Developing leaders
April Sabral, Founder and CEO of RetailU.ca
To learn more about setting a retail team up for success with strong leaders, education, and empathy follow April Sabral:
Website | LinkedIn
April’s experience in the retail industry is wide-ranging from her roots as a part-time sales associate to holding key roles in sales, operations and management at companies such as Banana Republic, GAP, Starbucks and Apple. Her long-lasting influence at these companies has helped fuel interest in her approach and philosophy for retail management.
One such lasting example of her impact is the origin of the Starbucks standard of writing customers names on the cups. Originally stemming from an issue with people grabbing the wrong drink, April and her team identified a no-cost solution that helped both the baristas and the customers, while being aligned to the company value of providing a personalized experience.
Across her career, she diligently pursued self-development opportunities and reaped the benefits of learning and development programs from some of these larger companies. April soon realized though that while these opportunities were available to her at the larger U.S. companies where she had worked, they were not necessarily available at Canadian or other small companies. Knowing that the skills foundational to her success were not broadly available across large swaths of the retail industry greatly influenced her desire to become a certified coach, invited speaker, and founder of RetailU—a company providing online leadership training for retail stores and district managers.
