Wes Arens

Wes Arens advises CEOs facing digital disruption. He provides advisory services to senior business leaders and their investors on how to improve innovation and business performance. Arens is an expert on digital transformation and the business models that are transforming how work gets done in the 21st century.

Arens helps CEOs clarify their customer vision, market point of view, and ask the hard questions necessary to transform the business. Using leadership principles learned from Amazon, he collaborates with senior leadership to leverage their collective intelligence to create their own culture of innovation. This proven approach has helped dozens of companies unlock new innovations, objectively assess their own internal capabilities and operational gaps, and transform business models. The outcome is an actionable roadmap on where to place critical digital bets that aligns to broader business strategy and overall investment priorities.

Currently, Arens serves private clients through Wes Arens and Advisors, LLC on digital strategy and transformation. He is also the co-founder and managing partner at Digital Brand Insights, a company that provides performance improvement advisory services to merchants on platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair. Additionally, he serves as a Senior Advisor at Alvarez & Marsal and Rossman Partners, guiding companies like Georgia Pacific, Iron Mountain, Boeing, Regence Blue Cross, and Microsoft. As a keynote speaker, Arens shares insights on topics including business performance, strategy, customer service, disruption, innovation, retail, and technology, with presentations such as "The Art of Failing Forward" and "Think Like Amazon about — The Future of Your Industry".

Previously, Arens was Vice President of Merchant Services and Sales with Amazon.com, where he oversaw the commercialization of Amazon's e-commerce platform and business process outsourcing. He was responsible for driving enterprise direct sales, channels, alliances, and partnerships. His team worked closely with leading enterprises to provide e-commerce digital capabilities that leveraged Amazon's world-class digital technologies for customer service, payments, order fulfillment, and online merchandising. Before Amazon, he was a senior executive at Syncra Systems, a leading SaaS supply chain management company providing internet-based collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment solutions to the largest retailers and their suppliers. Arens started his career at IBM and served in various sales management roles during IBM's historic transformation from a hardware company to a services company.

Arens grew up in Boston and graduated from Boston College. He currently lives in the Seattle area.