Jill Rourke, who joined Mars United as Client Leadership Director this summer, was named a winner this month in the Innovator category of the Path to Purchase Institute’s 10th annual Women of Excellence competition. The following is a profile of the qualities and characteristics that earned her the award.
Jill Rourke is not just an innovator, she’s a change agent who has continually brought structure to ambiguity, clarity to complexity, and progress to inertia across the evolving world of digital commerce.
Over the past 18 years, Jill has consistently led from the front, as a visionary strategist, a hands-on operator, and an empathetic leader who builds trust in the face of disruption. At Amazon, Jill was one of the early architects of CPG success in retail media, helping major clients across multiple categories build their first ecommerce strategies well before “retail media” became an industry buzzword. She demystified a new platform for hesitant brands, transforming new opportunities into repeatable best practices across content, assortment, and shopper marketing.
Her pioneering work continued at Kellogg Company, where she built and scaled an ecommerce marketing strategy across the North American breakfast and snack portfolio. She led Kellogg’s first cross-functional finance P&L for ecommerce, tackled forecasting challenges head-on, and championed media innovation. Jill didn’t just challenge the way Kellogg’s marketed online, she reshaped how the company measured success, dramatically improving the process by introducing new metrics tied to omnichannel impact, loyalty, and incrementality.
At Wellness Pet Company, Jill took the lead again, this time bringing omnichannel excellence to a fast-growing, highly competitive category. Amid pandemic-fueled transformation, she expanded Wellness Pet’s presence across leading category platforms and led the development of a digital strategy rooted in data and enabled by a modern tech stack.
What truly sets Jill apart is her ability to lead transformation. She builds the trust required to teach team members new ways of working, especially when they feel threatened by change. She doesn’t shy away from organizational discomfort but innovates through it, anticipating both real and perceived barriers and finding creative ways to disarm them. Her impact isn’t just in what she builds, but in who she empowers along the way.
From Amazon to Kellogg’s to Wellness Pet, Jill has consistently pioneered new processes, platforms, and mindsets that unlock long-term growth. Her track record speaks volumes, but it’s her vision, empathy, and relentless curiosity that truly define her as a Woman of Excellence. Jill Rourke is the innovator every organization needs when standing still is no longer an option.
