Forter Taps Retail Vet for New Chief Merchant Role in AI Strategy Shift

NEW YORK, NY – May 12, 2026 – Forter, a major player in AI-powered decisioning for e-commerce, today announced a significant strategic move with the appointment of Jennifer Howard as the company's first-ever Chief Merchant. The creation of this novel executive role signals a deliberate effort by the tech firm to embed deep retail expertise directly into its product development and corporate strategy, aiming to move beyond traditional fraud prevention and address the full spectrum of modern commerce challenges.

HHoward, a seasoned executive with over two decades of experience at iconic brands like Levi Strauss, Gap, Williams-Sonoma, and e.l.f. Cosmetics, joins Forter from Balsam Brands. Her appointment is positioned as a cornerstone of Forter's commitment to its customer base.

"Creating the Chief Merchant role embeds our merchant obsession into our corporate structure," said Michael Reitblat, CEO and co-founder of Forter, in the company's announcement. "Jennifer has lived and breathed the challenges our customers face. Her ability to translate merchant reality into action, and to amplify their voices across everything we build, is exactly what this moment in commerce calls for."

A Strategic Play in a Crowded Field

Forter's decision to create the Chief Merchant role is more than a high-profile hire; it's a calculated maneuver in the fiercely competitive AI decisioning and fraud prevention market. The company competes with formidable players like Riskified, Signifyd, and Sift, each vying for dominance by offering sophisticated AI-driven solutions to reduce chargebacks and approve legitimate transactions. In this environment, differentiation is paramount.

By establishing a role dedicated to championing the merchant's perspective from within, Forter is betting that a deeper, more empathetic understanding of its clients' day-to-day realities will yield a significant competitive advantage. While competitors also tout customer-centricity, formalizing this function at the C-suite level with a veteran from the target industry is a distinct and powerful statement. The move suggests a strategy focused not just on technological superiority but on superior alignment with the business goals of the retailers it serves. Howard's mandate includes engaging and scaling Forter's community of nearly one million businesses, aiming to transform a massive user base into a collaborative network that informs future innovation.

From Retail Veteran to AI Strategist

Jennifer Howard's extensive resume is a testament to her deep immersion in the world of digital retail. Her career spans leadership roles in digital commerce, product, and merchandising, where she was responsible for shaping the end-to-end customer journey and driving revenue growth. Her most recent position as Vice President of Digital Experience at Balsam Brands saw her spearheading initiatives to transform the customer experience. This background makes her a unique fit for an AI technology company.

Her value to Forter lies not in her ability to code algorithms, but in her profound understanding of what makes a commerce experience successful from a merchant's and a consumer's point of view. She brings the voice of someone who has managed inventory, designed online storefronts, and obsessed over conversion rates.

"The brands I've admired most are the ones that treat commerce as a craft, obsessing over the consumer experience and defining the commerce moments that truly matter," Howard stated. "Forter is already the platform of choice for those businesses... I'm joining to deepen these relationships even more and to ensure Forter maintains its place at the center of the most exciting commerce stories being written right now." This perspective indicates a focus on leveraging Forter's AI to empower merchants to perfect their craft, moving the platform's value proposition from a defensive tool against fraud to a proactive engine for growth and customer loyalty.

The Evolving Role of AI in Commerce

Howard's appointment comes at a critical juncture for AI in the retail sector. The industry is rapidly moving beyond using AI solely for risk management. Today's leading-edge applications are focused on creating hyper-personalized shopping journeys, optimizing supply chains, and even anticipating consumer needs through emerging technologies like agentic AI, where autonomous agents shop on behalf of users.

Forter's AI platform is built on a network of two billion shoppers, giving it a massive dataset to make trust decisions from sign-up to checkout and returns. However, the strategic challenge for companies like Forter is to ensure their technology evolves in lockstep with the fast-changing needs of merchants. By bringing in a Chief Merchant, Forter is creating a formal feedback loop to ensure its product roadmap is directly informed by real-world retail challenges and opportunities. This internal expertise is crucial for translating broad technological capabilities into specific, high-value features that help merchants not only survive but thrive in a landscape being reshaped by AI.

Redefining the Partnership Between Tech and Retail

The introduction of a Chief Merchant role at a B2B SaaS company is a noteworthy development. While the title is standard in retail organizations, its adoption in the tech sector is rare and points to a maturation of the industry. It reflects a growing recognition that to effectively serve a vertical market, tech companies must do more than just sell software; they must become genuine partners who speak the language of their customers and understand their business from the inside out.

Howard is tasked with embedding customer insight across Forter's operations, from research and development to go-to-market strategy. This holistic approach aims to break down silos and ensure that every part of the organization is aligned with the goal of delivering merchant success. This model of embedding deep industry expertise at the executive level could become a new benchmark for B2B technology companies. As industries become more complex and digitally integrated, the most successful tech providers may be those who, like Forter, choose to build their strategy not just around their code, but around the people and businesses they serve.