Terry Lundgren
Running an institution through a structural reinvention rarely fails because the strategy is wrong. It fails because the operating model, the people, and the brand cannot move in step. Senior leaders need a credible account of what it actually takes to hold a large business together while changing what it does.
Terry Lundgren spent fourteen years as CEO of Macy’s, Inc., leading the USD 11 billion merger with The May Company and the company’s pivot to omnichannel retail, and now advises senior leaders on running institutions through structural change.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Terry Lundgren
- He executed one of the largest retail mergers in US history and rebranded more than 400 regional stores under a single national brand inside twelve months, a case study in integration that boards rarely get to hear from the person who ran it.
- He led a Fortune 100 retailer through the early omnichannel transition, making capital and organisational decisions that other CEOs were still debating.
- He sits on the board of Procter and Gamble and chairs its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, which gives him a current view of how blue-chip boards are thinking about CEO succession and operating performance.
- His Deming Cup citation from Columbia Business School recognises sustained continuous improvement at scale, not a single transformation moment, which is the harder leadership question for most enterprises.
Biography highlights
- Chairman and CEO of Macy’s, Inc. from 2003 to 2017; executive chairman until January 2018.
- Led the 2005 Federated/May acquisition, the largest US retail transaction at the time, creating a single national Macy’s brand from more than 400 regional stores.
- Director of The Procter & Gamble Company since 2013; chair of the Compensation and Leadership Development Committee.
- Executive in Residence, Columbia Business School; namesake of the Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona.
- Recipient of the National Retail Federation Gold Medal Award (2008) and the Columbia Business School Deming Cup (2012).
- Named one of Barron’s Top 30 CEOs in the World (2015) and WWD Newsmaker of the Year (2014).
Biography
Federated’s USD 11 billion acquisition of The May Department Stores Company in 2005 was, at the time, the largest retail transaction in US history. Inside a year, more than 400 regional department stores across the country had been rebranded under the Macy’s name. Terry Lundgren was the CEO who ran that integration.
He had joined Federated in 1975, run Bullocks Wilshire at 35, served as Chairman and CEO of Neiman Marcus, and returned to Federated in 1994. By the time he became CEO of Macy’s, Inc. in 2003, he had spent almost three decades inside the operating layer of American retail.
The fourteen years that followed are the substance of his speaking work. He launched the “My Macy’s” localisation programme in 2008, an early answer to the question of how a national chain competes with category specialists. He made the capital and organisational decisions that pulled Macy’s into omnichannel before most peers had committed. By his final year as CEO in fiscal 2016, the company was running sales of roughly USD 26 billion with about 140,000 employees.
Since stepping down he has sat on the board of Procter and Gamble, chairing its Compensation and Leadership Development Committee, and served as an Executive in Residence at Columbia Business School. The Deming Cup citation from Columbia, awarded for continuous improvement at scale, is the credential that distinguishes him from CEOs known for a single defining moment.
Key speaking topics
- Large-scale merger integration
- CEO leadership through structural change
- Omnichannel and the reinvention of retail
- Continuous improvement at enterprise scale
- Brand strategy and national brand building
- CEO succession and board-level talent decisions
Ideal for
- CEO and board audiences working through merger integration or major restructuring.
- CHROs and Chief Talent Officers focused on CEO succession, executive development, and operating discipline.
- Retail, consumer, and consumer-adjacent leadership teams navigating channel transitions and brand consolidation.
- Senior leadership programmes inside large enterprises where the case studies need to come from someone who ran the company.
Audience outcomes
- A first-hand account of what merger integration costs an organisation operationally, culturally, and in customer experience.
- A clearer view of the decisions a CEO actually faces when committing capital to a channel transition.
- Reference points from a fourteen-year tenure for how continuous improvement is institutionalised, not just announced.
- A board-level perspective on what compensation, succession, and leadership development look like inside a current Fortune 50 company.