Kathryn McLay is stepping away from one of the most powerful jobs in global retail, wrapping up a decade-long run that helped reshape how Walmart thinks about growth, technology, and the very idea of what a “big-box” retailer can be. Her exit as president and CEO of Walmart International lands at a moment when the company is leaning harder than ever into e‑commerce, automation, and data-driven decision making, which makes the timing—and what comes next—especially interesting for anyone watching the future of retail.

Walmart made the news public on January 15, saying McLay will stay in her role until January 31 and then continue into the first quarter to help with the transition, a classic “steady the ship” move when a senior leader walks out the door. The company hasn’t named a successor yet, but has been clear that an announcement is coming “shortly,” suggesting the board and senior leadership have a shortlist—or even a preferred candidate—already in mind. In his statement, Walmart Inc. president and CEO Doug McMillon did what CEOs usually do in these moments—thank the outgoing leader for their service—but the praise went beyond boilerplate, highlighting how McLay pushed a growth agenda and delivered strong top- and bottom-line results while advancing Walmart International’s digital and technology transformation.​

If you zoom out a bit, McLay’s departure caps a pretty intense couple of years. She took over Walmart International in 2023 and was tasked with steering a sprawling portfolio of businesses across 19 countries, from big-box formats to cash-and-carry operations and e‑commerce marketplaces. That unit is strategically important even if it doesn’t always get the same headlines as Walmart U.S.—it’s where the company experiments with new formats, partnerships, and tech-heavy models that can later be imported back into the core business. Under her leadership, the company says the international arm not only grew but also sharpened its tech edge, leaning into digital tools, data, and automation to serve customers more efficiently.​

To understand why this exit matters, it helps to look at the roles that made McLay one of Walmart’s most influential internal leaders long before she took the international job. Before she went global, she was president and CEO of Sam’s Club U.S., where she and her team pulled off 12 straight quarters of double-digit sales growth—an impressive streak in any retail environment, let alone during a pandemic and amid shifting consumer behavior. That run wasn’t just about people buying more bulk toilet paper; it reflected a deliberate push on things like better merchandise quality, stronger value perception, and smoother omnichannel experiences, from curbside pickup to digital membership tools.​

Sam’s Club had historically played second fiddle to Costco in the public imagination, but under McLay, the chain quietly became one of Walmart’s standout growth stories. Revenues at Sam’s climbed roughly 40‑plus percent over about four years, hitting around $84 billion in fiscal 2023, while membership trends moved in the right direction and digital engagement tightened the loop between app, club, and checkout. That performance didn’t just look good on a spreadsheet; it gave Walmart a working playbook for how to modernize a legacy retail format with tech, data, and better curation—less “warehouse of everything,” more “club that understands what you actually want.”​

McLay’s Walmart story started back in 2015, and it’s very on-brand for how the company develops its senior talent. She came in as vice president of U.S. Finance & Strategy, helping drive a set of cross-functional initiatives aimed at transforming the Walmart U.S. business, including a program known internally as “Legacy.” From there, she moved into supply chain, redesigning how products move from suppliers to shelves, and eventually led operations for imports and reverse logistics—unsexy but absolutely critical pieces of Walmart’s promise to keep prices low and shelves stocked. In 2018, she stepped into the executive vice president role for Neighborhood Markets, overseeing hundreds of smaller-format grocery stores and showing that she could run a fast-moving, high-frequency retail operation at scale.​

What makes her résumé even more interesting is the path she took before Bentonville. She started her career in 1992 as a junior auditor at Deloitte, working across internal and external audit while finishing her studies, then moved to Qantas Airways as an internal audit manager—roles that are all about understanding risk, systems, and how big organizations really function behind the scenes. In 2001, she jumped into Australian retailer Woolworths, initially in corporate audit and then as head of group audit, before stepping into general manager roles in business development and cost-focused projects, and later broader retail and supply chain leadership positions. That mix of finance, audit, operations, and strategy is very much the template for modern retail leadership, where the job is as much about systems design and capital allocation as it is about what shows up on promotional end caps.​

In Walmart’s official announcement, McLay leans into the idea that this decade at the company was about purpose as much as performance. She talks about the “privilege” of being able to impact communities, touch lives, and serve customers and members, while emphasizing that Walmart gave her a platform to make a real difference in the world. One line stands out: she repeats her belief that “the world is a better place because Walmart is in it,” which is a pretty concise summary of the company’s own narrative about itself as a force for affordability and opportunity. Whether readers fully buy into that corporate framing is another question, but it does reflect how closely aligned she has been with Walmart’s internal culture and story.​

So what does all this mean for Walmart and for the broader retail landscape? On the one hand, leadership changes at this level are not unusual; after a decade, including multiple top-tier roles, it’s not surprising to see an executive either take a breather or go chase a new challenge elsewhere. On the other, this is happening as Walmart International is under pressure to keep finding growth in markets that are increasingly competitive, heavily regulated, and in many cases already quite mature. The next leader will inherit a business that has been tuned for growth and tech-driven transformation, but will also have to navigate geopolitical risk, currency swings, and the reality that customers everywhere want more convenience, lower prices, and better digital experiences—simultaneously.​

For McLay personally, stepping down from a role like this doesn’t usually mean disappearing from the business world. Her background—spanning Deloitte, Qantas, Woolworths, and now a decade at Walmart—positions her as the kind of executive boards look for when they need someone who can speak both the language of the CFO and of frontline operations. Whether she lands at another large retailer, moves into a different consumer-facing industry, or takes on a portfolio of board seats and advisory roles, she exits Walmart with a track record that is both financially strong and tightly linked to digital transformation, which remains a hot commodity across sectors.​

For shoppers, the immediate impact will probably feel minimal; stores stay open, apps still work, and the logo on the front doors doesn’t change. But at the strategic level, the choice of McLay’s successor will quietly shape how Walmart International deploys capital, which markets it doubles down on, and how aggressively it pushes automation, AI, and marketplace models across its portfolio. McLay’s decade at Walmart shows how much one leader can influence not just the P&L, but the way an old-school retailer evolves into something more data-driven, more digital, and, ideally, more resilient—and that’s why this departure is worth paying attention to, even if the transition itself looks smooth on the surface.​