Lori Flees was named president of Valvoline Inc. in April 2022. In her role, she oversees the fast-growing Valvoline Inc. retail services business in North America which operates more than 1,700 Company-owned and franchised service center locations (No. 2 in the U.S. under the Valvoline Instant Oil ChangeSM brand and No. 3 in Canada under the Valvoline Great Canadian Oil Change brand by number of stores), and nearly 300 Valvoline Express Care locations.
Flees joined Valvoline after spending nearly a decade at Walmart where she, most recently, oversaw all aspects of Walmart’s Health & Wellness business across more than 4,800 locations, including the COVID vaccination operations. She started at Walmart as the head of Corporate Strategy which also included responsibility for global Mergers & Acquisitions. She was promoted to Senior Vice President, Next Generation Retail & Principal, Store No 8., where she led the incubation of new retail capabilities via the deployment of emerging technologies and strategic partnerships (including Google and Microsoft). Lori then moved to running part of the retail operations as SVP and GMM for Sam’s Club Health & Wellness, the 590-site wholesale club’s pharmacy and optical business.
Prior to her leadership experience at Walmart, she spent 17 years at Bain & Company Inc., where she did a variety of work in consumer goods and services, engineering and construction, industrial manufacturing and oil and gas. Flees has extensive experience in M&A, corporate strategy, and performance improvement, including experience developing growth strategies for retailers with a combination of company-owned and franchised stores. Early in her career, she worked at Intel and at General Motors.
Flees holds a bachelor’s degree in management systems from Kettering University and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.