Walmart appoints Google exec as CTO

On May 28, 2019 Walmart announced it had appointed Suresh Kumar to a new elevated Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer role reporting directly to President and CEO Doug McMillon. Kumar joins at a time when Walmart is rapidly transforming its customer and associate experiences and brings more than 25 years of technology leadership experience coming from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM.

“The technology of today and tomorrow enables us to serve our customers and associates in ways that weren’t previously possible. We want to take full advantage of those opportunities,” said McMillon. “Suresh has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in advertising, cloud and machine learning. And, he has a track record of working in partnership with business teams to drive results,” he said.

“Walmart is one of the great success stories in how a company evolves over time to serve the changing needs of its customers, and today, it is in the midst of a very exciting digital transformation,” said Kumar. “With more than 11,000 stores, a high-growth eCommerce business and more than two million associates worldwide, the potential for technology to help people at scale is unparalleled, and I am excited to be part of this,” he said.

Kumar was most recently at Google, serving as vice president and general manager of display, video, app ads and analytics. Prior to Google, he was the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and operations. He has also worked at Amazon and was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.