About
Maria Carlton
Founder and Principal Advisor, Forth & Forward Advisory, LLC.
Twenty-plus years of retail and consumer leadership, including fifteen at Under Armour spanning global go-to-market, merchandising operations, marketing operations, commercial execution, transformation, and cross-functional operating model work. Earlier roles at Macy's, Fashion Accents, and Jos. A. Bank.
That is the whole argument for this practice. Most people advising retail leaders on transformation have never carried a plan through a matrixed organization, watched it stall at a handoff nobody owned, and had to fix it anyway. Maria has, repeatedly, at scale.
The work
Operator, not observer
Global go-to-market leadership, merchandising and planning, marketing operations, commercial execution, and enterprise transformation inside apparel, footwear, and department store businesses.
The study
MIT Technology Leadership Program
2025-26 cohort. AI, systems thinking, and emerging technology, taken up specifically to pressure-test where technology genuinely changes how organizations should operate.
The practice
Forth & Forward Advisory
Founded to do the work that gets skipped: designing how a strategy actually moves through people, decisions, systems, and technology.
Beyond the practice
Industry and community leadership
Credibility in this industry is not a claim. It is who calls you, and what rooms you are asked to help build.
Maria holds active leadership and advisory roles across the retail community, including work with Retail Women in Tech across multiple chapters, the Women of Color Retail Alliance in Maryland, and an industry leadership council seat in retail technology.
Personally
What keeps her curious
Sustainability and circular retail, where the operating model question is unusually honest, because you cannot fake a reverse logistics flow with a deck.
Mentoring, particularly women moving from operating roles into leadership roles, where the hard part is rarely capability.
And the middle layer of organizations, the directors and managers who translate strategy into work every day and almost never get designed for.
Affiliations & Recognition
- r4 Leadership Council Council Member
- Retail Women in Tech Community Leadership
- Women of Color Retail Alliance Maryland
- MIT Technology Leadership Program 2025-26 Cohort
Start here
Tell me where the work is slowing down.
Thirty minutes. You describe what is happening. I tell you honestly whether this is the right work, and whether I am the right person for it.
Book a 30-minute fit call