Primary Job Title Chief Operating Officer / Owner Primary Organization 
AKIRA
Location Chicago, Illinois, United States Regions Greater Chicago Area, Great Lakes, Midwestern US Gender Male
Website www.markricard.com LinkedIn View on LinkedIn
Mark Ricard is an operating executive with 25+ years building, scaling, and transforming B2B and B2C businesses. He is Chief Operating Officer and a co-owner of AKIRA, a privately held Chicago-based women's specialty retailer with 40+ stores and 1,200+ associates; he joined in 2023 and became a co-owner in 2024, alongside the company's
founders.
At AKIRA he has grown EBITDA roughly 5x in 24 months through warehouse efficiencies, discounting discipline, top-line growth, and operating productivity; removed millions of dollars of shipping and operating cost through negotiation and process redesign; and helped grow e-commerce revenue approximately 30% year-over-year for three consecutive years by re-platforming the e-commerce stack, adding a mobile app, and bringing on new agency partners.
Previously he was SVP of Professional Services and Chief Technology Officer of Levata (formerly Barcodes, Inc.), a private equity-backed retail and supply-chain technology company, where over 8+ years and multiple PE ownership cycles he established and led the US Professional Services business unit — building a ~50-person delivery organization from the ground up — and led technology and integration work across multiple PE-backed acquisitions.
Comfortable with private-equity rhythms — monthly reporting, EBITDA leverage, integration playbooks, and exit preparation — Mark holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Information Systems from Indiana University Bloomington, with recent executive education in M&A and Corporate Development Strategies (Wharton, 2025) and AI: Implications for Business Strategy (MIT, 2025).
