Walgreens fine-tunes senior leadership, creates greater synergy between merchandising, operations arms

DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreens recently fine-tuned its merchandising leadership structure, most notably elevating Jim Jensen to VP daily living implementation and space planning, where he will be looking at maximizing merchandising initiatives against space optimization in the stores. Moe Alkemade will assume the role of general merchandise manager handling seasonal, sundries and consumables; and Beth Stiller has been named group VP retail brands and global sourcing. 

All appointments are effective Nov. 4. 

These changes are coming about as "something that both [Mark Wagner, president operations and community management] and [Alex Gourlay, EVP, president of customer experience and daily living] have been talking about [since August] in how they want to align their areas," Michael Polzin, Walgreens spokesman, explained. "It's having the right leadership in the right area."

The alignment is meant to better enhance Walgreens' ability to realize the chain's three strategic objectives — creating the Well Experience, transforming community pharmacy and establishing an efficient global platform — by better aligning Walgreens' merchandising and operations arms. 

Walgreens originally announced the enhanced Daily Living business organization in August.