Over the past two weeks, I had the pleasure of showing off my new haircut across
By Lisa Williston · October 8, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Over the past two weeks, I had the pleasure of showing off my new haircut across the west-coast 😉
All joking aside, I had the incredible opportunity to support both Amazon Ads Accelerate and unBoxed 2026 back-to-back (Seattle ✈️ San Francisco) with our team bringing hands-on learning to the stage at both.
Between the two events, we delivered 14 hands-on keyboard (HOK) sessions across 4 unique topics, putting in-UI tools in front of practitioners:
- AI Masterclass: Optimize Your Brand Store for Q4 with AI-Powered Tools (w/ Helium 10)
- Inside the Client Call: Solving Your Sponsored Ads Challenges (w/ Xnurta)
- Launch in Minutes: AI-Powered Campaign Management
- Inside the Workflow: Exploring the Future of Advanced Programmatic Buying
At Accelerate, we filled 200+ seats in the ballroom for opening sessions. We had practitioners work in-UI with existing products and at unBoxed provided test accounts and computers for attendees to play with the newly launched DVA+ and DVA+ with advanced settings. Our Brand Stores session earned the highest quality rating of any HOK, with 98% of attendees saying the content was relevant to their role and 93% saying they'd implement what they learned. Across all unBoxed HOKs, 100% of speakers were rated as Effective or Very Effective in at least one session.
The real highlight? Working alongside all the talented people who made it happen.
Massive kudos to Marcus Gverzdys, Priya Patel, Jaclyn Seifert, Adam Rubens, Bradley Sutton, Digvijay Sawant, Boris Chung, Angie Mosqueda, Donald Shen, Erin Xie, Alisa Warshawski, Sam Blum, Pierre Coker, Julien Houeix, Zeina Awedikian, Sujoy Paul, Emmanuel Osei Boakye, Hao Bai, Liza Ansher, Jordan Kelman, and Corey Rubin - your expertise during the review process, test account creation, allow-listing, and energy on stage and onsite made these sessions come alive. And to our partner teams across the two events Jessica Bendes, Don Valdez, Sai Mun Foo, Tiffany Douglas, Tian (Seasons) WANG, Lendon Ebbins, Taylor J. Kaplan, Madeline Shapiro, Janna Ritzcovan Synovec, Kristina Garza Cassidy, Carly Snider, Natalie Merkle, Annalie Kaiser, and Michelle Campbell Hurdle (sorry if I missed anyone! so many to tag).
To Archana Ramakrishnan who onboarded just 3 months ago and delivered content across ALL 4 unique sessions at both events, while simultaneously developing and launching our Partner Pathways online learning program. If that's what 3 months looks like, I can't wait to see what's next. 🤯
And to the rest of my team - Greg Bennett, Johnny Bustamante, Taylor Phelan - thank you for every rehearsal, onsite reset madness, my computer SOP neurosis, and every last-minute pivot. We get better and better each year and I'm so happy to have these events to connect and see our work on display.
Already looking forward to what's next. 👀
#AmazonAds #unBoxed2026 #Accelerate2026 #HandsOnLearning #PartnerEducation