Daniel Williams Hooker

Biography

Daniel Hooker is a global retail and consumer packaged goods executive with broad experience across diverse business environments and formats, leading traditional food retail operations and merchandising, as well as product development, consumer and category analytics, sourcing and procurement, global trading, national sales and e-commerce. Hooker is an outstanding strategist and general manager, and he has led the successful startup of multiple diverse businesses. Known as one of the world’s leading authorities on retailers’ proprietary brands, he has shaped clients’ programs across four continents and eight classes of trade. His passion is helping companies see their unique DNA and positioning and creating actionable marketing and sales strategies essential to their success.

After earning a degree in agribusiness and marketing from Cornell University, Hooker plunged headlong into retail, joining Aldi Foods as a district manager. In the early 1990s, Wakefern/ShopRite was concerned about Aldi’s expansion east, and Hooker jumped at the opportunity to start a business, moving to West Springfield, Massachusetts, and opening the first Price Rite store. Today, there are more than 70 Price Rite stores that generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue, and they are a strategic growth driver for Wakefern.

After spending two years at Arthur Andersen as a retail consultant, Hooker spent 14 years at Daymon Worldwide working with manufacturers and retailers around the globe. His career at Daymon progressed rapidly, and in 2011 he was appointed to the executive leadership team as chief supplier officer. As chief supplier officer, Hooker was responsible for category management and analytics, supplier relationships, and global sourcing and procurement. He also ran Daymon’s import and export businesses. As a member of the executive leadership team, he was instrumental in reinventing Daymon from a consulting and brokerage company into a broader retail services company. He left Daymon at the end of 2013 and joined Trilliant Food and Nutrition in January 2014 as vice president of sales for national accounts and e-commerce. Most recently, Hooker has focused on the digital channel, selling to e-commerce retailers and running multimillion-dollar businesses for Walmart.com and Jet.com.

Today, he is on the faculty at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, where he is director of external education for the Food Industry Management Program and teaches graduate and undergraduate students in food and consumables marketing and supply chain strategy.

He has an MBA from the University of Connecticut.

Education

MBA University Of Connecticut, 2001
BS Cornell University, 1993