Executive Vice President, Chief Supply Chain & Transformation Officer, Gap
Search every verified Sally Gilligan interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a September 2021 conversation, Sally Gilligan, then Gap Inc.'s Chief Information Officer and head of Strategy, Sustainability, and Government Affairs, discussed the company's digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. She stated that Gap Inc. moved 140,000 employees remote overnight, which she said was feasible due to prior modernization and adoption of productivity tools. Gilligan noted that the company built curbside pickup in four weeks, a project she said would normally have been on a two-year roadmap. She also said that Gap Inc. ran all its stores and frontend e-commerce site in the Cloud for the first time during the pandemic, describing the scaling and momentum as "really fun to watch." Gilligan spoke about the acceleration of innovation, saying she did not see the pace of change slowing down. She described data and personalized shopping experiences as areas where the company was "scratching the surface," and mentioned that privacy would continue to be a requirement for CIOs. On leadership, she distinguished between mentorship and sponsorship, advising that individuals should assume they can succeed and "make sure you fill" their seat at the table. She predicted that consumers would re-engage with fundamental changes in how they live, rather than returning to pre-pandemic behaviors.
“Gap Inc. has 140,000 employees remote overnight, that was only feasible based on the modernization our teams had gone through and the productivity tools that we had chosen to adopt and making sure that groups could do their jobs and what that looked like.”
“The speed and the agility to your point of sort of what you're truly capable of and you're an incredibly modest person, and in many ways you laid those tracks and you create the digitally from a technical perspective early, because you had that vision, but you also have empowered your teams that it's okay not to be per...”
“We built curbside pickup in four weeks, normally that would have been two years on our roadmap. That is what I get excited about and all that the potential of the teams.”
“I think the pace of change you've often heard quoted, many people have said the innovation was accelerated three years and I don't see that pace slowing down either. Once folks have a taste of that, how do you keep up with it?”
“We're scratching the surface on what data can do and what that means from a personalized shopping experience and how that enables the customer to truly shop where she wants to, when she wants to. Watching the breakthroughs in ML and AI and how data moves comes through really starts to make that real.”
“There's a large conversation on privacy and how you think about that in respecting your customer. And I think that's going to continue to really be a requirement of all CIOs and how you think about the technology solutions around that as well.”
“I always talked around there's mentorship and their sponsorship and they are two very important things. Mentorship is personal, each person's journey is different. Sponsorship is really how do you navigate your organization and how do you understand your organization.”
“You can do it and you should just assume that you can, and that the opportunity is there. But you do have a seat at the table and make sure you fill it and make sure that you continue to mentor others.”
“We took all our stores and all of our frontend e-commerce site in the Cloud for the first time in a year where we normally would have been very nervous about watching that pivot. It was really fun to watch that scaling and momentum.”
“I think the consumer is going to be excited to re-engage as we all start to... I think we would never will go back to what we did. I think it'll be fundamental changes in how we live our lives and that's a really fun part to be, something to get to participate in.”
Join us for episode 15 of Taking Stock Live – a conversation with Shelley Bransten as we welcome GAP Chief Information Officer ...
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