Mar 14, 2019, 3:43 PM ETFireside Chat, Interview

Rosalind Brewer: COO and Group President, Starbucks

Roz Brewer was born and raised in Detroit during a post-Civil Rights era, though her family viewed this period as "glorious" due to the economic boom in the local auto industry.
Her parents, originally from Alabama, were blue-collar workers in the auto sector who did not attend college; Brewer and her four siblings were the first generation in their family to earn degrees.
Brewer spent summers as an intern in General Motors' chemistry and R&D departments, gaining early exposure to the automotive industry.
She attended Spelman College, a historically Black women's college (HBCU), which she credits as the "single most effective factor" in her professional trajectory outside of her upbringing.
During her sophomore year, while her father was diagnosed with cancer and passed away six weeks before her graduation, Spelman faculty and staff provided critical support, including rescheduling her GMAT and exams.
Brewer attributes her academic success in rigorous courses like organic physical chemistry and calculus to faculty mentorship, specifically noting a professor who took a personal interest in her learning.

Brewer began her professional career at Kimberly-Clark as an organic chemist and bench chemist, working for four and a half years in research and development.
She transitioned from science to business leadership without an MBA by joining the M&A team to value patent estates, where she developed financial acumen and collaborated with finance professionals.
By the time she joined her third or fourth acquisition, she was asked to run business units, marking her permanent shift to the business side of the company.
She joined Walmart, eventually becoming the President and CEO of Sam's Club, where she was the first woman and the first Black person to lead one of the company's segments.
During a 2015 CNN interview, Brewer stated that "diversity makes good business sense" after witnessing sales drops caused by a homogenous leadership team failing to reflect a diverse customer base.
The comment sparked a significant backlash; while the Target CEO received praise for a similar statement on the same program, Brewer faced a "hellstorm" of criticism.
Walmart publicly stood behind Brewer "2000 percent," validating her assertion that diverse leadership correlates with better performance.

Brewer met Howard Schultz at a Walmart leadership series in 2017, where a planned 25-minute interview extended to an hour, leading to her recruitment onto the Starbucks board.
Although she initially intended to join a private equity firm, Kevin Johnson convinced her to return to corporate leadership as COO and Group President in October 2017 to align with Starbucks' mission and values.
Brewer's leadership philosophy centers on managing individuals according to their unique needs rather than applying a "cookie-cutter" approach, emphasizing that work and life are interconnected.
In April 2018, two Black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks for loitering without purchasing, an incident Brewer felt personally and professionally responsible for addressing.
Brewer traveled to Philadelphia within 36 hours of the incident to meet with the two men and apologize, acknowledging a "failure in leadership" regarding police intervention policies.
In response to the incident, Starbucks closed 8,000 U.S. stores on May 29 for a day of racial bias training, developed internally rather than using external vendors.
The company instituted mandatory annual and monthly diversity training modules to ensure the conversation around bias remains active among all employees.

Following the crisis management efforts at Starbucks, Brewer joined the Amazon board of directors, a move that generated headlines focused on her identity as a Black woman rather than her qualifications.
Brewer stated that she still hopes for a future where her race and gender joining a major board are considered "boring" and unremarkable, noting that "our work is never done."
In her 2018 Spelman commencement address, Brewer defined her generation of Black women as "Generation P" (Perseverance) and the next generation as "Generation Q" (Quest), urging them to pursue their goals believing doors are open.
Brewer emphasized that despite progress in diversity numbers, Black women still frequently face being mistaken for support staff in executive settings, citing an anecdote where a man asked if she worked in marketing at a CEO summit.