Walmart announces top executive leadership changes (Updated)

Editor’s note: The story is updated with changes throughout.

Somewhat breaking from traditional succession protocol, Walmart announced Friday (Jan. 16) a new slate of C-suite executives effective Feb. 1 to start the retail giant’s fiscal year. The moves follow the retirement of Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.

John Furner, who will take over as CEO of Walmart on Feb. 1 following McMillon’s retirement, said Walmart’s executive leadership changes are expected to support customer and member experiences across its businesses and advance the company’s next phase of retail transformation.

“Over my 32 years with Walmart, I’ve seen that our people are our greatest competitive advantage,” Furner said. “These internal promotions reflect our culture of opportunity and the depth of our leadership bench. These leadership changes also mark a key step in how we organize for the future. Even the best teams need the right structure to win. As AI rapidly reshapes retail, we are centralizing our platforms to accelerate shared capabilities, freeing up our operating segments to be more focused on and closer to our customers and members.”

Walmart promoted David Guggina to CEO of Walmart U.S. Guggina joined Walmart seven years ago from Amazon, where he spent nine years in customer service operations. During his time at Walmart, Guggina has held executive roles with central operations, innovation and automation, supply chain and most recently chief e-commerce office for Walmart U.S. Prior to Amazon, Guggina worked for Anheuser-Busch. He holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business management from Purdue University.

Guggina, 40, does not have a traditional retail background, a departure from the past two Walmart U.S. CEOs. Bill Simon was the last Walmart CEO who did not have a traditional retail background.

In keeping with the traditional lines of succession, Walmart is moving Chris Nicholas, 54, into the CEO role of Walmart International. Nicholas spent the past 2.5 years as CEO of Sam’s Club. He began working in retail at age 14 in his home country of England. He was chief financial officer at Walmart International from 2020 to 2021 and deputy chief financial officer for the business from 2018 to 2020. He was director on the boards of ASDA, Walmart’s former grocery business in England, and at WalMex. The role of Walmart International CEO became available with the recent announcement that Kath McLay is leaving the company.

Walmart promoted Latriece Watkins, 49, to backfill the CEO role at Sam’s Club. Watkins is a lifer at Walmart, logging more than two decades with company following her graduating with a Juris Doctorate from the University of Arkansas in 1999. Watkins was chief merchandising officer for Walmart U.S. since May 2023, and held other senior merchandising roles since 2017. She oversaw many categories as buyer and senior merchandiser at Walmart between 2010 and 2017. She worked in store operations and the company’s real estate division, and merchandising for Sam’s Club earlier in her career.

Walmart also announced that Seth Dallaire will be promoted to executive vice president and chief growth officer for Walmart Inc., overseeing global enterprise platforms like Walmart Connect, Walmart+, Walmart Data Ventures, Vizio, and a global Marketplace platform. He joined Walmart in 2021 as chief revenue officer. Before that he spent two years at Instacart and nearly 11 years in advertising sales management roles at Amazon.

Walmart said the new executive leadership changes focus on innovations, operations and global platforms and work to fulfill the company’s people led, and tech powered mission. The company said the executive appointments also compliment existing leadership focused on talent, digital, data-driven decisions, operations excellence, and technology-enabled retail transformation.