Umesh Sripad
Full Name
Umesh Sripad
Job Title
Chief Digital Officer
Company
IKEA
Speaker Bio
Umesh Sripad is a Digital native leader with several years of experience in Product Management, Technology, & Consumer Marketing. As Digital Leader for IKEA Retail U.S., he is responsible and accountable for leading the brand’s digital transformation creating a seamless omni-channel customer experience that delivers home furnishing inspiration through bricks & clicks. His past experiences include leading global Product, Marketing, Data, User Experience and Engineering teams at organizations like CNN, Weather Channel and Overstock.com.

Before IKEA, Umesh was at Overstock.com (one of the largest e-retailers in USA), he headed up Omni-channel Consumer Product teams. His responsibilities span across digital products, personalization, search, payments, loyalty, etc. He led a team of 120+ professionals across Product, Engineering, UX and Analysts/data scientists to solve two huge problem: 1) Create the best shopping experience to reduce customer acquisition cost, and 2) Build and grow customer LTV.

Prior to Overstock, Umesh he headed up Publishing and Advertising for CNN. He led CNN to 100M+ monthly digital visitors, #1 in Live news coverage and real-time personalized advertising.

Before CNN, he led Globalization and International growth efforts at The Weather Channel. He led weather.com to expand into 175+ countries, he led channel partnerships with Apple, Google, Samsung, etc. He was instrumental in the IBM’s acquisition of Weather.com.

Umesh is from New Zealand, he kicked off his career with APN News and Media (leading Media company in NZ) as a Product Manager and worked his way up to be Head of Product Management for their flagship product nzherald.co.nz.

Umesh’s passion is solution finding and inspiring others to work through solutions to provide superior customer experiences. He speaks and instructs frequently at Product School - sharing his experiences to a new generation of budding Product management professionals.

Outside of his professional life, he loves hanging out with his wife Prasanna and daughter Svana (9 yrs old). Umesh enjoys traveling, he has backpacked across 18 countries so far. When not traveling, he loves British stand-up comedy and plays tennis.