Emily Watkins

SVP, Real Estate & Construction Charlotte Russe

Current Responsibilities

Emily leads real estate, store design, store development, facilities, lease administration and procurement functions for Charlotte Russe, a fast fashion retailer of on-trend apparel, shoes and accessories at value prices for young women in their teens and twenties, with approximately 540 stores nationally, and their newest brand Peek Kids, an upscale specialty kids and baby brand with 11 stores.  She is responsible for establishing strategies, finding store locations, designing and building the stores, and managing and maintaining all corporate and retail assets. 

Experience

Prior to her current role, Emily spent 3 years with JLL, a global real estate services company, where she led the Innovation & Product Development function for the Corporate Solutions business.  She was responsible for focusing on developing leading edge services and products.  Some key innovation initiatives that she launched were innovation and critical thinking workshops to generate leading edge ideas which she facilitated for internal and client teams, a technology tool to capture and vet ideas and best practices across the firm, and many new revenue generating product lines.  She also led JLL’s national women’s employee resource group, the Women’s Network.

Prior to JLL, she spent 14 years with Gap Inc. in increasingly high-profile roles within the company’s store design, construction, and real estate departments, most recently as Senior Director of Real Estate Management & Operations. In this role, she was responsible for guiding the global asset management for the company’s brands with experience in all aspects of driving new initiatives (innovation, process, change management, training, technology, analytics) and managing the real estate lifecycle (portfolio management, strategy, site selection, planning & design, construction management, and asset management) for their 38-million-square-foot portfolio.  She was involved in facilitating organizational change efforts around process design, cultural initiatives, and onboarding.  She has also held positions at Gap Inc. in Construction Estimating, Gap Brand Global Store Design, and Architecture & Construction.

Education and Affiliations

Emily holds Masters of Business Administration degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University (joint Executive MBA program) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Architectural (Structural) Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is a Six Sigma Champion and Green Belt and an active member of the Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley.  She resides in San Diego.