Walmart's McLaughlin to Deliver Next 'Food for Thought' Lecture

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Kathleen McLaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation and senior vice president for Walmart Global Sustainability

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Kathleen McLaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation and senior vice president for Walmart Global Sustainability, will provide this year’s second “Food for Thought” lecture.

The lecture series is sponsored by the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas

McLaughlin will speak at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, in Hembree Auditorium (Room E107) in the Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences Building. Her lecture is titled “Business and Society in the Next Decade: Using Scale and Capabilities to Address the Complex Problems Facing the World.”

McLaughlin’s visit is open to all students, faculty and staff, as well as the public. “Food for Thought” is a Bumpers College Honors Student Board lecture series.

The series focuses on food, family and the environment, which corresponds with the goal of the Bumpers College to advance the business of foods and the impact of foods on human health, environmental sustainability and human quality of life.

McLaughlin joined Walmart in October 2013. In addition to her role with the foundation, she also leads Walmart’s global sustainability and women’s economic empowerment initiatives.

In 2013, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation gave $1.3 billion in cash and in-kind contributions around the world, topping the 2012 total by more than $244 million.

Walmart also recognizes environmental sustainability as essential in doing business responsibly and successfully. The world’s largest retailer has three aspirational goals related to sustainability:

• Energy, to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy
• Waste, to create zero waste
• Products, to sell products that sustain people and the environment

McLaughlin spent more than 20 years with the consulting firm McKinsey & Company where she was a senior partner based in Toronto. As director of the firm’s Social Innovation Practice, she helped develop solutions to social challenges for institutions around the world. She led numerous successful engagements such as accelerating country ownership of the HIV/AIDS response in Africa; redesigning the global organization of a major foundation to improve its effectiveness; and helping an international agency develop a strategy to engage the private sector in advancing nutrition.

In the firm’s Retail Practice division, she worked with companies in the Americas, Europe and Asia to increase efficiency and drive growth by expanding into emerging markets; defending home markets against foreign competitors; revamping retail formats; introducing new categories; launching new formats; overhauling marketing, merchandising and store operations functions; and leading large-scale cost reduction efforts resulting in 15 to 20 percent improvements.

McLaughlin earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Boston University. She was a Rhodes Scholar, and earned a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics, and a diploma in theology from Oxford University.

She served as a director of the Toronto Community Foundation for 10 years, where she held various roles including chair of the Community Issues Committee that oversaw initiatives and grant-making to Toronto nongovernmental organizations that address poverty, hunger, housing and immigrant integration issues.

Previous speakers in the “Food for Thought” series, which was created in 2013, include U.S. Sen. John Boozman; Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development; and Charlie Arnot, CEO of the Center for Food Integrity.