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Meet Walmart heir Stewart Walton. He is the most powerful board member you may have never heard of. With some traditional family relationships, he is one of two current family members of Walmart’s board of directors, the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who founded the retailer in 1962. But, most of the focus is Stewart Walton, the 43-year-old may be destined to oversee family wealth. Now, the family owns about 45% of Walmart shares, worth $330 billion for those who keep track of it. CEO Doug McMillan told Yahoo Finance that having such an active family member on the board was a “huge advantage and very positive word” for him. It is helpful to have a long-standing major shareholder, caring about our colleagues and our culture. Stewart joined the board in 2016 and in a rare interview with Yahoo Finance, he said it was something he had always been eager to do. He told me that the family conducted this internal governance process for those interested in joining. Raise your hand, this is the first step. Then there are a lot you need to do to qualify, which is part of a longer process that takes years. Marissa Mayer, current Walmart board member and former Yahoo CEO, told Yahoo Finance that the Walton family has an impressive deal to raise their families. She said they gave seminars and even management coaches. She also said that if they want to join the board, they encourage them to earn a degree, law degree, MBA and research business. And we also learned that they had to work at Walmart sometime in their careers. Now, Marissa Mayer, she sits on the committee of Chairman Walton. This is the Technology and E-Commerce Committee. He was joined by KPMG’s retired chairman and CEO Timothy Flynn, retired chairman of Pricewaterhousecoopers, Bob Moritz, and Starbucks CEO Brian Nichol. While board members such as Stewart and others are not actively managing day-to-day operations, a retail analyst told Yahoo Finance, “They need to oversee operations to make sure things are going in the right direction and how capital is spent and allocated.” Now, it is also crucial to hire the right people to run the business, he said, probably a priority, especially because it aims to compete with something Sam Walton might never have thought: Amazon. On Walmart’s high heels, that’s nearly $200 trillion in market value. Or other major challenges, such as President Trump’s tariffs, have fought a cultural war with Walmart withdrawing its inclusion efforts in diversity equity or ensuring that it stays in sync with AI. When Yahoo Finance asked Stewart what he did with the global company with 2.1 million workers in nearly 11,000 stores, he called it an incredible person every day when he thought about working day after day. The concept could soon be in his hands, as he might be the next concept for Walmart’s board chairman. This is something we need to pay attention to, but it will take a while. For more information about his efforts, Stewart Walton, which includes making Northwest Arkansas a destination for cycling and aviation, and more, check out our full story on yahoofinance.com.
