Eli Del Carmen
Vice President, Sales
Caleres

Eli (“Ellie”) Del Carmen began her career with May Department Stores as an assistant buyer in 2003. She worked her way up to buyer of Junior Footwear and then moved over to the wholesale side of the business. She joined Caleres in 2010 and helped lead the Naturalizer team to become one of the top 20 brands in the industry. Eli thrives on developing and executing sales strategies, financial planning, relationship building and working closely with designers to bring the best product to market. She is currently the brand lead for Lifestride and is motivated by the fast pace and ever-changing environment of the footwear industry. Eli is a proud alum of Washington University in St. Louis. She was born in Nicaragua and has lived in Panama, Venezuela, Chicago, Miami, and St. Louis.

Elaine Eaton
VP of Wholesale
Crocs

Elaine Eaton currently serves as Vice President, Wholesale for Crocs Americas where she is responsible for leading teams in driving strategic growth for the region. She is a strategic and engaging wholesale leader with deep expertise in footwear brands in high growth and turnaround situations.   She is adept at leveraging data and insights to build multi-year strategic plans with key accounts. Prior to joining Crocs, Elaine held several leadership roles with the most recent being Sr Director of Sales for the Fashion Specialty business at Converse.   She has also held leadership positions at national brands including Keds and Puma.  An active member of Two Ten, Elaine has also served as co-chair for the Boston chapter of WIFI. Outside of work Elaine is busy raising two young daughters Alexandra and Caroline.  She enjoys travel, time at the beach, listening to podcasts and attempting to chase down friends and family on the Peloton.

Jennifer Hutchison
Director of Operations
BBC International

Jen Hutchison began her career in 2005 in the Payless ShoeSource Corporate Management Trainee program. Upon completion, she started as a distribution analyst in men’s footwear before realizing she really wanted to learn how products are developed and sourced. She moved over to the Direct Sourcing Team which launched her career in product development. Jen spent 7 years on the Kohl’s Department Stores footwear product development team before joining Dick’s Sporting Goods initially as a product manager before working her way up to Director of Product Development, gaining some apparel experience along the way. Jen made the jump to wholesale and got back to her footwear roots by joining BBC Int’l 5 years ago and is now a Director of Operations overseeing planning/buying, analytics, product management and DTC customer service. Jen is a graduate of University of Kansas who is passionate about understanding the “ins and outs” of an organization and fitting all the puzzle pieces together. She loves the balance between the numbers/analytics and design/product, but she truly thrives on guiding and leading her teams to success.