The Great Resignation is over — unless you’re a retail CEO

A number of high-profile retailers — including Kohl’s, Ulta and Kroger — said goodbye to their top brass in 2025. Retail companies have reported 41 CEO exits year-to-date, a 116% increase from the 19 during the same period in 2024. That makes retail the top industry for CEO turnover this year. Financial firms have seen a 19% increase in CEO departures year-to-date, while CEO exits at entertainment and leisure companies are up 22% from last year. CEO turnover in other industries is in the single digits.

“Overall CEO exits are up, but retail really stands out,” said Andrew Challenger, workplace and labor expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

While the “Great Resignation” among rank-and-file workers has largely receded with the pandemic, leadership experts say a similar phenomenon is now unfolding at the top, with retail CEOs under growing pressure to deliver results in a volatile economy.

The surge in retail CEO turnover shows how much harder the job has become and how few leaders are ready for what it now demands. Running a retailer today means doing far more than picking products and forecasting demand. Now, top executives are also expected to master e-commerce alongside brick-and-mortar stores, navigate major geopolitical events like trade wars and pandemics, and steer long-term transformations around cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence — all while maintaining profitability in an industry that famously operates on razor-thin margins.

“It almost feels like the retail CEO’s job in 2025 has been a marathon run, but at a sprinter’s pace,” said Norm Yustin, global omnichannel retail and luxury practice leader at Russell Reynolds Associates, a leadership advisory firm.

Shorter ‘prove-it’ clocks

While many baby boomers are approaching retirement age, that’s not the only driver of retail CEO turnover. Sixty-four percent of retail CEO departures this year were unplanned, including removals, abrupt retirements and internal role shifts — while just 29% were part of a planned succession, according to Russell Reynolds.

Last month, Maly Bernstein, who served as Bluemercury’s CEO for four years, stepped down. A spokesperson for Bluemercury parent company Macy’s described Bernstein’s departure as a “personal decision.” In January, Ulta Beauty announced that it was promoting Kecia Steelman to the CEO role, effective immediately, while Dave Kimbell, who was Ulta’s CEO for four years, would retire. And in May, Ashley Buchanan was abruptly fired after only 100 days as Kohl’s CEO, after the department store found he had channeled millions of dollars of business to a paramour.

As President Donald Trump’s trade war raises concerns about inflation, an economic downturn and a dip in consumer spending, leadership experts told Modern Retail that periods of economic uncertainty often lead to CEO turnover. Target, which has seen sales slide as consumers cut back on discretionary spending, is one of the most prominent examples. The retailer announced in August that longtime executive Michael Fiddelke will succeed Brian Cornell as CEO in early 2026.

Yustin said many boards are using this period of uncertainty to swap in leaders with new skill sets, particularly those versed in technology and automation.

“It’s not just a natural evolution of leadership cycles,” said Yustin. “Quick changes in strategy require different leadership skills.” Retail CEOs, Yustin said, are being asked to modernize how their companies operate, from AI adoption to digitization, even as boards expect them to keep profits steady in the meantime. “There are shorter ‘prove-it’ clocks,” he said. “Boards are shortening the runway to these turnarounds or transformations.”

One CEO who is the midst of leading a major turnaround, with a focus on technological innovation, is Kelly Cook, who started as chief executive at David’s Bridal in April. David’s Bridal has filed for bankruptcy twice in five years, most recently in 2023. With nearly 200 stores across the U.S. and Canada and around 5,000 employees, the retailer is betting on a new strategy dubbed “Aisle to Algorithm.” The AI-driven push aims to expand the company beyond gowns into a digital marketplace for all things wedding-related. When Cook spoke with Modern Retail in July for a separate interview, she acknowledged that “there’s a lot of demands at this job” but also, “it’s very hard to not be incredibly passionate about this industry.”

Retail CEOs like Cook are under intense pressure to perform in 2025, which may explain why tenure in the consumer sector is so abbreviated compared to other industries. Russell Reynolds data show that the average tenure for a chief executives across industries has dropped from 7.7 years to 6.8 years. In retail, half serve less than four years.

The new skill set

In turn, the profile of a retail chief has changed dramatically.

For years, traditional retail companies gravitated toward hiring merchants to run their companies, according to Craig Rowley, senior client partner at Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm. Retailers wanted a leader with specific functional expertise, such as sourcing and buying merchandise. “That skill set doesn’t necessarily go away,” but it’s become less important to retail leadership, he said.

Now, boards are focused less on functional skills and more on a prospective chief’s “vision,” Yustin said. Today, retailers are looking for CEOs with diverse experiences across operations, digital, marketing and more. “Retail CEOs now need to be technologists, in addition to merchants, in addition to mark marketers, in addition to supply chain leaders,” Yustin said.

But finding the right “hybrid leader,” as Yustin called it, with sufficiently diverse experience, has narrowed the talent pool considerably, creating what he described as a “unicorn scarcity of finding these leaders that are really multifaceted and multi-dimensional.”

Retailers have started looking for executives outside the industry. In January, Peter Stern took the reins at Peloton. His prior experience includes leadership roles at Ford, where he specialized in hardware, software and series, and Apple, where he managed the company’s subscription businesses, including Apple TV+, Apple Fitness+ and iCloud. Peloton pointed to Stern’s experience with “scaling differentiated technology-oriented platforms” when it announced his appointment.

Kroger has been conducting a search for a new CEO since the abrupt resignation of former CEO Rodney McMullen in March following a board of directors investigation into his conduct, which the company said violated its business ethics policy. The grocer’s Chief People Officer told the Cincinnati Business Courier that the company’s next CEO will be the first in the company’s 143-year history to be selected from outside the company.

Leadership experts said they expect high levels of CEO turnover at retailers to persist or even accelerate thanks to ongoing uncertainties like tariffs and AI. “Until those actually stabilize a little bit, there will be turnover,” Yustin said.

Crowley agreed. As he put it, “It’s going to be a wild ride for the next five years.”