I work at the intersection of commercial strategy and financial outcomes — specifically the gap between what was negotiated and what actually hits the P&L.
Two things have been true across every role I've held: I have never walked into an environment where things ran smoothly, and I have always been the person translating between teams that don't speak the same language. Commercial and Finance. Finance and IT. Sales and Operations. Vendor and client. That combination — problem solver in broken environments, technical interpreter across functional boundaries — is what I bring to commercial execution work.
My career spans 20+ years in CPG: promo operations and retail channel management at Estée Lauder, Finance Director-level P&L accountability at L'Oréal, and multi-market commercial execution advisory across Tier 1 CPG enterprises. The thread running through all of it is the contract-to-cash cycle — making sure what was agreed commercially survives the enterprise and shows up correctly in the P&L.
WHAT I DO
Commercial Execution Advisory
Pre-engagement readiness, fit/gap assessment, solution design validation, and post-go-live stabilization for RGM, TPM, and TPO deployments. I engage at the point where platform logic meets commercial reality — and where they stop agreeing.
Contract-to-Cash Governance
End-to-end O2C cycle integrity: pricing condition architecture, trade spend governance, accrual discipline, deductions management, and settlement controls. I make sure what was agreed in the contract survives the enterprise and shows up correctly in the P&L.
ERP-Centric Commercial Finance
SAP SD/FI/COPA/MM validation, TPM-to-ERP translation layer governance, and commercial logic audit. I work across the stack — from deal logic design through billing alignment through financial settlement — so the system tells the truth.
BACKGROUND
Joshua Dopkowski
I started my career in promo operations at Estée Lauder, managing the Clinique seasonal launch and gift-with-purchase cycle across major retail doors — Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Dillard's. That work required coordinating commercial strategy, retail execution, KPI monitoring at door level, and replenishment liaison with warehousing and logistics. It was a contract-to-cash loop before I had the vocabulary for it. The pattern recognition I built there — how commercial intent gets lost between planning, execution, and settlement — has informed everything since.
At L'Oréal, I served as Finance Director for SalonCentric, a $1.1B L'Oréal PPD channel operation and the primary national distribution network for professional salon products in the US. My direct P&L responsibility covered $394M — a mixed portfolio spanning L'Oréal PPD brands alongside partner and competitive brands including Dyson, GHD, Bio Ionic, Revlon, Coty, and Olaplex. The structural complexity of this environment was genuinely unusual: promotional funding ran simultaneously as AP debits against manufacturers and AR credits in the brand's local entity, while flowing downstream through our salon professional customer base as debit and credit memos — across four distinct channel layers (sub-distribution, company-owned stores, street sales, and e-commerce), each with different settlement timing and compliance obligations. Six distribution centres across the US meant that receiving discrepancies were a constant operational reality: SAP 3-way match failures on promotional inventory blocked AP invoices, which broke payment timing, which cascaded into Trade Event Agreement debit memo disputes and early payment discount windows missed on both sides. I was responsible for drafting and managing the manufacturer distributor agreements that governed all of it — trade event confirmation and settlement mechanics, inventory management obligations across six classification tiers, compliance chargeback programs, EDI requirements, and anti-diversion controls. I rebuilt the end-to-end trade operating model: claims automation, promotional finance workflows, ERP alignment across the full AP-to-AR arc, and Gross-to-Net integrity. Recovered 330+ basis points of gross margin over three years.
Subsequently I worked as Lead Commercial Execution Advisor on multi-market TPM and RGM deployments for Nestlé, Mars, Haleon, and Deoleo — primarily on enterprise-grade platforms across EMEA. I stabilized stalled deployments, rebuilt vendor-client operating models, and created governance frameworks that survived go-live. The problems I encounter most often are not software problems. They are commercial logic, data integrity, and incentive alignment problems that the software surfaces but cannot fix.
I have also worked as a Researcher and Subject Matter Expert at emlyon business school, contributing to institutional economics research and delivering executive education on commercial finance and RGM. I have advised Private Equity on functional due diligence for RGM/TPM platform acquisitions, providing independent assessment of platform capability, deployment quality, and commercial execution risk.
I am available for senior embedded roles and structured advisory engagements. Independent project work and advisory retainers are structured through Doppler/Edward LLC, my operating entity for commercial execution advisory, training, and subject matter work.
WHAT I BELIEVE
I have never worked in an environment where things ran smoothly.
That's not a complaint — it's a qualification. Every engagement has been a broken system, a stalled deployment, or a misaligned operating model. That's the environment I'm calibrated for, and where I'm most useful.
The interpreter role is the hardest one in the room.
Commercial and Finance don't speak the same language. Neither do Sales and IT, or vendor and client. I've spent a career in that gap — translating across functional boundaries so decisions get made on shared reality rather than competing versions of it.
Pre-assessment is the highest-value intervention.
The most expensive mistake a CPG enterprise can make is deploying a platform on top of broken master data and misaligned commercial logic. I identify when a client isn't ready — and why — before the damage is done.
HOW I WORK
SENIOR EMBEDDED ROLES
Available for permanent and contract positions as Strategic Advisor, Solution Advisor, Commercial Execution Lead, or equivalent — at vendors, CPG enterprises, consulting firms, and PE-backed transformations.
ADVISORY & PROJECT SPRINTS
Structured engagements for specific rescues, pre-assessments, due diligence, and deployment governance — typically 3–9 months with clear exit criteria. Structured through Doppler/Edward LLC.
SPEAKING & WORKSHOPS
Executive education, conference sessions, and workshops on RGM, contract-to-cash, commercial execution systems, and AI in commercial finance. Available through Doppler/Edward LLC.