Sarah Davis, president of Loblaw Companies Limited, has been named among Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International 2020.
Every year Fortune scans the globe to highlight the most powerful women in business based outside the United States. While women remain vastly under‐represented in C‐suites around the world—helming just 13 of the world’s 500 largest companies, there are markedly more female executives each year taking their place at the highest ranks of corporate power.
Davis ranked 25th on the list of 50 women and was the only women in Canada in the ranking.
According to Fortune, Davis is “a self-described “mathy” executive at the top of Loblaw Companies—which comprises nearly 2,400 grocery stores and pharmacies across Canada…and is the data-obsessed president behind the nuts and bolts of the group, which brought in over $36 billion last year. That includes a push to expand the group’s e-commerce business, a fortuitous decision ahead of the pandemic. The company saw basket sizes quadruple in the early days of the pandemic. While online sales had already nearly doubled year on year in 2019, sales were up by 280% in just the second quarter of 2020. It hasn’t been easy to capitalize on that jump: the costs of safeguarding employees and customers has largely reversed profit gains—but the nature of shopping has changed for good.”
