Former Calvin Klein, Walmart execs joins Walgreens c-suite

Walgreens has made three senior appointments: chief marketing officer,  chief product officer  and chief merchandising officer.

The drug store company named Linh Peters as chief marketing officer, responsible for overseeing the vision, strategic direction and performance of Walgreens marketing activities, including marketing collaboration, brand design, brand positioning and marketing plan execution. She succeeds Patrick McLean, who resigned at the beginning of 2022 after a little more than two years in the role.

Most recently, from November 2020 to December 2021, Peters was global chief marketing officer at Calvin Klein. Prior to that, she was with Starbucks Corp., where she served as VP of loyalty, partnerships and licensed stores product and marketing. (Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer, who took the reins in March 21, is the former COO of Starbucks.)

Before joining Starbucks in 2018, Peters was head of loyalty and marketing at Ulta Beauty. She also held various marketing positions at SpartanNash, Target and Best Buy.

Chief Product Officer

In other appointments, Walgreens named Bala Visalatha as senior VP and to the new role of chief product officer, where he will lead the execution of Walgreens customer product strategy and development, along with user experience.

Most recently, from 2012 to 2021, Visalatha was VP of e-commerce at Walmart U.S., where he was instrumental in launching the new Walmart app and website, creating a unified omnichannel experience for customers.

Prior to Walmart, Visalatha was with American Express, from 2015 to 2012.

Chief Merchandising Officer

Also, Luke Rauch was named senior VP and chief merchandising officer.  Rauch joined Walgreens in 2015 and most recently served as chief of staff to Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer. Prior to that, from 2020 to 2021, he was group VP, customer experience and general manager, owned brands. Rauch’s previous Walgreens leadership roles include VP, commercial strategy and senior director, insights.

Before joining Walgreens, Rauch was with Deloitte Consulting.

The three appointments are effective in May.

“I am thrilled to have Linh, Luke and Bala join the Walgreens retail products and customer leadership team, and I’m confident that their collective decades of retail expertise and deep involvement with launching new customer experiences will accelerate growth in our company,” said Tracey Brown, president of retail products and chief customer officer, Walgreens. “As strong innovators in their own right, each have an excellent track record when it comes to successfully identifying white spaces across different customer touchpoints and tracking evolving consumer trends, which will be instrumental as we transform our business.”