---
id: "entity-stephanie-thomas"
type: "entity"
entityType: "person"
canonicalName: "Stephanie Thomas"
aliases: []
source_timestamps: ["byline", "Readers Also Viewed These Items"]
tags: ["author", "academic"]
related: ["entity-org-university-of-arkansas"]
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2025/09/the-importance-of-trust-and-transparency-in-retail-media-networks"
source_title: "The Importance of Trust and Transparency in Retail Media Networks"
sources: ["attention"]
isSpeakerEntity: true
---
## Segment 4 — attention

## Article 71 — a071

# Stephanie Thomas

**Profile.** Stephanie Thomas is an associate professor of practice of supply chain management at the [[entity-org-university-of-arkansas]] (Sam M. Walton College of Business). She previously held supply-chain roles at Lowe's Companies, IBM, and Stanley Tools, and is the executive director of **Women Impacting Supply Chain Excellence (WISE)**.

**Role in this source.** Co-author of the study behind this article. Her practitioner background across major retail and industrial firms informs the article's attention to how merchandising teams and supplier relationships actually operate.

**Attributed contributions.** As a co-author she shares in every author-attributed finding: the central thesis and [[claim-rmn-failure-is-relational]]; [[claim-rmn-as-a-tax]] and [[claim-end-of-exploratory-budgets]]; the [[framework-five-pillars-of-rmn-success]]; and the author-voiced quotes [[quote-fee-not-strategy]], [[quote-problem-is-relational]], and [[quote-earn-supplier-dollars]].

**Canonical reference.** University of Arkansas faculty profile and biography; connected to women-in-supply-chain leadership work.