DSN Women Leaders 2014: Jocelyn Wong, Family Dollar

For Jocelyn Wong, SVP, chief marketing officer of Family Dollar, challenging the status quo is what she strives toward each day.

“For me, what I strive to do is be more of a change agent; … to challenge the status quo. That is very important to me. To really take the team and the partnerships to a place you never even thought was possible. That’s a big deal for me,” Wong told DSN.

With an engineering background, Wong started her career in manufacturing and worked for Procter & Gamble before her first retail stint at Safeway. It was through LinkedIn that she was tapped for Family Dollar. Wong credits her experience at P&G with helping her understand the true value of ROI-driven marketing.

Today, Wong is leveraging all facets of her professional background to help develop a new customer segmentation model that is about to be deployed at Family Dollar.

“We’ve been working for probably the last nine months on really taking our understanding of the consumer to the next level. So, we are in the process of deploying a really ground-breaking consumer segmentation model that I think will help suppliers, as well as merchants within our organization, better meet [our customer’s] needs,” Wong said.

Wong’s unwavering passion and excitement for creating a customer-centric organization is irrefutable, but she admits that her journey to get where she is today hasn’t always been easy. Taking the advice of several “great mentors” along the way, Wong has learned the value of bringing confidence to the table, leaning in and acting like you belong there.

“For me, I’ve had to really work on that over the years to make sure that people hear my voice, to have a point of view and to not be afraid of that,” Wong said. “... It is important, especially when you are in a male-dominated field.”

To view the full DSN Women Leaders 2014 report, click here.