DSN Women Leaders 2014: Judy Wray, Rite Aid

Judy Wray  is helping to reinvent the beauty experience at Rite Aid. The chain’s beauty department’s new look features a much more interactive experience and the addition of more prestige cosmetic and skin care lines. Also in select stores, Rite Aid Beauty Advisors — specially trained to assist shoppers with all the beauty brands Rite Aid carries —  offer demonstrations and education. 

Customer delight, an ever-changing category and supplier negotiations are what keep Wray excited about the business. The key to retailer-supplier success “is finding common ground for business growth between yourself and the supplier,” she said. 

 Wray got her start in the business at Hills Department stores before she met  John Jennings and Harvey Rosenthal, formerly of CVS, at a Private Label Manufacturers Association event. “They hired me to work at CVS. That gave me the opportunity to enter the drug industry,” she said. In addition to Jennings and Rosenthal, Wray said she’s been lucky to have a number of important mentors — Steve Peck, Ed Kelly, Jim Mastrian, Tony Montini [and] Jeannette Solomon; and the most important advice she ever received “is to love to win more than being afraid to lose,” she said.

However, the advice she’d give herself if she could go back in time: “make friends with Bill Gates while he was still in college,” she said. 

Wray also has a healthy work-life balance strategy: “Be 100% in the present whether you are at work or at home,” she said.

To view the full DSN Women Leaders 2014 report, click here.