The Groupon Champions Club is a recognition program benefitting a maximum of 50 exceptional performers company wide. The aim is to recognise our top performers, help retain top talent as well as showcase those who are living our values on a daily basis and driving our performance culture. Meet our first group of 2024 champions, learn all about them and their missions and find further details on the programme below

Kate's career began in the startup world, where she was managing various digital advertising campaigns, with Affiliate Marketing standing out as a personal favourite. When the opportunity to focus solely on Affiliate campaigns for Groupon arose, she jumped at it. Over the past 5 years, Kate has been growing within Affiliate marketing; launching new partnerships, fine-tuning campaigns to meet different goals, pushing our creative limits and transforming the program into a comprehensive full funnel marketing effort—all this within one channel. 

MISSION:

This year, Kate will be aiming to surpass 2022's affiliate spending and build a strong influencer program with CJ Affiliate partners. By leveraging influencer content, Kate will aim to drive conversions, strengthen our social media presence, and achieve a monthly gross profit of $1 million with a minimum 1:1 ROI from the influencer program by Q4 2024.

Since starting his Groupon career in 2011 as a Customer Service agent, Adam has worked across the world supporting our Customers, Merchants and internal stakeholders. More recently moving into a new role as VP - Groupon Operations, Adam continues his mission to  enhance the Groupon experience for all.

Mission:

Adam is nominated to holistically own and drive quality across all areas of Groupon, focusing on:

• Fixing GO controllable failures: agent tools, uptime, processes, internal/self-help satisfaction.

• Identifying root causes: working upstream with Sales, P&E, Finance, Legal, etc. to prevent issues.

• Building an evergreen feedback framework: providing continuous quality improvement across all teams.

• Scaling Salted/AI insights: leveraging AI to identify and resolve issues.

Action Plan:

• Q1: Fix GO issues, build feedback loops across the business.

• Q2: Expand quality focus to the entire company.

• Q3: Eliminate email as a contact channel, further improve self-help satisfaction, integrate Salted CX across all teams.

Overall, Adam's leadership will create a culture of continuous improvement and ensure a merchant-centric approach across Groupon.

Samu began his journey with Groupon in 2011 as a Customer Support Agent, addressing customer inquiries via phone and email. Over the years, he transitioned to various roles within Customer Operations, focusing on enhancing our processes, tools, and communication methodologies used by our customer service teams. During this period, he also gained insights into other departments at Groupon and had the opportunity to work closely with the Sales team on contract and refund issues. This collaboration aimed to reduce issue volumes and improve the customer experience. For the past year, he has been focusing on developing a self-service support strategy for our customers and managing both Customer Service and Merchant Operations.

Mission:

Samu is nominated to transform GO into a retention and revenue driver, while still automating tasks.  This includes:

• Launching customer-centric initiatives (e.g., voucher protection, optimized refunds).

• Partnering with other teams (Finance, Product) to improve customer experience across the board.

• Ensuring all customer-facing functions prioritize retention and revenue.

Action Plan:

• 2024: Monetize self-help and add retention/revenue features to all customer interactions.

• Q1: Build the foundation (paid services, product recommendations, segmentation).

• Q2: Refine the foundation (expand voucher protection, optimize self-help treatments).

• Q3: Expand treatments everywhere (segmentation across teams, transactional email optimization).

• Q4: Plan for cost-neutral GO by 2026.

Samu's leadership will create a customer-centric culture and drive sustainable growth for Groupon.

Ernesto joined Groupon as Finance Manager for Spain and Portugal in 2013, covering FP&A and Commercial Finance. He then lead a Finance Ops team (which was a combination of Commercial Finance and Sales Ops) out of London. In 2017 he moved to Chicago to do the same for NAM and supported SG&A for Sales along with other Operations functions. In January 2020 he left Groupon and moved back to Spain to lead an e-pharmacy business until he integrated it into a multinational group and returned to Groupon in April 2023 as Regional Sales Director for Spain, UK, Ireland and later also UAE and Australia. He now serves as Regional Director, Pacific & Southeast USA along with leading his home country Spain.

Mission:

Ernesto is nominated to lead the US team in achieving (revenue) growth, leveraging learnings from successful implementations in the United Kingdom (UK) and UAE (United Arab Emirates). Through building a strong regional sales team, he shall:

• Implement regionalisation strategy.

• Standardise and launch a repeatable sales process.

• Build a high-performing team through strategic hiring (BDs), efficient onboarding, and performance management.

• Review all accounts of the regions, and work with market managers to remove low quality merchants and improve deal quality all around.

• Leverage local data (e.g. Enterprise) and focus on top supply and top merchants in the regions (past, existing, new) in order to increase retention rate.

• Focus on high-impact areas: top cities, top accounts, and account review.

Jordan embarked on his Groupon journey in 2010 as a Sales Executive for the Côte d'Azur region. He then served as Sales Manager, Regional Director, and ultimately Commercial Director for New Partnerships. In 2018, Jordan assumed the role of General Manager of Groupon France, overseeing operations in the country. He soon expanded his responsibilities to include oversight of operations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany. Recently, Jordan's role expanded further to Head of East and North East in the United States.

Mission:

Jordan is nominated to lead the US team in achieving this growth by replicating the successes seen in France (FR), Poland (PL) and BENL (Belgium and Netherlands).

• Implement regionalization strategy for the US regions under his supervision, similar to FR, PL & BENL.

• Standardize and launch a proven, repeatable sales process in the US, leveraging best practices from FR, PL & BENL.

• Build a high-performing team through strategic hiring of Business Development reps (BDs), efficient onboarding processes, and ongoing performance management.

• Review all accounts of the regions, and work with market managers to remove low quality merchants and improve deal quality all around.

• Utilize core local data (e.g., Enterprise) throughout the year and focus on top supply and top merchants in the regions (past, existing, new).

• Prioritize top cities, top accounts, and a comprehensive regional account review.

• Continuously analyze and adapt strategies based on past successes in France and Poland.

In 2011, Gonzalo joined Groupon to establish the Business Intelligence and City Planning teams for Latin America. In 2017, he relocated to Chicago to assume the position of Manager of Reporting and Analytics for GO. After a brief hiatus from the company, he returned to lead the Sales Operations team for INTL, subsequently taking on a global leadership role. 

Mission:

Gonzalo is nominated to lead the US market management team in achieving similar YoY growth (around 15%) as seen in other regions. He will accomplish this by:

1. Building a Data-Driven Market Management System:

• Identify gaps between available inventory and market demand.

• Inform sales reps, B2B marketing, and lead generation efforts with robust data.

• Create regional inventory management tools to optimize resource allocation.

• Implement a market scorecard (think Frieza for Market Managers!) to monitor regional performance.

• Track deals and opportunities within each region.

2. Comprehensive Inventory & Market Analysis:

• Build a database of all US inventory by zip code, targeting groups (TGs), and potential.

3. Existing Business Optimization:

• Improve revenue tracking and insights within the existing Merchant Dashboard (MD) tool.

• Implement real-time alerts for significant revenue fluctuations.

4. Create a data-driven forecasting model to support Brano.

5. Utilize all the above initiatives to implement a successful regionalization strategy for the US market.

Nikash joined Groupon in 2014 as a software engineer on the Getaways engineering team in Groupon India. Shortly thereafter, he relocated to the Seattle office to contribute to the development of the suite of V1 travel products and systems, which played a pivotal role in driving Getaways to a peak of $700 million in Gross Billings (GB) revenue. In 2019, he joined the Goods engineering team, initially as a Staff Engineer and later as Director of Engineering. In these roles, he led the transition of the Goods business from 1P to 3P, streamlined the Goods service footprint, and migrated all Goods and Getaways services to the AWS cloud. Currently,  Nikash serves as Vice President of Engineering, responsible for critical areas such as Merchant, Marketing, Groupon Connect, and the core application platform.

Mission:

Nikash is on a mission to empower business partners through efficient engineering practices, ensuring exceptional product quality and innovation. This means focusing on several key areas:

• This includes streamlining knowledge transfer, improving lead times for new features, and optimizing overall engineering processes.

• Nikash's team will ensure products consistently meet or exceed customer expectations.

• They'll be actively creating and implementing new ideas, processes, and technologies to keep the company ahead of the curve.

• Nikash is committed to fostering seamless collaboration across all teams and organizations. He'll be working to create an organizational hierarchy that prioritizes delivering value to the customer.

Tomas joined Groupon in December 2022 as the Director of Transformation. Over the past 18 months, he has evolved from a highly effective senior individual contributor, spearheading the Booster implementation and BI transformation, to becoming the Head of the Transformation team. In his current role, he leads a team of six Technical Program Managers (TPMs), guiding significant projects that span cost savings, process improvements, and product development. Under his leadership, the team has successfully structured and managed program initiatives across multiple departments to achieve collective objectives. 

In 2024, Tomas's team has been particularly instrumental in several key projects, including the implementation of Signifyd, the migration to AWS, the launch of Mbnxt in North America, and the migration to Teradata. These projects underline the team's critical role in driving forward Groupon's transformation agenda, showcasing their capability to handle complex, high-impact initiatives.

Mission:

Tomas is leading a critical initiative to establish a governance framework for top Product, Analytics, Commercial and Engineering (PACE) projects. This framework will ensure each project is clearly linked to improving the experience for consumers, merchants, and employees, with well-defined ROI criteria.

The top 10 P&E projects will have a comprehensive business case with projected financials, milestones, and KPIs. Project financials will be monitored throughout the lifecycle and accessible to the senior team. Governance will be in place to identify and address underperforming projects before significant losses occur. Each project will have a dedicated or coached Project Manager to ensure best practices are followed.

As part of this initiative, Tomas will oversee the top 3 P&E projects each quarter, ensuring they are delivered on time, within budget, and achieve the desired value.

Robert joined Groupon's Finance team during the summer of 2022 and found himself with one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences in his career: "Our Finance team has accomplished so much in the past 2 years: from the renegotiation of our Revolving Credit Facility, to the execution of our $80M Rights Offering, and the successful resolution of our Going Concern issue. I'm so proud of the work we've done at Groupon. I truly believe that we've successfully pulled Groupon from the brink and have now provided the company with the financial stability and runway to fix our core business. I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish in the next 2 years!"

Mission:

Robert has been entrusted with an exciting mission to transform the FP&A team into a dynamic business partner, fostering collaboration across all departments to propel company performance, and bridging the front and back-office operations to achieve unified company targets.

Over the next 3 years, he will be working closely with the CFO, and demonstrating the value FP&A can bring across the company. This includes leading cross-functional projects, implementing efficiency or revenue-generating ideas, and gaining the experience necessary to potentially step into the CFO role in the future.

One of Groupon's internal governing principles has always been: "Make Life Less Boring."  As a member of the Groupon law department, that has never been a challenge. for Kevin. His Groupon journey started in 2016 when he joined after practicing as a litigator in Chicago for nine years. He started as an in-house lawyer responsible specifically for Groupon's active commercial lawsuits in the U.S. Along with so many others at Groupon who have been given opportunities to cross-train and hone new skills, his role has expanded over the years to cover new management responsibilities and areas of law. Today, he oversees Groupon global litigation, as well as regulatory and intellectual property matters. 

Mission:

Empower the Legal team to evolve into a dynamic and business-oriented unit, adapt at navigating risks while maximizing opportunities, thus enabling leadership with a strategic and balanced risk-to-gain perspective. Over the next 12 months, he will be stabilizing  his team and setting up processes right in his part of the team. He should also lead at least 1 cross-departmental/company project with a focus on the top-line, e.g. Merchant monetization. 

Carl has been at Groupon for 7.5 years starting as the Revenue Management manager for Getaways.  About a year later, his team's scope expanded to include Local RM.  About a year later, he came up with the concept of Predicted GP to help relevance optimize for GP and was then fully immersed in the exciting world of relevance, a function that has stayed with him ever since.  In 2020, the NA pricing and promotion function was added to his responsibilities, a role that he was extremely comfortable doing as I'd previously spent 20 year doing at FedEx and Microsoft.  Subsequently, the INTL pricing and promotions were merged under his team.

MissioN:

Carl's team has a critical mission this year! They're expanding to transform pricing & promotions and search & relevance. Their goals are to improve the customer experience by making promotions clear throughout the purchase journey, maximize the return on promotions while focusing on customer value, and create programs to encourage repeat purchases. They'll also be finalizing the integration of Booster to personalize the customer experience further. This includes lifecycle-based recommendations, diverse deals, incorporating seasonality, and improved search & cart upselling.