Renee Hartmann
Boards & Advisory
Renee brings 30 years of operating experience across three continents as an entrepreneur, operator, consultant, and board member. She combines deep retail industry knowledge with financial rigour and a hands-on understanding of how technology creates competitive advantage in retail and consumer businesses.
She brings to boards a distinctive blend of expertise across retail strategy, international markets, brand building, and technology adoption — with a particular focus on helping companies navigate growth, digital transformation, and global expansion.
About Renee
Renee Hartmann has spent nearly 30 years at the intersection of retail, technology, and global markets.
She began her career as an equity research analyst at Putnam Investments covering consumer and retail companies, moved into investor relations at Ogilvy in San Francisco and Beijing during the dot-com era, and then spent over a decade in China as a founder and entrepreneur — building ENO, a lifestyle retail brand recognised by Fast Company as one of China's Top Ten Most Innovative Companies, from zero to 25 stores.
Since founding CLA in 2012, she has advised some of the world's leading retailers and consumer brands on growth, international expansion, and technology adoption — including Bergdorf Goodman, El Corte Inglés, Coach, L'Oréal, and Fendi. She currently serves as a Non-Executive Board Director and holds multiple advisory positions with retailers and retail technology companies across Europe and the US.
She is the co-author of Next Generation Retail (Kogan Page, 2023), a ReThink Retail Top 100 Expert for three consecutive years, and a frequent keynote speaker at NRF, Luxury Outlook, VivaTech, and DMEXCO. She is based in Sintra, Portugal.
CFA® Charterholder · MBA Duke Fuqua · BBA Emory Goizueta · Mandarin speaker
Co-hosted with Chris Baker. Conversations with the leaders, thinkers, and operators shaping the future of global commerce.
“One of the most trustworthy and insightful presentations on China I had seen in years.”
Milton Pedraza
CEO, Luxury Institute
“Renee Hartmann stands out among the very best. Smart, insightful, thorough, charismatic.”
Scott Kronick
President & CEO, Ogilvy Asia
"Renee provides an incisive look at the forces impacting the retail sector — essential for anyone serious about the industry."
Philip Guarino
Board Director, Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs