Julia Lazzara, President of Leading NOW, joined the company after a distinguished 23-year career leading B2B sales teams across diverse channels in the consumer products industry. A proven results-oriented leader, Julia is passionate about forging mutually beneficial and lasting partnerships with her clients. With expertise in strategy and business development, Julia, as President, oversees Leading NOW’s client relationships and operations globally.
Julia held sales leadership roles at General Mills, ConAgra Foods, and Lamb Weston. She built high-performance sales teams and established a winning track record with her expansive customer base. Across Retail Grocery, Bakeries and Foodservice, Convenience Channels, Wholesale Distribution, and E-commerce, Julia’s strategic customer portfolio included the Albertsons Companies, Ahold, Kroger, Whole Foods, Target, AWG, HEB, and Amazon. In these roles, she consistently delivered creative solutions to her customers, posted strong top and bottom-line growth, and expanded distribution for major consumer brands and retailer branded programs.
Most recently, Julia led the rapidly growing Wine segment for Berlin Packaging, the leading full-service supplier of rigid packaging to the consumer products industry. Her leadership resulted in strong double-digit growth at 10X the industry average. Julia’s effective cross-functional collaboration among product design, brand marketing, global supply chain, quality services, finance, and operational teams was essential in achieving business outcomes and elevating the customer experience for over 1,400 customers in the U.S. Wine Industry. Her customers included the top 25 U.S. wineries, and leading Direct to Consumer (DTC) companies.
In her role at Leading NOW, Julia has been an invited mainstage speaker at major industry events such as the Restaurant Leadership Conference (RLC), Outlook Leadership, and Convenience Store Women (CSW) to present important aspects of Leadership Development to C-Suite level industry leaders.
Julia is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame/Mendoza College of Business and completed an Executive Leadership Certification from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. She currently resides in Napa, California.
