Retail Veteran Latriece Watkins Takes the Helm at Sam’s Club

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Published by Stephen Oluwadara at January 16, 2026

Watkins Career Trajectory Up Till Now

Watkins began her career at Walmart as a real estate intern in 1997 and steadily rose through the ranks, later overseeing merchandising across categories including snacks, beverages, and beauty, as well as leading key store operations.

She became its chief merchant in 2023, where she led the selection of approximately $500 billion worth of products sold by the American brand annually. During her tenure in the role, she oversaw which products were stocked on Walmart’s shelves, curating options for customers while creating new opportunities for growing businesses.

“My team and I get to choose all the items that customers experience at Walmart. We consider ourselves their personal shoppers. We love to curate an assortment,” she said at the time on Fast Company’s innovative companies podcast.

The graduate of Spelman College and the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville also succeeded in attracting more shoppers from higher-income households to Walmart. These included those earning $100,000 or more.

An Appointment to Boost Diverse Leadership

Three years after becoming chief merchant, Watkins has been promoted to CEO of Sam’s Club. She’ll have the chance to further prove her expertise by working to make Sam’s Club a sharper competitor to Costco.

With membership-based stores adopting similar business models, Walmart and Watkins hope to cut into Costco’s sales by elevating Sam’s Club’s private-label brands.

Its mainstay brand, Member’s Mark, still accounts for a third of Sam’s Club’s revenue. Given Watkins’s success with Walmart’s Bettergoods private label, her mission is to further promote Member’s Mark to shoppers.

“We are focused on the customer. We start our conversations with the customer… with what’s important to them. What are they thinking about? How can we serve them? We do that across a number of things,” Watkins said of her thought process leading merchandising at Walmart. How she handled her previous duties offers only a hint of what Sam’s Club will look like under her leadership.

There’s no doubt that innovation, especially with regard to technology, will be at the forefront of how she leads the wholesale membership club retail division. But Watkins will also be gunning for a larger market share, competing with Costco, which currently dominates the area.

Per Fast Company, that’ll likely involve continuing to develop Sam’s Club’s private label, which generates about a third of its revenue. She’ll also compete with Amazon, especially in e-commerce and convenience.

“We’re an ‘and’ company. We are execution and innovation. We are people-led and tech-powered. We are really focused on quality and value. We want to make sure the access we give is available to anyone who wants to purchase the products that we have,” Watkins said of Walmart Inc.

Her appointment to the Sam’s Club top position will take effect on February 1. This announcement also serves as a boost to diverse leadership. In the retail industry, the C-suite has often been inaccessible to Black women professionals.

According to 2023 statistics from the Women of Color Retail Alliance, obtained by the Robin Report, Black women accounted for only 1.7% of executive roles in the retail and goods industry.