Sr. Director Go-To-Market Strategy & Commercial Planning

The Gap•Folsom, CA

10d

About The Position

The Go-To-Market Strategy & Commercial Planning role leads the development and orchestration of Athleta’s seasonal go-to-market strategy to deliver against financial targets, brand priorities, and customer growth goals. Reporting into the Marketing organization, this role serves as the strategic and operational hub that connects brand strategy, financial objectives, consumer insights, and commercial levers to ensure the business executes with clarity, rigor, and impact. This leader owns the development of the cross-functional Seasonal Blueprint, translating brand priorities, category strategies, and market insights into a unified go-to-market strategy that drives demand across channels and customer touchpoints. In close partnership with Merchandising, Inventory Management, Finance, Digital, and Retail teams, this role ensures alignment on the commercial plan, demand-driving moments, and the end-to-end omni channel customer journey. A critical component of the role is overseeing the health and growth of Athleta’s customer file, ensuring the business is acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers in line with enterprise growth objectives. The role partners closely with marketing, site, analytics, and loyalty teams to monitor customer performance and translate insights into strategies and tactics that drive sustainable customer growth. This leader also oversees in-season business performance management—tracking results against key GTM and commercial KPIs, identifying risks and opportunities, and mobilizing cross-functional teams to adjust strategies and execution as needed. Through strong governance, communication, and operational discipline, the Senior Director ensures the organization remains aligned and accountable to delivering impactful seasonal plans and business results.

Requirements

12–15+ years of experience in strategy, commercial planning, brand marketing, merchandising strategy, or business operations
Experience leading enterprise-level planning or go-to-market processes
Strong Background in omni-channel retail, apparel, or consumer brands
Proven ability to translate data, insights, and financial targets into direction
Demonstrated success driving cross-functional alignment and operational rigor
Exceptional executive communication, influence, and stakeholder leadership skills

Responsibilities

Ensuring alignment seasonal go-to-market strategy Lead the development of Athleta’s cross financial targets, brand priorities, and customer objectives.
Defining key Seasonal Blueprint Own the creation and cross-functional alignment of the demand drivers, product priorities, storytelling moments, and commercial opportunities.
Translate brand strategy, category plans, consumer insights, and macro trends into seasonal priorities and strategic direction.
Ensure alignment between design and merchandising strategies, marketing storytelling, and commercial priorities to deliver a cohesive market approach.
Commercial Strategy & Promotional Planning, including promotional strategy, demand-driving enterprise commercial plan Own the moments, and revenue-driving tactics.
Partner with Finance, IM, Merchandising, and Integrated Marketing to ensure commercial strategies support revenue, margin, and inventory productivity goals.
Establish promotional guardrails and decision frameworks that enable effective demand generation.
Ensure marketing and promotional activities are strategically aligned to maximize both short-term performance and long-term brand equity.
Provide strategic oversight of Athleta’s customer file performance and growth, ensuring alignment with enterprise customer acquisition, retention, and engagement goals.
Partner with Marketing, Strategy, Customer Analytics, Site and Product teams Partnering closely with Strategy and Customer D/A leads to translate customer insights and cohort performance data into actionable strategies and tactical adjustments across marketing, promotional, and channel activation.
Identify risks and opportunities within the customer file and mobilize cross-functional teams to adjust strategies to drive sustainable customer growth.
Monitor performance against key GTM, commercial, and customer KPIs, ensuring visibility into drivers of demand and business performance.
Identify emerging risks and opportunities and lead cross-functional action planning to course-correct performance.
Partner with analytics and planning teams to translate performance insights into clear business recommendations and strategic decisions.
Serve as the central orchestrator across Marketing, Merchandising, Inventory Planning, Finance, Digital, and Retail to ensure coordinated execution of seasonal priorities; including acquisition, weekly and monthly performance against customer KPIs - retention, reactivation, and lifetime value.
Provide regular readiness updates in Establish operating rhythms and communication frameworks that ensure clarity, alignment, and disciplined execution across teams
Ensure strong cross-functional communication cascades to maintain alignment across all consumer touchpoints and channels.
Enterprise ownership of the seasonal GTM planning framework
Significant cross-functional influence across Marketing, Merchandising, Planning, Finance, Digital, and Retail
Regular engagement with senior leadership and executive stakeholders
Ownership of key business planning forums and performance governance processes meetings to review performance, identify risks and opportunity gaps, Assessment (IBA) and drive cross-functional accountability.