Starbucks chief operating officer Rosalind Brewer continues to open new routes for the American corporation.
In late February, Brewer, who is the coffee company’s first black COO and first woman, will leave her position to take on the position of CEO of the Walgreens pharmacy chain. In this new role, she will be the only black woman currently serving as CEO of Fortune 500 and only the third black woman to run a Fortune 500 company in history. Ursula Burns, who served as Xerox’s CEO from 2009 to 2016, was the first, and Mary Winston, who served as interim CEO at Bed Bath & Beyond in 2019, was second.
Prior to joining Starbucks in 2017, Brewer spent five years as CEO of Samm Club, owned by Walmart. As a longtime executive in the American corporation, she has spoken openly about the bias and challenges she has faced as one of the few black women in Suite C.
Starbucks chief operating officer and group president Rosalind “Roz” Brewer speaks at the annual shareholders ’meeting in Seattle, Washington, on March 20, 2019.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
“When you’re a black woman, you’re very wrong,” she said during a 2018 speech to her alma mater Spelman College, which is a women-exclusive HBCU. “You get it wrong like someone who really couldn’t have such an important job. Sometimes you get confused with kitchen help. Sometimes people assume you’re in the wrong place and all I can think about in the back of my head is, ‘No , you are in the wrong place “.
During the speech, Brewer recalled the time she was invited to an exclusive CEO roundtable in New York City when she served as general manager of Sam’s Club. During the reception, he said, he met a fellow CEO and introduced himself in the same way the other men in the room had introduced themselves, “Roz Brewer of Sam’s Club.” After exchanging presentations, he said the fellow CEO asked him what he was doing at the company and asked if he was directing marketing. Bewildered by the question, as the invitation to the event claimed it was a roundtable for CEOs, Brewer says she responded by saying, “No, that’s part of my organization.”
After the man continued the conversation by asking him if he was working in merchandising, Brewer said he gave a “side eye” to the fellow executive, as he actually served as the principal for the event. “I enjoyed his appearance when my biography was read,” he said. “It was a good day.”
Brewer, listed at number 48 on the Forbes 2020 Power Women list, explained that the CEO’s roundtable was one of many incidents in which bias has been found inside and outside of work. “If there’s a place where there’s no bias, I haven’t found it,” he said.
Recognizing that many women experience bias and gender discrimination in the workplace, Brewer said her biggest message for women in the business is to “stand firm” and know that “your voice matters.”
“Sometimes you get it wrong and there are some ways to clean up your mistakes,” he told TV host Shaun Robinson in a December 2020 Facebook interview. “First of all, he admits you made the mistake. “But keep using your voice.”
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