As vice president of hard goods at Nick-elodeon & Viacom Consumer Products, a division of Nickelodeon Enter-prises, Sherice Torres manages a $1.5 billion plus domestic retail business whose product categories include toys, games, collectibles, packaged goods, stationery and social expressions, representing more than 35 percent of the division’s annual revenue. With her team of 20, she develops related strategies for TV and movie properties and creates retail partnerships for the division’s hard goods business, overseeing negotiations for more than 150 active licensing deals.

Prior to joining the Consumer Products division, Torres was director of licensing for Nickelodeon Interactive Home Entertainment and Consumer Electronics and vice president of the Home, Gift and Packaged Goods division. Her experience as a change management consultant to Deloitte Consulting prepared her for these high-powered roles, she says. “[It] gave me the ability to strategically analyze situations under time pressure, the instinct to question the status quo and to look at business scenarios from an outsider’s point of view in order to find the best approach to a business issue,” she says.

With parents who “made it clear that there were no limits to my ability to succeed,” Torres graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. from Harvard University and with an M.B.A. from Stanford University. Her M.B.A. experience has been an invaluable resource in her career, she says. “Not only do I have the ability to tap into a vast network of alumni to bounce business ideas and expand my professional development, but the ability to tackle business issues with a broad tool kit of skills has been priceless,” she says.

Torres, who married less than a year ago, is president of the New York chapter of the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications. She has completed three marathons, although she only began running in 2004. “[My parents] instilled in me…the belief that I would always be able to achieve more than anyone would expect of me. I am who I am today because of Tyrone and Barbara Guillory,” she says.