Nate Shenck is a managing director and senior partner at BCG, specializing in the Retail Industry. His journey—from submarine officer in the US Navy to advising the world’s leading retailers—has been shaped by a commitment to service, curiosity about how complex systems work, and a deep belief in the power of people to drive transformation.
If you’d told me when I was leaving the Naval Academy at 22 years old that I’d spend most of my career in retail, I wouldn’t have believed you.
My path to retail wasn’t planned. It began with a very different calling: military service.
Service was deeply ingrained in my family. Both of my grandfathers served in World War II—one in the Navy and one in the Army—and growing up I felt a strong pull toward that tradition. When it came time to choose a college, the Naval Academy felt like the right place. The combination of Athens and Sparta—intellectual challenge paired with discipline and service—resonated with me personally.
My time in the Navy provided more than one kind of education. Professionally, it led me to submarines and then to teaching engineering at the Naval Academy. Personally, it also gave me outlets that might surprise people. I was part of the Men’s Glee Club, and that experience was formative in its own way. We traveled all over the world, performed for presidents and dignitaries, appeared on live television, and made great music in amazing places. That experience turned out to be a better practicing ground for my professional career than I would have expected. Performing at a high level on stage taught me that preparation and presence matter. You have to represent what you know in a way that moves people to action. That skill translated naturally to leading a division and watch section in the Navy as well as leading teams and clients at BCG.
Expanding My Aperture—and My Path
My move to BCG came at a real decision point in my life.
I was teaching at the Naval Academy, my wife and I had our first child on the way, and I had to choose whether I was going to stay and go back out to sea or do something different. I explored several paths, many of them closer to my existing background in engineering and defense. Consulting came onto my radar through someone I knew from the Naval Academy community who had made a similar transition. Ultimately, I chose to join BCG.
What drew me in was partly the chance to open my aperture. Some of the other roles I was considering would have kept me on a narrower path. BCG was a place where I could learn how business works, challenge myself, and develop in ways I would not have elsewhere.
Just as importantly, as I got to know BCG it became clear that this was where I wanted to be. I describe the people I met during the interview process as embodying “excellence without arrogance”: incredibly capable, but grounded and without pretense. That combination stuck with me and ultimately became one of the reasons I joined—and stayed.
I expected to spend a couple years learning the fundamentals of business before moving into something closer to my background—tech, energy, something more familiar.
And then I fell in love with retail.
Buying In to Retail
What keeps me energized about retail today is exactly what surprised me about it when I first encountered the industry: it’s incredibly dynamic. Retailers operate in one of the most competitive environments in business. Consumer expectations change constantly, new technologies reshape the landscape, and companies must continuously adapt to meet customers where they are.
Retail sits at the intersection of strategy and execution. You can design the best strategy in the world, but if it doesn’t work on the shop floor—if it’s not intuitive for customers and associates—it doesn’t matter. I loved that about retail. You’re solving complex problems, and, at the end of the day, you see your work impact the real world.
It also appealed to both sides of my personality. The engineer in me appreciated how data-driven retail is. The human side of me loved how tangible and relatable it is. Everyone has experienced what happens in a store.
That combination hooked me, and retail has been my professional home ever since.
I really like to crack a problem, and one of the most exciting parts of my role today is helping retailers navigate a period of enormous transformation.
Rewiring Retail in the Age of AI
Retail is always evolving, but the pace of change right now is extraordinary. Consumer expectations are shifting, economic conditions remain volatile, and generative AI (GenAI) is rapidly changing the experience for customers and tools available to retailers.
AI as the next industrial revolution. Like every transformative technology wave before it, it’s changing the economics of business, reshaping how work gets done, and creating new sources of competitive advantage. With that comes enormous evolutionary pressure on the industry. Retailers have always had to adapt to changes in their environment, but the speed and scale of change today are unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it’s touching every element of the value chain.
On the frontline, AI can simplify the day-to-day work of store associates. Anyone who has worked in a store knows there are hundreds of tasks competing for attention—stocking shelves, helping customers, solving operational issues. AI tools can help prioritize those tasks and provide instant answers, allowing associates to spend more time serving customers.
At headquarters, AI is transforming how decisions are made. Retail organizations are swimming in data. The challenge has never been collecting it—it’s turning it into insight quickly enough to act. Traditional AI accelerated that process and improved the outputs. GenAI provides context around those insights, eliminating the “AI black box.”And agentic AI is beginning to take low-value work off leaders’ plates.
And for consumers, the shift is even more profound. Consumers are starting to use agents to shop, and shopping behavior is moving from “search” to “ask.” “Ask” is a completely different interaction with technology. Instead of browsing websites, people increasingly rely on AI-powered tools to guide decisions—giving the AI engine the ability to customize an answer rather than an outcome of a search. For customers, that means they get much more tailored, much more personal recommendations about the thing they want. For retailers, it means you have to make sure the information available online is relevant to the types of asks customers are making of AI. That fundamentally changes how retailers compete for attention.
My job, and BCG’s job, is to help companies move beyond fascination with these technologies to functional and operational advantage.This transformation is not really about technology. It’s about people.
Putting People First
If there’s one belief that guides how I lead, it’s this: great outcomes start with great people working in a cohesive team.
Retail offers a powerful illustration of that principle. The companies that consistently outperform are the ones that invest in their frontline associates—empowering them, supporting them, and creating cultures where people want to stay and grow.
When associates feel valued and equipped to succeed, customers feel it. That drives loyalty, which drives performance, which allows companies to reinvest in their people. It becomes a powerful flywheel.
That belief in investing in people shaped more than my client work. When I joined BCG, there were only a handful of veterans across the US offices, and many of us barely knew one another. Coming from the military, where community and shared purpose are central, that felt like something worth changing.
Alongside a small group of colleagues, I helped establish what became BCG's Veterans Network. We wanted to help veterans navigate the transition into consulting, build confidence in what they brought to the firm, and make sure future recruits could see a place for themselves here. Watching that community grow from just a few people into a network of several hundred has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career—not because of its size, but because of the connections it has created.
Whether you’re commanding a submarine, leading a consulting team, or helping a retailer reinvent itself, the principles aren’t that different. Success comes down to clarity of purpose, trust in your team, and the ability to turn insight into action.
