Dan O’Connor is a recognized thought leader, advisor, and educator working with the world’s most innovative brands, retailers, and digital platform companies. His future views are widely referenced by senior executives, policymakers and academics. He is a published speaker and teaches extensively. His acclaimed “Selling To” series remains in wide circulation as does his “Retail Leadership” executive education program for rising retail executives.

Dan is an entrepreneur who has founded and scaled multiple businesses. Most recently, he has established;

• The “Future Commerce Initiative” (FCI), where he coaches large-scale retailers/consumer products companies to develop significant new commerce capabilities.
• RetailNet Group (RNG), an advisory and insights firm that works with leading retailers and consumer brands worldwide. During his time at RNG, Dan was the founding “Dean” of the Retail Leadership Program, an executive education program taught at UCLA and MIT with over 1500 alumni from 50+ countries. (RNG was sold to Ascential Insight, PLC in 2015)

Dan has extensive private investment experience, ranging from early-stage funding to large-scale, leveraged buyouts. Rockhurst Ventures, his investment vehicle, has a highly specialized investment team. It applies its experience, networks, and capital to targeted private equity and individual entities whose business models are ripe for change.  It focuses on ideas where significant consumer, societal, technology and industry change is underway. Its investments include innovative consumer brands, B2B and consumer services, store-based and automated retail models, digital commerce, analytic-based entities and AI services, as well as aging-based services such as the assisted living industry.

Dan’s board/governance experience has extended over 20 years with companies such as Daymon Worldwide (now Bain Capital investment), publicly-traded firms such as Coinstar (Redbox), DemandWare (NYSE and now Salesforce), as well Premier Retail Networks, a division of Thomson (NYSE).  DemandWare is a fast-growing, cloud-based software platform provider that powers digital commerce for some of the world’s most successful retail brands.

Earlier in his career, Dan founded MVI/Kantar Retail, a syndicated research firm that followed the world’s largest retailers. He sold this company to WPP Group in 2001.  Dan started his career with Ernst & Ernst and later became a national director of Touche, Ross & Co.’s (now Deloitte) Consumer Products & Retail Consulting Group.

He is the very proud father of three wonderful children, lives in Concord, MA USA and recently completed all of the peaks to become an Adirondack 46r!