'Ladders: Lifting As We Climb': Walgreens Boots Alliance Team Members

There’s only one way to climb a ladder, and that’s one rung at a time. It takes a courageous person to tackle that first rung, and a true leader to lift others up alongside them on the ascent.

For Black History Month, Walgreens Boots Alliance is providing a deeply personal and introspective look into what it means to have true representation and how Black history is so much more than what’s happened in the past. Black history is alive, and it is in a constant state of evolution—especially as more people of color pave the way upward for leaders of the future.

The ‘Ladders: Lifting As We Climb’ video series introduces the leaders at Walgreens Boots Alliance who have made history in their own right, whether as the first CEO of the American Diabetes Association to live with the disease, as associate counsel to President Barack Obama or, for a time, the only Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. This is as WBA continues to work toward its promise of increasing the number of leaders who are women and people of color.

In the first installment of the series, WBA team members Lisa Swift-Young, regional account executive; Antionette Jackson-Wilson, pharmacy operations manager; Cleaveland Smith, HR business partner and Kera Bussey, senior analyst, supplier diversity, discuss what Black history means to them and how it feels to see themselves reflected in their leaders.

Watch below and stay tuned for interviews with Tracey Brown, Walgreens’ chief customer officer and president of retail products, Danielle Gray, WBA’s global chief legal officer, and Roz Brewer, CEO of WBA.