Former president of RW&CO Lora Tisi will be addressing students from her alma mater on March 24 as part of a new virtual speaker series.
The speaker series, organized by NC’s schools of Business and Management, and Hospitality, Tourism and Sport, focuses on the topic of entrepreneurship. Tisi was among the first speakers announced in early 2021 to launch the series.
Justin Williams, dean, Business, Hospitality, Tourism and Sport, noted that the featured speakers will come from a cross-section of backgrounds, but all will present on the theme of entrepreneurship – often, highlighting cross-cutting themes such as diversity, inclusion, indigenization or sustainability.
“The speaker series is an initiative that is intended to enrich the learning of our students and highlight the integration between the world of work and their learning journey here at NC,” said Williams. “We wanted to integrate the great things that our faculty are already doing with guest speakers and share them with the NC community. We are also lucky to have support from our friends at RBC to help support our entrepreneurship ecosystem.”
Tisi has over 30 years experience as an international retailer, leading several team’s business growth and brand initiatives including revenue and profit growth, merchant and brand leadership – most recently, as former president of the RW&CO brand for Reitmans Canada Limited (delivering 18 consecutive quarters of sales and margin growth. Menswear results were particularly strong, with product and brand collaboration with NHL superstars, such as PK Subban, Erik Karlsson, Morgan Reilly and Mark Schieffele, resulting in significant sales and market share increases across both genders.
In 2000, Tisi became president of American Eagle Outfitters and launched the brand across Canada. The team was successful with the brand launch, opening 46 stores, coast to coast in 108 days, exceeding first-year profit targets, and becoming a brand of choice for Canadian teens.
Prior to American Eagle, Tisi spent 17 years building the four banner, two-country, 900-store chain, The Northern Group. By leveraging the marquis brand, Northern Reflections, total sales grew to $1 billion (Canadian). Unquestionably, the U.S. stores result is a proud achievement, as this success eclipsed any other Canadian apparel entry into the U.S. for sales, growth and profit.
Tisi graduated from Niagara College’s Fashion Merchandising program in 1979. She was featured in Encore magazine’s 2019 issue [View article on page 25 of digital magazine here.]
Each speaker event is open for NC students and staff to attend and registration is conducted via Eventbrite (must have NC email to register).
