Starbucks COO Rosalind Brewer Becomes CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance

Former COO of Starbucks Rosalind ‘Roz’ Brewer will become the new chief executive officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, making her the only Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. In December 2020, Catalyst reviewed women holding CEO positions on the S&P 500 list.

The Detroit native is a graduate of Spelman College and was elected in 2006 to the college’s Board of Trustees. Brewer has advanced studies degrees from the Advanced Management Program of The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of the Director’s College at the University of Chicago/Stanford School of Law.

The pre-Starbucks CEO and President of Sam’s Club, owned by Walmart, Brewer arrives at Walgreens at a time when the Walgreens partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is “off to a rocky start”, writes WWD.

Steve Stoute, founder and CEO of UnitedMasters and Translation, a marketing agency, and the author of ‘The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy’, worked with Brewer when Starbucks founder Howard Schultz tapped him to help the company address the crisis resulting from two Black men being arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia in 2018.

“Her operational talent is probably best in the world — she is that good,” said Steve Stoute, CEO and founder of Translation and UnitedMasters. “She is a best-in-class leader in corporate America who will help deliver Walgreens results and success that will surpass expectations.”

In April 2019, Brewer joined the board of directors of Amazon, after being named to named to Forbes’ most powerful women in business list in 2018. Brewer started her career at Walmart in 2006 as a regional vice president, after spending 22 years at Kimberly-Clark.

Returning to the subject of the Starbucks-related 2018 arrest of two young black men — Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson — in Philadelphia, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart interviewed Brewer about the incident for his ‘Cape Up’ podcast.

Not only is she African American, she is the mother of a son who is the same age as Nelson and Robinson.

“When I learned about the two gentlemen, the thing that struck me most was these were two African American males, 23years old at the time. ... My son was a 23-year-old at that time,” Brewer told me during a live interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. She later talked about how her son called her with an urgent message.

“It made me almost tearful. He was like, ‘Mom. I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, but you gotta fix this.’... He was livid,” shared Brewer in our conversation that is the latest episode of “Cape Up.” “He really wanted me to get after it, but it gave me confidence to do everything I could possibly do. Because I could tell in his voice, I heard the fear in his voice. He was scared, he thought about himself.”

Whatever progress has been made with race relations in America, there is so very much to be done. Brewer is one of the country’s most informer voices in the business community on this topic.

When companies think of diversity and inclusion, they too often focus on meeting metrics instead of building relationships with people of diverse backgrounds, Rosalind G. Brewer explained in this October 2020 conversation with TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers.

Brewer invites leaders to rethink what it takes to create a truly inclusive workplace — beyond metrics -- and lays out how to bring real, grassroots change to boardrooms and communities alike.