Rosalind Brewer becomes the only Black woman running an S&P 500 company.
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. named Starbucks Corp. operating chief Rosalind Brewer as its next chief executive, succeeding Stefano Pessina, who became Walgreens’ CEO in 2015 — making Brewer the only Black woman currently slated to take the helm of a Fortune 500 company.
“I am excited to work alongside the entire [Walgreens Boots Alliance] team as we deliver further innovation and positively impact the lives of millions of people around the world every day,” Brewer said in a statement. “This is especially true today as the company plays a crucial role in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Shares of Walgreens, which has a market value of around $43 billion, rose 8% after hours after The Wall Street Journal first reported on the move.
Although the 58-year-old executive, who goes by “Roz”, will remain in the role at the coffee company until the end of February, Starbucks has already announced her departure on Tuesday. She is also resigning from the board of Amazon.com Inc. on Feb. 16 and ultimately join Walgreens and its board on March 15.
According to CNN Business, only one other Black woman, Xerox’s former CEO Ursula Burns, has ever held the chief executive role at a Fortune 500 company, Hariton said. “It’s really great to see her in this position,” said Lorraine Hariton, president and CEO of Catalyst, a nonprofit research group that keeps track of the number of women serving in leadership positions at large companies. “We are definitely accelerating the number of women CEOs, period, in the Fortune 500,” Hariton continued, but “as it relates to Black women, that has been a place that has been lagging(…) “We still have to work to do to really have a pipeline for women of color.”
The CV
With Brewer, Walgreens is getting a retail vet with a reputation for investing in digital operations.
- She joined Starbucks after a five-year stint as the head of Walmart-owned Sam’s Club.
- Before that, Brewer worked at Kimberly-Clark, the consumer goods giant. Fun fact: She started there as a chemist.
