Lori Flees was named chief executive officer and director of Valvoline Inc., effective October 1, 2023.

Flees joined Valvoline Inc. as president of the fast-growing retail services business in North America which operates more than 1,800 Company-owned and franchised service center locations (No. 2 in the U.S. under the Valvoline Instant Oil Change brand and No. 3 in Canada under the Valvoline Great Canadian Oil Change brand by number of stores) serving consumer and fleet customers, and nearly 300 Express Care locations.

Before joining Valvoline, she spent nearly a decade at Walmart where she, most recently, oversaw all aspects of Walmart’s health and 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 and acquisitions. She was promoted to senior vice president of next generation retail and 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. She then moved to running part of the retail operations as senior vice president and general merchandise manager 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 performed 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.

A native of Michigan, Flees holds a bachelor’s degree in management systems from Kettering University and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.