Ex-Bainee Lori Flees appointed CEO of Valvoline
Lori Flees, a former partner at Bain & Company, has been appointed CEO of Valvoline, a Lexington, KY-headquartered retail automotive services company.
Flees, who joined the firm last year as president of retail services, succeeds Sam Mitchell, who will retire on September 30, 2023.
Mitchell has led Valvoline since 2016, when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2022, the company announced the sale of its automotive lubricant division to Saudi Aramco for $2.65 billion.
Valvoline today operates and franchises more than 1,800 service center locations. It is the second-largest oil change service provider in the US, with a 10% market share.
"On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Sam for his leadership of Valvoline for the last 21 years,” Rich Freeland, chairman of the Valvoline board of directors, said. “During this time, Sam has led the Company through a period of exceptional growth and performance, which included a very successful IPO in 2016, and most recently, the restructuring and separation of Valvoline's Retail Services and Global Products businesses.”
As president of retail services for the past year, Flees led operations and drove top- and bottom-line growth to record highs. She will continue to serve as president.
Before joining Valvoline, Flees spent eight years at Walmart, latterly serving as SVP and COO of the health & wellness business – which spans the company’s pharmacy, vision center, insurance brokerage, and digital businesses across 4,800 locations.
Before that, Flees spent 17 years at Bain & Company, where she was a partner leading engagements in strategic and operational performance improvement. Earlier in her career, she was a senior business analyst at Intel.
Flees has an MBA from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in management systems from Kettering University.
“Lori's experience in strategy development, incubating innovative retail capabilities, and her deep consumer focus make her the ideal choice to oversee Valvoline's next phase of growth as a pure-play retailer," Freeland said.
