Why Retail Experience Beats an MBA: Lessons from Jamal Hamad

Episode notes

A VTEX Live podcast featuring Jamal Hamad, Senior Vice President at RONA, who has spent more than three decades building retail from the ground up, one relationship, one transformation at a time. Access this and more episodes of VTEX Live on Apple Podcasts or Spotify What if the real key to transformation isn’t technology, but trust? In this episode of VTEX Live, Jamal Hamad joins Santiago Naranjo in São Paulo for a candid conversation about retail innovation, emotional buy-in, and why culture, not code, is what really drives change. Drawing on 32 years at Home Depot and now leading digital transformation at RONA, Jamal shares how tech implementations succeed when people believe in them, how a flooded VTEX demo sealed a major partnership, and why 85% execution with buy-in beats a perfect plan that nobody’s excited about. You’ll also hear Jamal’s take on the future of B2B and AI, how to build platforms customers and teams actually want to use, and why young talent should learn to embrace failure and “find the vibe” that keeps them moving forward.