Effie.ai is adding more commercial experience to its leadership team as artificial intelligence moves deeper into retail operations.
The Chicago-based agentic retail execution company appointed Nataliia Freidrich as Strategy Advisor in August. Freidrich brings more than 15 years of experience across revenue growth management, sales operations and commercial transformation, with previous leadership roles at Mondelēz International, AB InBev and Merrill Lynch.
Her background comes largely from the consumer goods industry, where the gap between commercial strategy and what happens in stores can have a direct impact on sales performance.
That experience aligns with the problem Effie.ai is trying to address. Its platform uses AI agents to support retail execution, including helping sales representatives and merchandisers identify issues in stores, prioritize actions and verify results.
The company has increasingly positioned its technology around AI agents that can operate within existing field workflows rather than simply generating recommendations. In one recent deployment highlighted by Effie.ai, AI-assisted retail execution reduced merchandiser time per visit by 56% and supervisor workload by 55%.
The shift comes as retailers and consumer goods companies move from experimenting with AI toward finding applications that can produce measurable business results. Deloitte’s 2026 survey of 200 retail and CPG executives found that only 7% to 10% of companies in either sector had reached enterprise-wide AI deployment, despite widespread piloting.
For Effie.ai, Freidrich’s appointment adds experience from the commercial side of the industry the company is trying to automate.
Her role will focus on helping the company connect its agentic AI technology with the operational realities of consumer goods and retail, particularly as Effie.ai expands its presence in the US.
The appointment also reflects a broader change in enterprise AI: the value of agents is increasingly being measured not by how well they generate information, but by whether they can help companies turn that information into action.
