Starbucks has gone just down the road to Redmond, Wash. To recruit a new board member. Late Tuesday, it announced that it had nominated Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella for a board seat.
Along with Nadella, the giant Seattle-based coffee seller tapped Rosalind Brewer, president and chief executive of Sam’s Club and executive vice president of Walmart (WMT), and Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, executive chairman of LEGO.
Nadella, according to Starbucks, will bring “extensive experience and an understanding of how technology will be used and experienced around the world.”
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The board election will take place March 22, 2017. James Shennan, a Starbucks (SBUX) director for 27 years, will retire just before that meeting, according to a Starbucks statement announcing the news.
Nadella, a self-proclaimed Starbucks fan, sits on the board of trustees at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He resigned his seat on Riverbed Technology’s board once he was named Microsoft (MSFT) chief in 2014.
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Last month, Starbucks’ two-time chief executive Howard Schultz said he is stepping down from that leadership role this year. He will be succeeded by current company president and chief operating officer Kevin Johnson, who, incidentally, is a former long-time Microsoft executive.