Walgreens Retail President And Chief Customer Officer Tracey Brown: The C-Suite Interview

“If you are able to really figure out what your purpose is and then align that with your passion and position, great things will happen.”

In some ways, Tracey Brown’s path to the Walgreens C-suite began two decades ago when she became pregnant with her daughter. Brown contracted gestational diabetes, which then became the type 2 diabetes (T2D) that she had to manage while taking on ever-bigger leadership roles.

Brown left the private sector in 2018 to be CEO of the American Diabetes Association, coming back late last year to be president of Walgreens retail and its first chief customer officer. Her mission: To oversee the transformation of Walgreens to a healthcare company.

She’s confident that it will happen: : “The transformation of healthcare starts with community—and who better to serve that community than a company with 9,000 locations? “

Brown, who was recently named to Forbes 2022 CEO Next list of leaders likely to lead some of America’s largest companies, sat down with Forbes to talk about her career, her industry and what’s on her radar as the next disruption to business.