Retail Women in Tech (RWIT), a 501(c)(3), today announced the relaunch of the Women2Watch Think Tank – a first-of-its-kind retail program designed to identify and validate the early signals shaping the industry – at RetailClub AI Festival. Women2Watch is powered by a pattern recognition platform that captures real-time perspectives from multidisciplinary, multigenerational women leaders in retail, helping leaders recognize what is moving before it becomes industry consensus.
Women2Watch relaunches at a time when women are losing ground in the workforce and remain underrepresented in the roles shaping the AI economy. According to a National Women’s Law Center’s jobs analysis of monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women accounted for 100% of the decline in the labor force in July. That brings the total net number of women who have left the labor force since January this year to 845,000. Meanwhile, women hold just 13% of executive AI roles at AI companies across 27 countries and represent only 26% of U.S. hires into AI roles in 2025.
Women2Watch is advancing a more human-centered approach to AI: human in the lead, technology in the loop. As retail increasingly adopts AI, judgment, empathy, contextual understanding, and the ability to recognize fear and uncertainty become competitive advantages. When women are missing from the roles shaping those systems, their perspectives are too, allowing bias and blind spots to scale with the technology.
“AI is already reshaping how people work, shop and make decisions. The choices we make about whose voices are in the room, designing, deploying and governing AI, will shape society for generations to come. Women2Watch is addressing this head on. Women must be shaping AI from the beginning so that the future we build reflects the people it serves,” said Shannon Flanagan, Founder and CEO, Retail Women in Tech.
From October through May, Women2Watch will hold monthly collaboration sessions and two Collective Thinks within each of its three domains: Operating Models, Human Capital and Consumer Belonging, creating a continuously developing view of what is changing in the industry. Women2Watch will translate the platform’s intelligence into future reports, programming and other industry-facing outputs.
The Retail AI Pulse Report: First proof point
Developed with The Consumer Collective, the Retail AI Pulse Report is the inaugural public output of the signals that are emerging. It is based on the first annual interview series of the Women2Watch Advisory Board – 16 senior executives from retail, consumer brands, consulting and technology. The qualitative report identified a rapidly growing gap between technological acceleration and human readiness, a shift in value toward human judgment and connection, and trust as a prerequisite for AI to scale successfully in organizations and with consumers.
Founding underwriters Intel, ShipperHQ, Stripe, Arkhive Digital, FluentCommerce and Intelo.ai support the funding of RWIT programming and the Women2Watch’s work to convene leaders, develop pre-analysts insights and create industry-facing outputs.
“Effective leaders pair strategic clarity with high emotional intelligence, reading the room, listening deeply and adapting their approach to what people and the business need. Their responsibility is not simply to direct change, but to create the space, confidence and support for teams and organizations to evolve in a way that feels purposeful, achievable and aligned with the company’s strategic direction,” said Mariya Zorotovic, GM, Consumer Industries, Intel – a founding underwriter of Women2Watch and Advisory Board Member.
Women2Watch at RetailClub AI Festival: Join us
With support from RetailClub, Women2Watch will be present at RetailClub AI Festival in Huntington Beach, California, September 22-24. Join the team for walks, picnic-table activity, panel and cocktail reception.
Learn more about Women2Watch here and access the Retail AI Pulse Report here.
About Retail Women in Tech
Retail Women in Tech is a global organization working to change who has access, who advances and who shapes the future of retail. We connect women and allies of all ages across retailers, brands, technology, consulting, media, capital and academia, breaking down the silos that too often determine who gets seen, sponsored and given opportunity. Our mission is to have more women in the rooms where decisions are made. Through mentorship, career pathways, AI education, industry intelligence and meaningful connections, we help people build the relationships and capabilities that move careers and the industry forward. Powered by Retail Connections a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity.
About Women2Watch
Women2Watch is a Pattern Recognition Think Tank Program licensed to Retail Women in Tech (RWIT) 501(c)(3). It works in the pre-consensus window: the space where a pattern in retail AI already exists but has not yet been named, counted, or framed. Through confidential operator listening, cross-operator synthesis, and a compounding Foresight Record, it surfaces signals before they harden into published data. Signals are the proprietary asset; data is what they eventually become. The work centers the Human Advantage: the judgment, ethical discernment, emotional intelligence and pattern recognition that women bring to leadership. It cultivates leaders the future economy would choose to hire.
