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Community Corner

Why "The Future of Shopping Is Now"

Two of the co-founders of the online shopping site Gilt.com will present this
year’s Ellsworth Lecture with a talk titled “The Future of Shopping Is Now,” on
Thursday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. in Wilde
Auditorium.  Alexandra Wilkis Wilson,

founder and head of Strategic Alliances for Gilt Groupe, Inc., and Alexis
Maybank,
founder and chief business development and strategy officer
for Gilt Groupe, Inc., will speak about the future of e-commerce.



The event, sponsored by the
University of Hartford and its Barney School of Business, is free and
open to the public.
If you would like to attend, please register at www.anchoronline.org/Ellsworth.





Just in time for the spring 2007 season, Alexis Maybank and
Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, longtime friends and devoted New York City
designer-sample sale shoppers, joined Kevin Ryan, Mike Bryzek, and Phong Nguyen
to create the fastest, most exciting online shopping experience—Gilt.com.

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With BS and MBA degrees from Harvard University, Maybank
has dedicated her career to building innovative and compelling online
e-commerce experiences for consumers. A member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and Springboard Enterprises’ Media/Tech Council, she was named to
Crain’s “40 under 40” list in 2009 and awarded Ernst and Young’s New York
Entrepreneur of the Year Award in2010. Prior to founding Gilt, Maybank was
general manager of AOL’s e-commerce businesses. In 1998 she became an early
member of the eBay team, joining the company’s first strategic planning group, led
by cofounder Jeff Skoll. Maybank launched and ran eBay Canada and helped found
eBay Motors, which grew to more than $2.5 billion in sales.



Wilson, a cofounder of Gilt, holds a BA from Harvard and
an MBA from Harvard Business School. In her more than 14 years’ international
experience in luxury goods, retail, and finance, she has managed both retail
operations at Bulgari, overseeing 15 North American stores, and leather goods
sales planning for Louis Vuitton North America. Following her early career in
investment banking at Merrill Lynch, she worked for retail guru Marvin Traub at
Financo, Inc. Wilson speaks five languages and is a member of the Young
Presidents’ Organization.

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The Ellsworth Lecture program promotes an awareness of,
and appreciation for, the American business system. It was created in 1979 by
Ensign-Bickford Industries, Inc., to honor its former chairman, the late John
E. Ellsworth.








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