Appoints New Board Member and CIO with Deep IT Experience in Health care and Retail, and Kinds Finance and Technologies Committee on Board
DEERFIELD, Unwell. – Sept. 8, 2022 – Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) nowadays introduced that it is further strengthening its leadership to deliver outstanding activities and companies for people and consumers, with world-class technological know-how and innovation as the backbone.
WBA has appointed Inderpal Bhandari to its board of directors and Hsiao Wang as senior vice president and main information and facts officer (CIO), bringing deep technological know-how knowledge in the healthcare and retail sectors. The company’s board of administrators has also fashioned a finance and technological know-how committee to give even bigger target to this critical perform.
“We are building remarkable development on our strategic priorities, including reworking and aligning our core business enterprise and constructing our future progress motor with consumer-centric health care answers. With today’s bulletins, we are moving into our following stage of execution and elevating our abilities even further,” explained Roz Brewer, CEO, WBA.
“We want to welcome Inderpal to our board and Hsiao to our Executive Management Staff. They are both equally extremely gifted leaders and technologists. Jointly with our board’s new finance and technology committee, they will be instrumental to obtaining our ambitions and truly differentiating Walgreens Boots Alliance in how we supply the health care of the potential.”
Inderpal Bhandari Joins WBA Board
Inderpal Bhandari has served as IBM’s international chief data officer considering that 2015. In this situation, Bhandari is liable for the company’s knowledge system, which is significant to IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI leadership. His core knowledge is in transforming facts into organization value and bettering consumer ordeals by providing strategic and revolutionary abilities that use analytic insights to allow advancement and productiveness.
Above Bhandari’s four-10 years profession, he has created an extensive IT history, notably in the healthcare sector, in roles these types of as main details officer at Cambia Well being Options, Express Scripts and Medco Wellbeing Alternatives. Bhandari retains a few sophisticated levels: a Medical doctor of Philosophy in Pc Engineering from Carnegie Mellon College, Learn of Science in Personal computer Engineering from University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Know-how and Science, Pilani.
He was named U.S. Chief Info Officer of the Calendar year by the CDO Club in 2017 and 1 of Corinium’s Top 100 Innovators in Information and Analytics in 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2020, he was also appointed as one particular of the World Prime 100 Information Visionaries by Truata.
“I’m thrilled to be signing up for the board of directors of Walgreens Boots Alliance at an amazingly thrilling time in its heritage. I imagine WBA is uniquely positioned to offer engineering-enabled health care solutions, which will finally support hundreds of thousands of persons emphasis on their health and fitness. Nothing could be additional crucial than that and I’m enthusiastic to perform with this high-caliber and talented crew to tackle some of the most complicated healthcare challenges of today,” claimed Bhandari.
Board Forms Finance and Technological know-how Committee
Efficient right away, the finance committee of Walgreens Boots Alliance’s Board of Directors has been reconstituted as the finance and technological innovation committee, reflecting the relevance and importance of technological innovation to obtaining the company’s goals. As WBA accelerates its healthcare platform and worldwide infrastructure, the committee will govern the strategic expansion of its technology, which includes important shopper initiatives, emerging innovations and sizeable developments.
Hsiao Wang Appointed CIO
Hsiao Wang will think his new function on Sept. 26, and report to Brewer as a member of the Government Management Team. He will guide the technique for WBA’s IT perform and the implementation of its technological know-how and digital innovation. He will concentrate on advancing WBA’s technological know-how system to deliver on the company’s strategic priorities, with an emphasis on its electronic practical experience for buyers and people, which include technological innovation-enabled healthcare answers for Walgreens and Walgreens Health and fitness.
Wang is an MIT-educated IT professional who specializes in the retail sector. He joins WBA from The Michaels Company where by, as executive vice president and CIO, he oversaw merchandise progress, engineering and operations for all engineering features. Prior to that, he used 16 years at Walmart in an array of roles with expanding management duty in technological innovation and IT, culminating in his position as senior vice president and chief technologies officer for Sam’s Club.
At Sam’s Club, he founded artificial intelligence, robotics, impression and speech recognition and cell abilities. He was instrumental in producing the potential of automation, made use of AI and deep learning to accelerate operations to reward the customer encounter and reduced the ordinary technological know-how merchandise enhancement time from 12-18 months to 4 weeks.
Wang is a passionate advocate for the engineering-pushed client encounter, and has deep knowledge in innovating and developing powerful, significant-executing teams. He acquired his Bachelor of Science diploma in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Engineering (MIT).
“Joining a business with this kind of solid purchaser believe in and a clear vision to be the top lover in reimagining regional healthcare and wellbeing for all is a huge option. I am enthusiastic to function with an remarkable team to lead the continued transformation of know-how and electronic innovation at WBA, as properly as unlock and develop customer-centric health care options,” mentioned Wang.
Wang succeeds Francesco Tinto, senior vice president and CIO, WBA. Tinto’s many achievements in the course of his a few years at the corporation contain expediting its electronic modernization by relocating to the Cloud, deploying SAP S/4 across all Walgreens outlets and laying the basis for a world-class electronic expertise and shopper insights system by means of expanded partnerships with Microsoft and Adobe.
“We are really thankful to Francesco for accelerating our electronic transformation, which has been integral to our company’s results. In several approaches, he and his staff have laid the groundwork that will allow our enterprise to excel even more in the long term,” claimed Brewer.
About Walgreens Boots Alliance
Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) is an built-in healthcare, pharmacy and retail chief serving millions of shoppers and clients each and every day, with a 170-year heritage of caring for communities.
A trusted, world innovator in retail pharmacy with close to 13,000 locations throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America, WBA performs a important function in the healthcare ecosystem. The enterprise is reimagining regional health care and properly-currently being for all as part of its purpose – to develop more joyful lives by way of better well being. By means of dispensing medications, improving upon obtain to a vast selection of wellbeing providers, providing higher top quality health and fitness and elegance goods, and presenting at any time, any place benefit across its electronic platforms, WBA is shaping the long run of health care.
WBA has extra than 315,000 workforce users and a presence in 9 nations around the world by its portfolio of shopper manufacturers: Walgreens, Boots, Duane Reade, the No7 Elegance Company, Benavides in Mexico and Ahumada in Chile. Furthermore, WBA has a portfolio of healthcare-concentrated investments positioned in numerous nations, including China and the U.S.
The organization is proud of its contributions to balanced communities, a nutritious earth, an inclusive place of work and a sustainable market. WBA has been acknowledged for its motivation to running sustainably: it is an index component of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) and was named to the 100 Very best Corporate Citizens 2021.
Much more firm information is available at www.walgreensbootsalliance.com.
(WBA-GEN)
WBA Media Relations
United states of america / Jim Cohn
+1 224 813 9057
International
+44 ()20 7980 8585
WBA Investor Relations
Tiffany Kanaga
+1 847 315 2922
Resource: Walgreens Boots Alliance