Walgreens Poaches Starbucks Executive Rosalind Brewer for CEO

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. named Starbucks Corp. operating chief Rosalind Brewer as its next chief executive, setting her up to be the only Black woman leading a Fortune 500 company today.

Ms. Brewer will replace Stefano Pessina, who said in July that he would step down as CEO once the drugstore company found a new leader. Mr. Pessina, one of Walgreens’ biggest individual investors, will stay on the company’s board and serve as executive chairman.

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.

Starbucks said Tuesday that Ms. Brewer, its chief operating officer and group president, was leaving both the company and board of Starbucks at the end of February for a new role at another public company. Before joining the coffeehouse chain, Ms. Brewer was CEO of Walmart Inc.’s Sam’s Club division for five years.

The 58-year-old executive, who goes by “Roz,” will join Walgreens and its board on March 15. She is also resigning from the board of Amazon.com Inc. on Feb. 16.

The retail veteran joined Starbucks and its board in 2017. She helped shift Starbucks toward a focus on to-go operations during the pandemic and has worked to diversify the company’s leadership. Starbucks last fall said it would tie executive compensation to increasing minority representation in its workforce, and mandated antibias training for company leaders.

In 2019, Ms. Brewer joined the board of Amazon amid pressure on the company to add more diversity to its board. Amazon has been increasingly expanding into the health-care space, becoming more of a competitor to companies such as Walgreens and CVS. In 2018, Amazon bought online pharmacy PillPack for $1 billion.

Mr. Pessina said Ms. Brewer’s retail background, especially in growing Starbucks’ digital presence, makes her well-suited for the top job at Walgreens.

“We needed someone with an experience in retail and an experience in pharmacy and, more importantly, experience in digital,” Mr. Pessina said in an interview. “She’s very thoughtful and very personable, she’s reasonable and she has all the qualities that are important for a chief executive.”

Walgreens, the largest U.S. drugstore chain, has been struggling to turn itself around, an effort complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Pessina, an Italian billionaire, took over five years ago following the merger of Walgreens and European pharmacy chain Alliance Boots.