00:00The future CEO of Walmart told her she was on the wrong career path, and now she leads a $96
00:04billion business. I met with Latrice Watkins, the new CEO of Sam's Club, in April. We spoke about
00:10her earliest career at Walmart and her first few months in the job as Sam's Club's CEO.
00:14Watkins started at Walmart almost three decades ago, and she started there as an intern in 1997.
00:19Watkins was an impressive young exec in the real estate division at Walmart, and then the CEO of
00:24Sam's Club at the time told her that in order to really advance as far as he thought she could
00:29go
00:29as fast as he thought she could, she needed to switch to becoming a merchant. Because at Walmart,
00:33the merchant is king or queen. Retail is what Walmart does, and if you're doing something else,
00:37you're just not at the core of the company. And the person who told her that was Doug McMillan,
00:42who then went on to be the CEO of Walmart for more than a decade and just stepped down a
00:45few months
00:45ago. Before Watkins stepped into the job, Sam's Club had already outlined a plan to double sales,
00:50profit, and membership in the next eight to ten years. And that plan is now Watkins' responsibility.
00:55And on top of that, Sam's Club has always been known as a place for experimentation and growth
01:00of technology within Walmart. Because it's a smaller business and it's not totally reliant
01:04on sales, it's also reliant on membership fees like Costco. It is a way that Walmart can innovate
01:10and try new things. So people will be looking at Watkins to develop new technology that helps
01:14Walmart compete and to probably get some more customers from Costco. Watkins is number 87 on this
01:20year's list of the 100 most powerful women in business, and you can read the full list and
01:24my story about Watkins at fortune.com.
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