But on this sweltering summer day inside a plain-looking three-story building on the edge of the CVS corporate campus, Helena Foulkes (Most Powerful Women, No. In 2014, CVS paid $2.1 billion for Coram, which delivers treatments to homebound patients. Foulkes left CVS in 2018 to become CEO of the Hudson's Bay Company, the holding company with roots as a 17th-century colonial fur trading empire that owns Sak's Fifth Avenue and other retailers.. Change is good for companies looking for opportunities.. Despite a TV ad blitz for most of the summer, Foulkes remainedthird, at 14% of the vote, in the most recent public poll of the primary, and with voters fairlydisengaged from the governor's race so far, it's unclear how many know who this political newcomeris. Helena holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Dan McKee took over in March of 2021. Any desire to hold political office?My family and my parents were involved and active; we all have a great passion for the positive role that governmental leaders can play. ", Rhode Island's lieutenant governor race: Three Democrats make the case. [1] She is a granddaughter of Thomas J. Dodd and a niece of Chris Dodd, both former U.S. senators from Connecticut.[1][2]. To emphasize his companys evolution, in 2014 CEO Larry Merlo changed the companys name from CVS Caremark to CVS Health. Foulkes is known as a consumer innovator, having led teams on efforts such as the development of the CVS loyalty program, the companys efforts to drive digital innovation and the elimination of tobacco. Both womencame topolitics fromthe business world and Harvard,leading some to suggest Foulkesis running as Gina 2.0. All the large chains across the countryfrom Walgreens (WBA) to Eckerd to Rite Aid (RAD)operated largely from the same playbook: fill prescriptions in the pharmacy in back, and in the front, sell everything from diapers to shampoo to soda. Rivers. P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale 74, will serve as vice chair of the Board of Overseers executive committee. Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller agreed:"If she is planning to run from a businessperspective,shewill have tooutmaneuverDanMcKee, who also has a business background,andSethMagaziner,whohas beenworkingtoputthe statefinanceson an even keel.". Age : 57. Foulkes moved to Narragansett in 2020 and is a member of the Dunes Club and Point Judith Country Club. For example, Foulkes was the one who launched the ExtraCare card, which is CVS Health Corporations membership program that offers savings for those who shop at its stores. "Yes, and I believe we must trust and follow the lead of our state's tremendous public health officials.". Unsurprisingly, this meant that Foulkes had to make a lot of changes, which in turn, means a lot of potential for failure. Sergio Jimnez Amozurrutia is the CEO of Flink, a Mexican-based banking company that offers its clients a reliable technological platform from, which they can open an account within a few minutes. By 1992, Foulkes was working at CVS Health Corporation, where she managed to rise high in its ranks. "The history of thecompany is it was put together by real estate investors andthey kept adding different businessesto it, and when Ijoined it was burning$1 billion every year," she said about Hudson's Bay. Photograph by Andrew RenneisenThe New York Times/Redux. All Rights Reserved. [2] Larry Summers was her senior thesis adviser. document.getElementById("contentad8853").appendChild(s); Climate change: "Here in the Ocean State, we are uniquely vulnerable to climate change all the more reason we should lead the fight to innovate. She is known as a purpose-driven leader who has made significant impacts on organizations and industries. Prior to HBC, Foulkes spent 25 years at CVS Health, most recently as President of CVS Pharmacy, a position she held from January 2014 to January 2018. She also sits on the governing boards joint committee on inspection, as well as the Board of Overseers subcommittees on governance and visitation. This is a really great way, without PowerPoint, to stand in front of product and look and see and feel, she says. var qs=""; The oldest of five children of a prominent local lawyerand the niece of former senator Chris Dodd of Connecticutyoung Helena Buonanno planned to make her mark somewhere besides Rhode Island.. Apparently, the digital team for the corporation was so spread out that it needed senior management to speak with multiple people situated in various parts of the corporation to get them to make a single change to the digital operations. Open bar with wine bar and tapas buffet from 6-7PM followed by a moderated Q&A conversation. She wore her late mother's Trinity College medallion around her neck and, in a brief conversation, talked about her bout with thyroid cancer 20 years ago. Add it all up, and CVS is now the largest health carerelated company in the U.S. '86, M.B.A. '91, have four children, including Zoe '17 and Owen '20. Assuming the deal gets finalized, that will soon include integrating the nearly 1,700 pharmacies CVS is buying from Target and making that underperforming business profitable. [4] She helped spur the decision to stop selling cigarettes and tobacco products, citing the need for CVS to better position itself as a healthcare company. Tom Ryan, a onetime pharmacist who served as CEO at CVS from 1998 to 2011, was among the most aggressive players in the industrywide M&A spree, snatching up rivals such as Longs Drugs and Sav-On. As a Harvard Overseer, Chase-Lansdale chairs the boards committee on Schools, the College, and continuing education. As a candidate for governor, she received the Boston Globes endorsement. Offers may be subject to change without notice. She can motivate people, and thats what every CEO needs to do.. ", Should the governor extend the vaccine mandate beyond health-care workers? Depending on the most recent deal, CVS and Walgreens took turns as the industry king. claim that she wanted to bail out 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling but won't discuss specifics of what did happen. Helena Foulkes took the job of Hudson's Bay Co. CEO two years ago, fully intending to clean up one of retail's toughest messes. My mothers side is the Murphy family in Westerly. Walgreens has said it plans to close around 200 stores, while CVS is acquiring 1,700 Target pharmacies. Of course theres H! says Foulkes triumphantly as she and the half-dozen execs erupt in laughter. She wasnt sure she could manage. I sincerely apologize.". [3] In July 2015, Fortune magazine reported that as part of her role, Foulkes oversaw 9,600 retail stores and 18 distribution centers. . Rumors that Foulkes would run for governor began not long afterGina Raimondo left the job to become U.S. commerce secretary and Lt. Gov. "Foulkes is very much collaborative and faces challenges head on," he said. She led the strategic vision as well as the operations for all aspects of the companys retail business and was the principal architect of the companys move to becoming a recognized leader in healthcare. Currently, Ms. Foulkes is Co-Chairman & Co-Chief Executive Officer at this company. The company is based in the United States and has earned its reputation, Read More Does UPS Drug Test All Its Employees?Continue, Uber Eats is a fast-growing food delivery company offering services in over 200 cities worldwide. 2023 Fortune Media IP Limited. [3] Foulkes also created the Pharmacy Advisor program, its purpose being to offer advice to customers with chronic conditions, either in stores or over the phone. Shes a leader. Schiller also said "it would be a massivemistake'' for Foulkes to run as a new version of Raimondo, who quit mid-term to become U.S. secretary of commerce: "This is someone who left.". Here are 10 things that you may or may not have known about Helena Foulkes: In school, Foulkes studied economics, which is a field with a lot of applicability for business-people. Chase-Lansdale is an expert on research and social policy relating to children and families. All rights reserved. (And it was personal as well as business for Foulkes: Her mom died of lung cancer in 2009.) As such, the program that Foulkes pioneered continues to play an important part in the corporations customer loyalty measures. [7][8][9] In her first six weeks as CEO, Foulkes was challenged with refashioning the company's business strategies given the industry's declining sales at the time. To Foulkes, every detail counts. She left when investors made an offer to take the company private at a price shareholders couldn't refuse. (function() { As CEO, she guided major changes to the companys structure, leadership team, and operations, setting the stage for HBCs successful privatization. Helena has received numerous professional honors, including being named to Fortunes Most Powerful Women in Business lists four times as well as Fast Companys Most Creative People in Business. "Im particularly proud of my role at CVS Health when I led groundbreaking efforts like removing all tobacco products from every one of our eight thousand stores. We declined to put her on the spot by asking her to identify her preferred East Side CVS. (Walgreens didnt launch a customer loyalty program until 2012, but its Balance Rewards has grown rapidly and now has 86 million members.). The overhaul that Foulkes is leading in the retail business is about extending those gains. Helena Foulkes, a former CVS Health executive who joined the race in October, has hired political operative Sam Rivers as her new campaign manager, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday. She has published widely on topics in the areas of child and adolescent development; family studies; two-generation education programs and policy; poverty and social inequality; and the resilience of children and parents facing economic hardship. Foulkes has been at the forefront of CVSs efforts to boost adherence. That could be valuable as her opponents portrayher as a candidateof big business and attackpolitical contributions made while sitting on the corporate boards of companies like Home Depot. As the crow flies, its roughly 3,700 miles from the North Pole to the headquarters of CVS Health (CVS) in Woonsocket, R.I., just outside Providence. Foulkes stands in front of the pharmacy counter at a 10,000-square-foot mock-up store on the campus of the CVS Health headquarters in Woonsocket, R.I. As an undergrad econ major at Harvard, she impressed her thesis adviser, Larry Summers, as being extraordinarily effective.Photograph by Joe Pugliese for Fortune Magazine. While the company hasnt announced a formal succession plan, its clear that Foulkes would be a leading candidate to eventually replace Merlowith an emphasis on eventually. Rhode Island Gov. She is the granddaughter of Thomas J. Dodd and niece of Chris Dodd, both of them were U.S. senators from Connecticut. The competition for those lucrative prescriptions will go a long way toward determining who wins in the drugstore business long-term. Im looking more and more like my mom (the late Martha Buonanno)., If you were recruiting executives to CVS to relocate to Rhode Island, which East Side street would you show them to entice them to relocate?Three streets, if I could, she says. Instead of steel drums, he ran theOld Fox Fertilizer Co. of East Providence,which briefly competed with lawn-care giant Scott'sfertilizer in the 1980s. And it has been an essential tool in helping CVS personalize offers to customers while also providing a trove of data to CVS about their shopping habits. What is your favorite aisle in CVS?Skin care. He asked her to come up with products that would show the value of the CVS/Caremark merger, which was being criticized by Wall Street. Walgreens has suffered from some missteps in recent years. When the deal closes, CVS will have about 9,600 pharmacy locationseach one an outlet for reaching consumers with the message that CVS has their health in mind. On March 13, she stepped down, having achieved a number of wins . [1], In 2011, CVS made Foulkes its chief health care strategy and marketing officer, a new position created for her. Posted: Oct 12, 2021 / 06:49 PM EDT. qs=qs.substring(0,qs.length-1); In 2014, Fortune ranked Foulkes the 26th most powerful woman after CVS stores, under her leadership, stopped selling tobacco products. I was better than Providence.. "She is definitelyabout simplicity in finding solutions that don't make things more complicated than they are.". Foulkes, who has never run for public office before, is betting that her business acumen running multi . Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg via Getty Images. 2. ExtraCare now has 70 million active members (defined as people who have used it in the past six months). "Along the way, I held nearlyevery leadership position, including president of retail,where I was responsible for 200,000 employees and $80 billionin revenue. She lost in the Democratic primary on September 13, 2022. Who, specifically, was encouraging her to run? She is particularly taken with a new display for Makeup Academy, or MUA, a leading CVS store brand of beauty products. Rhode Island Primary Voting Guide:Everything you need to know to get your ballot. The company ranked No. A member of the boards subcommittee on visitation, she is past chair of the visiting committee for the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has also served on the visiting committees for Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Some 20 million customers now use Maintenance Choice. Speaking of which, Foulkes was the one who launched the Pharmacy Advisor program as well. She views her annual checkup as a time to reflect on how things could have been a lot worse. "Around the Water Cooler With CVS Caremark's Helena Foulkes", "CVS Health chief: Consumers care more about wallet than health", "CVS Caremark to stop selling tobacco products", "Saks Owner Hudson's Bay Appoints CVS Executive Helena Foulkes as CEO", "CVS Health exec named CEO of department store giant", "Hudson's Bay Poaches Helena Foulkes From CVS", "New Hudson's Bay CEO Helena Foulkes says 'no sacred cows' as retailer seeks elusive turnaround", "WSJ News Exclusive | CEO of Saks Parent to Step Down", "Hudson's Bay CEO Helena Foulkes on the way out as retailer prepares to go private", "Helena Foulkes to Serve as Harvard Board of Overseers President", "Helena Foulkes kicks off run for RI governor", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helena_Foulkes&oldid=1139351785, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 14 February 2023, at 18:00. 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