Walgreens Appoints Rosalind Brewer As Its New Chief Executive Officer

Rosalind Brewer: Rosalind Brewer was appointed a Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance. This makes Brewer the only Black woman who is to run a Fortune 500 company at the moment.  

Brewer will commence her role as the company CEO from March 15. She is currently working as the chief operating officer at Starbucks. The stock market saw a five per cent spike after Walgreen announced her appointment on Wednesday. She will replace Stefano Pessina who had earlier announced that he is going to step down. 

Who is Rosalind Brewer? 

Brewer before taking up her role as a chief operating officer at Starbucks was the chief executive at Sam's Club, a retail company.  She is going to resign from her role at Starbucks before March and her role will be shared by two executives at Starbucks.

Walgreens in its announcement praised Brewer for her “relentless focus on the customer, talent development and expertise in digital transformation”. Walgreen, which is a pharmacist company is reportedly trying to establish itself as a healthcare company. 

As per the data given by NYT, so far there have only been 18 Black executives who have run a Fortune 500 company in the past since 1999. Brewer will be the third women in history to do so. She follows Mary Winston, who headed Bath Bed & Beyond in 2019 and Ursula Burns who ran Xerox between 2009 to 2016.  

After the killing of George Floyd and the widespread Black Lives Matter movement in America, big firms have been pushed to tap into the potential of people without taking their race into account. The bid to make the workspace more diverse has also been pushed by the investors, lawmakers, shareholders and banks. This has made many giant firms motivated to promote and more racial equality in the workspaces.