Zalando appoints ad tech veteran Ray Cao as Senior Vice President

Zalando is strengthening its leadership team to accelerate its strategy as the leading pan-European technology platform for fashion and lifestyle. Effective July 15, 2026, Ray Cao will join Zalando as Senior Vice President of Partner Marketing Services (ZMS) to scale the company’s retail media unit, further develop its data-driven advertising solutions, and drive mutual growth for more than 7,000 brand partners in Europe.

ZMS is Zalando's dedicated retail media unit. It leverages Europe's most comprehensive fashion-tailored data and infrastructure, including billions of customer interactions and deep product insights, to offer brand partners powerful data-driven advertising solutions. By connecting brands with millions of customers across Europe, ZMS drives a positive spiral: it creates inspiring and personally relevant experiences that help brands grow effectively, while making the platform even more valuable to consumers.

Ray Cao has a strong background in building and scaling global organizations. As a veteran of the ad tech industry, he has worked with some of the world’s most influential platforms. He was a founding member and leader of TikTok’s global monetization team, where he helped scale the platform’s advertising business into a multi-billion dollar business. His expertise in scaling social commerce aligns perfectly with Zalando’s strategic focus on capturing major new opportunities in social and agentic commerce channels.

His career also includes leading roles in Google Shopping early years and within fintech at Intuit. Ray has a leadership style built on openness, a customer-centric mindset, and a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.

When Ray now takes on his role, Joanna Rogers to devote her full focus to her area of responsibility as SVP Propositions. Joanna has led ZMS with great success and dedication for the past 1.5 years. Since the end of 2025, she has also been responsible for the development of all Zalando's fashion and lifestyle offerings, including Sports, Beauty, Kids & Family and Designer, alongside the Partner Platform business. This change reflects the significant growth in both business areas, which now require fully dedicated leadership to flourish and unleash their full potential.

“Ray will further unlock the enormous commercial opportunity we have within ZMS, and elevate how our brand partners connect with over 62 million customers in Europe. As our pan-European platform scales, it is the natural next step to bring on a world-class leader of Ray’s calibre to drive our retail media business into the next phase of exponential growth,” says Robert Gentz, Zalando’s co-CEO and founder. I would also like to extend a big thank you to Joanna for her outstanding leadership and the strong foundation she has built during her dual mandate. This new structure provides both ZMS and our consumer offerings with the dedicated leadership they need to succeed.

Ray and Joanna will work closely together on strategy and execution to ensure ZMS and Propositions continue to grow strongly together, offering partners an integrated approach to retail media and assortment planning. Ray will also work closely with James Rothwell, SVP Marketing, to align the overall consumer brand strategy with partner marketing initiatives to drive mutual growth.

– As the leading technology platform for fashion and lifestyle, Zalando uniquely positioned to drive huge growth in retail media. With Zalando's vast and unique data set in the AI era, we have an unparalleled opportunity to connect brands with highly engaged consumers at scale, says Ray Cao. I am truly excited to immerse myself in the culture and create real impact, and I look forward to working with the entire team to deliver transparent, customer-centric advertising solutions that drive our partners' growth.

About Zalando

Zalando founded in Berlin in 2008 and is today Europe's leading technology platform for fashion and lifestyle. We connect 62 million active customers with over 7,000 brands in 29 markets through an infrastructure based on unique data and AI technology.

For our customers, our multi-app strategy offers, which includes Zalando, ABOUT YOU and Lounge by Zalando, an inspiring and personalized shopping experience that caters to the different needs of different customers.

For our partners, we build an operating system for e-commerce. Through ZEOS, Tradebyte and SCAYLE, we make our logistics, software and service capabilities available, enabling brands and retailers to scale their operations across multiple channels and markets.