Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The PUMP Act goes into effect, Vodafone gets a new CEO, and Mary Dillon is the rare woman to run two Coins2Day 500 companies. Have a meaningful Monday.
– Double duty. Last September, Mary Dillon became the CEO of Foot Locker, the struggling shoe retailer. In taking the job, Dillon achieved a milestone of sorts: The former Ulta Beauty CEO became the third woman ever to run two Coins2Day 500 companies.
Dillon, who led beauty retailer Ulta for eight years before stepping down in 2021, follows in the footsteps of Patricia Poppe, who served as CEO of CMS Energy and PG&E, and Meg Whitman, who led Hewlett Packard and eBay.
In a business world in which women currently run just 10% of Coins2Day 500 companies—and that 10% represents an all-time high—joining that club twice is a notable achievement.
My colleague Phil Wahba dives into Dillon’s career transition in a new story for Coins2Day. Instead of spending her post-Ulta life serving on boards or playing pickleball—her new passion, Phil reports—she chose to take on a second retail turnaround challenge. “I didn’t realize how much I would miss having one big thing to focus on and how much I would miss leading a retail company,” Dillon told him.
Before she became one of the retail industry’s most successful CEOs at Ulta, Dillon made a name for herself as a marketing exec at PepsiCo and McDonald’s.
Her two CEO jobs have some parallels. At Ulta, she tripled the company’s revenue to $8.6 billion and revamped the retailer’s flailing e-commerce presence. At Foot Locker, she’s now presented with similar challenges, from improving the e-commerce experience to building a stronger loyalty program; the business is around the same size with a greater international presence. Dillon says that sneakers and beauty are both “growth categor[ies].”
As for her own career trajectory, Dillon had a simple realization that helped her decide to accept a second CEO job. “I realized how much I miss running a company, and don’t laugh when I say this, but I’m not getting any younger,” she says. “So I thought, ‘If I want to take another run at a company, now’s the time to do it.'”
Read Phil’s full interview with Dillon here.
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Coins2Day’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Kinsey Crowley. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Medicare impact. Centene CEO Sarah London says that the company is "slowing down to speed up" while reformatting its Medicare programs. The Coins2Day 500 health insurance provider saw its profit floor drop after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services changed rating services and pricing determinations. Modern Healthcare
- Call on her. The new CEO of Vodafone is Margherita Della Valle, a nearly 30-year veteran of the company. She arrived at the company through its acquisition of Omnitel, which became Vodafone Italy. She's now the first woman to lead the telecom business and one of few female CEOs in the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index. Bloomberg
- PUMP Act. The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act went into effect on Friday. The law expands protections for nursing parents to salaried and other workers who don't qualify for overtime and provides legal recourse for workers whose employers don't abide by the law. While 9 million additional workers will be covered due to the PUMP Act, gig, contract, and airline crew members are still not protected. Surrogate parents or parents who have lost an infant are not covered either. The 19th
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Former Bloomin' Brands CEO Elizabeth Smith will become executive chair of Revlon's board as the company emerges from bankruptcy under new ownership.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- 'Digging deep.' Basketball player Brittney Griner said she is never going overseas to play basketball again unless it is to represent the U.S. In the Olympics. She got emotional at her first press conference since being detained for nearly 300 days in a Russian prison, saying that she had faced other tough times in life. She said the pay gap between men's and women's basketball was the reason that most players went overseas. CNN
- Maestra tequilera. Women in the tequila and mezcal industries had to overcome stereotypes informed by scantily clad women in advertisements to fight their way into leadership roles. Just 11 of the 174 registered tequila distilleries are led by women, but they are changing the industry to honor women's historical role in tequila production and advance women's economic development. Bloomberg
- On the calendar. New documents reveal further details about people who continued to meet with Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted as a sex offender. People who did not appear in Epstein's "little black book" but did have meetings scheduled with him, according to new documents, include attorney Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House official who is now a senior exec at Goldman Sachs, and Ariane de Rothschild, chief executive of the Edmond de Rothschild Group. Ruemmler said she "regret[s] ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein;" De Rothschild's bank has said she was "unaware of any questions regarding [Epstein's] personal conduct." Wall Street Journal
ON MY RADAR
Dwyane Wade and the toll of anti-trans rhetoric Washington Post
Nida Manzoor’s complicated Muslim women The New Yorker
Late Work: How the poet Jorie Graham wrote the best book of her long career Vulture
Diane Keaton: 'You’re gonna pray to get off this call' The Hollywood Reporter
PARTING WORDS
“Go into places and experiences that make you uncomfortable. That’s where the growth comes. That’s where the confidence comes.”
—Edward Jones CEO Penny Pennington on taking risks at work
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