Walgreens’ marketing, digital chief departs for Kohl’s
DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreens’ president of digital and chief marketing officer, Sona Chawla, is departing the company to become COO at Kohl’s, where she will report to the company’s longtime CEO Kevin Mansell. Even before she begins at Kohl’s on Nov. 30, the company is mentioning her along with chief merchandising and customer officer Michelle Gass as potential successors to Mansell.
For the past seven years, Chawla has held various senior leadership roles at Walgreens, including president of e-commerce, a title she held before her current one. During her tenure with Walgreens, Kohl’s said Chawla led a team responsible for developing the company’s industry-leading digital innovations that significantly enhanced such core aspects of customer experience as refilling prescriptions in seconds, printing photos from smartphones directly to stores, enabling seamless shopping through the integration of the Walgreens loyalty program, coupons and mobile payments in-store and launching digital health coaching and telehealth.
“We’ve never been more clear about the future of the company or the types of leaders that we need in place to deliver against our vision and Sona is exactly the right leader to join us,” Mansell said. “(She) will lead the seamless integration of all of our operations – from our stores to our website to all of our digital touchpoints with our customers. Her depth of experience in retail and her understanding of how to fully integrate technology and e-commerce into a retail experience will help Kohl’s elevate our customer conveniences across all channels.”
Chawla will join Kohl’s on Nov. 30 with responsibility for Kohl’s full omnichannel operations, store operations, logistics and supply chain network, information and digital technology, e-commerce strategy, planning and operations, and store construction and design. Her hiring is the result of a search that Mansell described as exhaustive and dynamic.
“As our future vision for Kohl’s developed under our Greatness Agenda, the search for this role dramatically evolved. We saw an enormous opportunity to create something truly unique in retail – a leader that has oversight for the full omnichannel experience,” Mansell said. “When stores, online and digital teams are not just compatible but truly integrated, new thinking and new ways of delivering a seamless customer experience emerge.”
Before joining Walgreens, Chawla was VP global online business at Dell, and before Dell she worked at Wells Fargo’s Internet Services Group and Andersen Consulting and Mitchell Madison Group.