At the Women in Retail Leadership Summit, Rokt's Al Repetto joined Best Buy's Romney Allen on stage to talk about the decisions that looked risky until they paid off. Jennifer DiPasquale, President and Co-founder of Women in Retail, led the conversation. What followed was less "lessons learned" and more a case-by-case account of what it costs to bet big at work and what you get when it lands.
The bets
Romney Allen, Director of Advertising Products at Best Buy, told the story of Best Buy's marketplace launch. The advertising team needed self-service campaign management available on day one of marketplace going live, not after. That meant building a campaign user interface from scratch on a proprietary platform that had been running for a decade, all on a timeline set by marketplace launch, not advertising readiness.
The scope was wide. Settings and configurations, internal and external integrations, and automated credit card payment processing, a first for a retail media network. At a certain point, the team hit a fork: delay advertising for marketplace sellers, or launch with current capabilities and keep building in parallel. They launched. Best Buy's assortment grew 10x through marketplace. Thousands of sellers have been onboarded. Hundreds activate ad campaigns on any given day.
Al Repetto, Senior Director of Strategic Key Accounts at Rokt, took a different kind of risk. When Rokt's CEO looked for a tiger team to build a new product on the payments page, there was no team, no playbook, and no product name. Al raised her hand. At the time, she had five years at Rokt supporting strategic retailers with deep client relationships and a track record as an executor. She wanted to become a builder.
The product vision: help retailers turn the payments page from a cost center into a value driver, through first-party or third-party partnerships. Getting there meant aggressive deadlines, inevitable misses, and work without a template.
Keeping teams moving when timelines slip
Both panelists had led teams through periods where the plan stopped matching reality.
Romney's framing: once the team accepts that something is happening, the energy shifts from doubt to problem-solving. "It's all about communication, commitment, and really staying focused," she said.
Al's came back to purpose. Missing a deadline, in her view, matters less than losing sight of why you're there. She talked about being "relentlessly clear on the why" and bringing that clarity to the team, so everyone understood the stakes of the work and kept showing up.
What each would take from the other
Romney pointed to Rokt's execution style. "They are very aggressive with their technology. They are very buttoned up. They are very polished." She wished she could have brought that level of precision to Best Buy's self-service launch.
Al pointed to how Romney managed people. Every time the marketplace build hit a blocker, she knew exactly who needed to be in the room to clear it. Not just in crisis moments, every time. That clarity of stakeholder judgment, she said, is what let the team move fast without losing ground.
Rokt and Best Buy currently partner on marketplace advertising integrations and post-transaction monetization.
What the audience took away
Jennifer closed by asking what the room should walk out with.
Romney's answer was accountability, extending beyond individual ownership to the team doing the actual work. She drew on remarks from Best Buy CEO Corie Barry earlier in the day: stepping into a big role does not mean doing everything yourself. The people around you are how the work gets done.
Al's was direct: "Be bold. Innovation comes from seeing something, saying something, and going with it." She talked about discomfort as a signal worth following. The moment you feel out of your depth is usually when the more interesting work starts.
About the panelists
Romney Allen is Director of Advertising Products at Best Buy, where she leads strategy and product for Best Buy Ads, including onsite ad experience and self-service advertising capabilities.
Al Repetto is Senior Director of Strategic Key Accounts at Rokt, where she leads growth and strategy for top retail and e-commerce clients.
Jennifer DiPasquale is President and Co-founder of Women in Retail.
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