Mike Motz
Walgreens CEO
2025 – Present
1 year (current)
Key Decisions & Impact
Motz previously ran Staples' US retail business as CEO and served as president of Canadian pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart before Sycamore Partners named him Walgreens CEO effective August 28, 2025, the same day Sycamore's roughly $10 billion take-private acquisition of Walgreens Boots Alliance completed. John Lederer, a former WBA director and senior Sycamore adviser, was named executive chairman alongside him.
Legacy
Leads Walgreens as a private standalone company after Sycamore completed the WBA acquisition, tasked with continuing the shift back toward core pharmacy execution after the VillageMD clinic strategy destroyed significant shareholder value under the prior public-company structure. His retail-turnaround background at Staples, a category facing its own long-term structural pressure from e-commerce, gave Sycamore Partners confidence he understood how to manage a mature retail chain through difficult competitive transitions. Both executives careers illustrate the increasingly common pattern of retail-industry leaders moving between adjacent but distinct categories -- pharmacy, office supplies, insurance-adjacent pharmacy benefits -- as core retail skills prove transferable across format types facing similar e-commerce competitive pressure. Both executives tenures illustrate how thoroughly private equity ownership has reshaped legacy retail-pharmacy strategy toward operational fundamentals over the ambitious healthcare-services diversification pursued in the immediately preceding public-company era.