Appriss Retail. In this role he is responsible for all engineering functions, building and supporting the product suite, and helping bring new products to market that better serve Appriss Retail’s customers. He has more than a decade of software and programming experience working with a variety of different technology stacks, database solutions, and cloud providers. Previously, as the director of data science R&D for Appriss, he was responsible for building and deploying data application and machine learning models for retail customers as well as customers of Appriss Health and Appriss Insights.
Vishal has a PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Irvine where he focused on machine learning and data integration challenges and published more than a dozen peer reviewed research papers. He has also taught professional classes in data science.
chief product officer
Amy Wilson
Amy Wilson is the chief product officer for Appriss Retail. She has extensive background in data and analytics and is a forward-thinker with a flair for innovation. Amy has the scale and executive experience of a true product strategist and leader and has helped pivot a product strategy from a customer-reactive approach to SaaS-driven revenue model. She also brings solid B2B experience in personalization services for online retailers, digital advertising services, audience engagement products, ecommerce martech, and predictive analytics.
Prior to joining Appriss, Amy served as SVP Product Management for Planalytics where she built the product function from scratch and helped the company determine its user story and scalable product market fit. She received her Bachelor of Science degree, Magna Cum Laude, from Rutgers University.
vice president, finance
Heather Magaro
Heather Magaro is the vice president of finance for Appriss Retail. Heather is a strategic finance professional with more than 20 years of experience in leading, managing, and guiding businesses to meet their strategic objectives. Heather has had the opportunity to work for small businesses and global multinationals alike, managing all finance and accounting capabilities including FP&A, AP, AR and Financial Strategy. She has also led multiple successful M&A processes on both the buy and sell side for strategic acquirers and financial sponsors.
Heather holds a degree in Finance from the University of Southern California.
vice president, marketing
Michele Marvin
Michele Marvin is responsible for global marketing for Appriss Retail, overseeing the teams working to drive growth through marketing strategy, branding, demand generation, product marketing, digital marketing, content marketing, and events. With her background in brand, product, and event marketing, as well as more than 10 years leading demand generation teams, Michele’s superpower is ensuring marketing strategy and tactics are aligned with the business strategy to efficiently drive growth.
Michele earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Florida Southern College and holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
VICE PRESIDENT, operational metrics & business intelligence
Dr. Adi Raz
Dr. Adi Raz serves as the vice president of operational metrics & business intelligence for Appriss Retail. She has more than 25 years of experience managing data scientists and modeling teams, developing and integrating analytical products, and building efficiencies in data operations, analytics, and modeling. Adi is responsible for end-to-end management of all operational aspects of the data and analytical products for Appriss Retail across hundreds of global retailers.
Before joining the company in 2004, Adi was the senior director of data sciences at Washington Mutual and a pricing analyst for Circuit City. Adi earned her Doctorate in Business and an MBA from Pepperdine University.
vice president, human resources
Melissa Trelfa
Melissa Trelfa leads the talent and development strategy for Appriss Retail. Melissa brings more than 20 years of experience in human resources leadership, organization design and development, and operations management. She has been able to blend her organization development and operations background with strategic culture and talent initiatives to drive businesses forward to become high performance teams.
Prior to joining Appriss Retail, Melissa served as a Human Resources Executive in several industries ranging from manufacturing to health insurance to large hospital systems. Her passion is recognizing the potential in people and organizations and serving as a catalyst to move them forward with steady, purposeful, and consistent action. Melissa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan and a Master of Arts in Human and Organization Development from Oakland University.
Vice president, sales
Leah Sells
Leah Sells oversees the sales team at Appriss Retail. She brings more than 20 years of sales and business development experience, primarily in the supply chain software industry. Leah has achieved great success selling complex, multi-dimensional enterprise SaaS solutions while attaining multi-million-dollar sales quotas with net-new and existing customers. She has also created high-performing business development teams that built and delivered qualified sales pipelines.
Prior to joining Appriss Retail, Leah drove growth in tier 1 and SMB markets, and implemented sales strategies that accelerated the sales process. She earned her MBA from SMU Cox School of Business.
leader, customer success managers
Holly Villanueva
Holly Villanueva leads the Appriss Retail Customer Success team and is responsible for the end-to-end customer experience and engagement. With 15 years of retail IT, internal auditing, and store operations, Holly has a strategic focus on customer engagement, strategy, and health.
Before joining Appriss Retail, Holly was a senior operations director at JCPenney, partnering with the Asset Protection team to create operations and processes to protect profits and reduce fraud. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration – Management information Systems degree from Texas A&M University.
Technical Leaders & Advisors
Nathan Smith
Nathan Smith is responsible for innovating and developing new products for Appriss Retail’s customers. He launched his career on the retail side of the business, starting at Safeway in the UK, and worked for several high-profile retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco. His broad range of retail experience and knowledge enables Nathan to have great insight into the challenges facing retailers today.
Bob Walters
Bob Walters has been in technology sales for more than 36 years. For the last 23 years, he has served as an executive VP of Sales for Datavantage (now part of Oracle) and managed the global sales team as Executive VP of Sales for Appriss Retail until his retirement in 2022. Bob currently serves as a consultant to Appriss Retail focusing on the evolving sales and messaging of Appriss Retail’s solutions.
David Speights
Dr. David Speights has more than 25 years of experience developing and deploying analytical solutions for some of the world’s largest companies. He is responsible for analytical modeling and managing POS data from retailers around the globe for Appriss Retail as well as overseeing the development of analytical models for other Appriss business units.
Cheryl Blake
Cheryl Blake joined Appriss Retail via acquisition in 2019 and oversees all loss prevention products. She has balanced her 40+ year career between being a retail loss prevention practitioner and working with software solution providers, beginning her LP journey as a store detective in Detroit and progressing through leadership positions with several large retailers. Cheryl continues to be an active member of the loss prevention community and has been a frequent speaker at industry events.
Jim DeJohn
Jim DeJohn leads the User Consultant team at Appriss Retail, where he and his team partner with customers to train and consult to help them fully utilize all aspects of Appriss Retail’s solutions throughout Australia, Europe, Canada, and the US. Prior to joining the company 11 years ago, Jim worked as a corporate analyst for the supermarket banner Hannaford of Delhaize.