Canterbury Career Connections

Nick Ragland ‘88, P ‘21 – Co-CEO of Salt Creek Capital

Nick is Co-CEO of Salt Creek Capital, a holding company consisting of an investment firm and the assets of The Gorilla Glue Company (Gorilla). For the last 6 years Nick has served as the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors for Gorilla a leading, family owned producer of consumer-branded glues, tapes, and lotions. The company’s two brands, Gorilla and O’Keeffe’s, were acquired as small niche brands and have grown to be dominant players in the home improvement and personal care markets. Gorilla has over 900 employees worldwide. For the last 25 years, Gorilla has grown through smart acquisitions, European expansion, focused organic growth, customer centric sales and analysis, efficient operations, and intentional investments in culture, talent, and team building. Nick has led many of those efforts through his progressions at Gorilla as COO, CFO and Co-President.

Nick graduated from DePauw University in 1992 with a BA in History and from Boston University in 1994 with BS in Journalism. He also has an MBA from Babson College in 2000.

Nick is married to Joelle and they have 2 daughters, Alexandra (25) and Sydney (23). Nick currently serves on the Board of Trustees of The Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut (Chair), The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame, and The Cincinnati Regional Business Committee (Education). Previously, he had served on the Board of The Summit Country Day School (Past Chair), The Children’s Home of Cincinnati (Treasurer and Finance Chair), on the investment committee at The Beechwood Home and on the Young Executive Committee at CISE (Catholic Inner-City Schools Education).

Outside of family and work, Nick has an unhealthy interest in the Cincinnati Reds and Xavier basketball.

Nicole D’Amour Schneider ‘93, P ‘20 ‘22 ‘23 – Senior Vice President, Retail Operations and Customer Experience of Big Y Foods, Inc.

Nicole has oversight of the chain’s entire retail division including Big Y Supermarkets, Big Y Express gas and convenience stores, Big Y Express Fresh Market, Table & Vine, as well as the Big Y Pharmacy and Wellness division. She also leads the asset protection, front-end operations, and continuous improvement teams. In this role she is responsible for defining and implementing Big Y’s operations strategy, structure and processes in each of these areas with a focus on the development of store and department leaders. Additionally, Nicole is responsible for creating and executing plans to drive innovation and efficiency, enhance sales and profits, and most importantly enrich the customer experience.

Nicole began working at Big Y in 1989 as a service clerk and worked in several departments including the front end and employee services throughout high school and college. Nicole became an assistant customer service manager in 1999 and a customer service manager in 2000. After completing the store manager training program, she was appointed as assistant store manager at the Westfield, MA World Class Market. In 2002, Nicole was promoted to store manager in the Enfield, CT World Class Market. In 2004 she took on the role of customer relationship manager, responsible for training, reinforcing and executing Big Y’s customer service culture and engagement programs. In April of 2012 Nicole was appointed as senior manager of pharmacy services. In June of 2013 she was promoted to director of pharmacy, responsible for the oversight and operation of Big Y’s in-store pharmacies. In January of 2018 Nicole assumed the role of senior director of store operations and was promoted to vice president of supermarket operations a year later before beginning her current role as senior vice president in January 2024.

Nicole spent two years teaching high school History and coaching at the Canterbury School in New Milford, CT before beginning her fulltime career at Big Y in 1999.

Nicole is a 1997 graduate of Connecticut College with a BA in History and Secondary Education.

Nicole has served on the Board of Trustees for the Canterbury School in New Milford, CT since 2009 and is a member of the Board’s Executive Committee.

Since 2015 Nicole has served as an executive board member for Big Y’s Women LEAD ERG (Employee Resource Group).

Nicole and her husband Todd reside in Wilbraham, MA and have 3 children.

Alex Vetter ‘89 P, ‘22 – Former CEO Cars.com

Alex is a seasoned media, technology, and automotive industry executive who was part of the founding team of Cars.com, the leading marketplace for cars. Alex has been with the company since its inception, leading for more than 28 years through various stages of ownership. He sold the business in 2014, ultimately taking the company public in 2017.

Alex has successfully navigated nearly three decades of growth - steering the company from its singular domain Cars.com into a vertically integrated Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and technology solutions provider Cars Commerce, which serves the broader automotive ecosystem with digital tools, services and technology solutions.

Under his leadership, the company strengthened Cars.com’s position as one of the most recognized automotive marketplace brands in the United States while expanding capabilities through strategic acquisitions and investments, including Dealer Inspire, AccuTrade, DealerClub and DealerCloud - all which are tools that power retail operations at scale.

In addition to buying the domain name Cars.com in 1997, Alex helped generate the company’s first invoice and has scaled the business to quarterly revenues in excess $180M with industry leading margins, over $200M in annual profit and an Enterprise Value of $1.2 Billion.

Cars.com has over 25 million monthly users and generates the vast majority of its traffic organically. Cars.com is the #1 most downloaded automotive app in android and iOs environments and one of the most cited automotive authorities in the AI ecosystem.

Alex has scaled the business to over 20K customers and nearly 2K employees - building and implementing comprehensive talent development and employee engagement systems used to recruit, hire, and train thousands of professionals, while personally mentoring numerous senior leaders, vice presidents, CEOs and Board Directors. Alex has proudly developed a track record of matriculating leaders - with dozens of other tech CEOs and leaders spawning from the Cars.com platform.

Alex is a strong advocate for local businesses, where he has also been active in industry coalitions, public policy efforts at both the state and federal levels, and philanthropic initiatives supporting the automotive community.

Alex graduated from Canterbury in 1989 where he learned to play lacrosse and went on to play four years at Providence College before being invited to play for the USA Development Team where he played lacrosse internationally prior to the 1994 World Cup. Alex currently resides in Kenilworth, Illinois with his wife, Johanna, daughter Ana, and son Henry who graduated from Canterbury in 2022.