Shaf Lalani, previously VP, Strategic Demand Leadership, U.S. Sales is the newly appointed General Manager for Mars Ice Cream. In his position, Shaf engages with more than 250 Associates based remotely and in Burr Ridge, Illinois aggressively growing our Ice Cream business as a part of our Reinvention. We’ve set a bold ambition to build a $1.1 billion Global Ice Cream business by 2024 – effectively tripling our size, and the U,S, market is critical to our success. Shaf serves as a valued member of our North America Leadership Team (NALT) and North American Leadership Team Plus (NALT+).
Shaf joined Mars in 2004 as Shift Manager in Newmarket, Canada. He was then promoted to Customer Supply Chain Manager for Chocolate Canada. In 2007, Shaf was appointed Retail Sales Director, leading a team of 250 representatives across Chocolate, Pet and Food segments. Prior to his current role, Shaf was Strategic Category Development & Business Productivity Director, during which Canada secured Category Advisership status at both Loblaws and Walmart.
Before moving to the U.S. team, Shaf was the Vice President of Sales for Mars Chocolate in Canada and was instrumental in driving Canada’s success, delivering both top-line and financial targets over the last few years. With an outstanding customer focus that inspires others, Shaf led a step change in customer engagement; Canada sky-rocketed from bottom tier to first in the Trade Attitude Survey.
Shaf came to the U.S. with his wife, Gina, and three children (Adam, Ryan & Yasmine) in 2014 as the Senior Director, Customer Marketing, for Mars Chocolate North America. He led the team in leveraging shopper insights to optimize our brand building in-store and drive category growth for our customers. He then became Vice President of Customer Experience where he brought together several critical customer touchpoints to create our go-to-market sales strategies. Components include Category Management, Sales Strategy, Customer Collaboration, Sales Effectiveness & Operations, and Trade Associations.
In 2019, he was promoted into the role of Vice President, Strategic Demand Leadership where he led the development of SRM transformational journey, our sales annual & customer collaborative planning processes. With the help of a small, dedicated team he led our Donate & Destroy program resulting in an annual savings of $70M.
