Gregory D. Wasson: Pharmacist At The Helm

Many corporations are run by individuals with business degrees. Some of these individuals come from well-known business schools like Harvard. Gregory D. Wasson runs a huge enterprise but his college degree was not in the field of business. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1981.

Greg worked as a pharmacy intern at a drugstore chain in 1980 while he was still a student. After earning his degree he managed several Houston drugstores for the company and was promoted to district manager in 1986. Greg was an excellent manager as evidenced by his promotion to regional vice president of store operations in 1999.

More promotions came along the way. He became vice president and executive vice president of the company’s Health Initiatives unit and pharmacy benefit manager in 2001. Other promotions included becoming company vice president in 2004 and executive vice president in 2005. Greg became company president and chief operating officer in 2007 and then appointed CEO in 2009.

Greg is not the CEO of a just a big company he’s leading the biggest one; the Walgreen Company or simply Walgreens. It is the largest drug retailing chain in the U.S. with around 8,300 stores in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.  For 2012 the company had revenue of $71.633 billion and 176,000 employees.

He may be a pharmacist by training but Greg is all business in reshaping Walgreens so it remains competitive and dominant in the decades ahead. While he can’t even get himself to gamble away $100 in a casino, Greg is different in the corporate setting spending $1.1 billion to acquire New York-based pharmacy chain Duane Reade, Inc. in 2010.

To augment Walgreen’s online presence Greg paid $429 million to buy Drugstore.com in 2011. He also led the over century old company to venture for the first time outside North America with a $6.7 billion cash-and-stock deal for 45 percent stake in Alliance Boots GmbH, the European pharmacy and health-and-beauty-retailer creating the world’s largest buyer of prescription drugs, with a network of 11,000 stores in 12 countries.

Wasson is reshaping and taking the company to new directions in a very bold manner.