As vice president of IT marketing and merchandising, Bhargavi Whatley leads the marketing and merchandising technology strategy and application development for Albertsons Companies. She is responsible for the systems and applications for pricing, promotions, allowances, product data and space planning. Bhargavi is driving the transformational initiative on predictive promotional forecasting and insight-driven planning using data science to efficiently harness promotional ROI.

Prior to her current role, Bhargavi led the complex data integration for the Safeway-Albertsons merger. The Safeway-Albertsons merger was the largest technology integration for a North American grocery chain. The integration brought the operations of the two companies on to the same technology and system. Bhargavi is experienced in leading large cross-functional teams, developing innovative technology solutions to accelerate performance and quality, and establishing robust processes and metrics.

Bhargavi joined Safeway 2011 fall as a manager and has since then grown in her career to take on additional responsibilities. Prior to Safeway, Bhargavi was at Microsoft.

Bhargavi holds an undergrad in electronics and electrical engineering and a master’s in computer science. Bhargavi lives in sunny Bay Area, California.