Senior Director, Format Strategy and Design

Job Summary

Role leads the vision, strategy, and ensures execution of Unified Design Standards across Walgreens’ retail, pharmacy, healthcare retail and non-retail spaces. Ensures environment is relevant, high-quality, and aligned with the brand. This role drives the innovative adaptation and rollout of new store concepts and formats, partnering cross-functionally to deliver cohesive, customer-centric experiences that support broader business goals.
Overseeing a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, and designers, this role manages the entire design lifecycle (from concept through execution), while ensuring alignment with company standards, business objectives, and regulatory requirements. This role guides multiple concurrent programs, balancing creativity with operational excellence, and empowering the team to deliver impactful, future-forward design solutions that advance Walgreens’ long-term vision.

• Leads a team of architects, engineers, and designers to drive innovation and creativity in current and future building design. Develops strategy to design new/innovative building designs. Drives innovation/creativity of new and remodel designs.
• Responsible for leading the all-encompassing design, focusing on strategic business needs. Elevate design and upload aspirations and rapid evolution of an enduring brand.
• Subject Matter Expert in the stated discipline supporting current technical needs & requirements to the overall Property and Real Estate organization assuring best in class design to provide a competitive advantage.
• Responsible to ensure Walgreens is on the leading edge of store formats for both the front-end retail as well as healthcare and pharmacy services lines of business.
• Creates and maintains Company Unified Design Standards, which is comprised of Design Guidelines, Brand Guidelines, Architecture and Engineering Standards, Building Criteria, Specifications, and Technical Manuals.
• Design and author highly influential program and projects with specific and broad reaching applications.
• Leads change management of the Company Unified Design Standards and strategizes the management of the release of quarterly updates to guidelines, scope of work documents, templates, drawings, specifications and cut sheets.
• Brings deep understanding & innovation to future enhancements within stated discipline and expertise.
• Strategic business partner across the organization—collaborating with pharmacy, healthcare, operations, and other key functions—to develop and drive design solutions that address operational challenges and business needs.
• Leads the organizational design for assigned team. Makes timely decisions on staff allocation and is adaptable to new strategy shifts. Assesses staff deficiencies in a timely manner, determines options, and makes appropriate decisions.
• Leads by example and sets the tone for a collaborative spirit for the team. Provides transparent leadership approach to delivering news and holding team accountable in delivery of all projects. Sets a high bar to build new muscle for the timely delivery of projects, challenging all aspects of convention to deliver with speed, quality, and completeness.
• Develops and mentors staff through on-boarding, open communication, training and development opportunities and performance management processes; builds and inspires employee morale and motivation; ensures the team is appropriately staffed with required competencies; fosters a diverse and inclusive workplace.
• Continuously improves processes and negotiates with internal and external business partners to value engineer in order to optimize total cost of ownership.
• Drives business objectives at the highest possible quality and within established budgets. Uses a balance of innovation, analytics, and feedback to establish policies and procedures to ensure best in class customer service for our internal and external partners.
• Subject matter expert in the negotiation consultant contracts and lead teams of licensed building design professionals retained for the development of the Company Unified Design Standards.
• Aligns and contributes to enterprise wide strategy and vision. Participates in establishing annual divisional goals, setting the business strategy and driving organizational vision and creative direction to differentiate against competitors and establish a distinctive advantage. Provides consultative leadership to achieve cross- functional alignment and collaboration necessary to execute strategy.
• Leads identification of new, more efficient ways of delivering projects and programs. Looks outside the business for new methods which can be adopted to deliver best in class design.
• Maintains strong industry ties with leaders from external execution forms to ensure WBA is delivering using the latest and best in class methods.

Founded in 1901, Walgreens (www.walgreens.com) has a storied heritage of caring for communities for generations and proudly serves nearly 9 million customers and patients each day across its approximately 8,500 stores throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and leading omni channel platforms. Walgreens has approximately 220,000 team members, including nearly 90,000 healthcare service providers, and is committed to being the first choice for retail pharmacy and health services, building trusted relationships that create healthier futures for customers, patients, team members and communities.
Walgreens is the flagship U.S. brand of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA), an integrated healthcare, pharmacy and retail leader. Its retail locations are a critical point of access and convenience in thousands of communities, with Walgreens pharmacists playing a greater role as part of the healthcare system and patients care teams than ever before. Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy provides critical care and pharmacy services to millions of patients with rare disease states and complex, chronic conditions.

The actual salary an employee can expect to receive, plus bonus pursuant to the terms of any bonus plan if applicable, will depend on experience, seniority, geographic location, and other factors permitted by law. To review benefits, please visit jobs.walgreens.com/benefits More Company information is available at www.walgreensbootsalliance.com.

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 8 years of experience in Project Management, Construction Management, Engineering, Design and/or Architecture or High/School/GED and at least 11 years of experience in Project Management, Construction Management, Engineering, Design and/or Architecture.
• At least 8 years of experience managing and working with construction, design and engineering practices including budgeting, estimating and scheduling.
• At least 8 years of experience managing and working with design concepts, construction plans and specifications.
• At least 8 years of experience managing and working with architectural/engineering site plan design, including items such as cost and quality control, material/equipment installation, bidding practices, material and labor costs.
• At least 5 years of experience directly managing people-managers; including hiring, developing, motivating, and directing people as they work.
• Experience diagnosing, isolating, and resolving complex issues and recommending and implementing strategies to resolve problems
• Experience in creation of design concept through implementation while demonstrating 3D visualization ability and working knowledge of color and design principles.
• Exceptional communication, negotiation, and stakeholder influence skills, with a history of effective collaboration across senior leadership and external partners to successfully deliver capital projects on time and within budget.
• Intermediate level skill in Microsoft Word (for example: inserting headers, page breaks, page numbers and tables and/or adjusting table columns).
• Intermediate level skill in Microsoft Excel (for example: using SUM function, setting borders, setting column width, inserting charts, using text wrap, sorting, setting headers and footers and/or print scaling).
• At least 5 years of experience contributing to financial decisions in the workplace.
• At least 5 years of direct leadership, indirect leadership and/or cross- functional team leadership.
• Willing to travel up to 25% of the time for business purposes (within state and out of state)

• Experience in retail / healthcare industry.
• Experience on both the owner and consultant side of management.
• Master’s degree in architecture, Engineering, Construction Management, or Business Administration.
• Certified as a Licensed Architect or Professional Engineer
• Certification in Project Management (PMP) as granted by PMI.
• Member of USGBC and LEED Accredited Professional.
• Experience utilizing CAD, Revit, Sketch-up, Adobe InDesign and rendering programs such as Enscape.

We will consider employment of qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.