74
FORTUNE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2019
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon was on his way to lunch
with his wife when he got the call. It was Saturday,
Aug. 3, and it had already been a sad and tumultuous
week at the company. A few days earlier, at a Walmart
in Southaven, Miss., an associate—as Walmart calls its
employees—had shot and killed the store manager and a
department manager. Now, McMillon was told, a new crisis was un-
folding: There was an active shooter in a Walmart store in El Paso.
McMillon immediately diverted his route to Walmart’s Benton-
ville, Ark., headquarters, and his wife dropped him off. He went
straight to Walmart’s emergency operations center (EOC), where
security, operations, and human resources teams were track-
ing the situation. The Southaven tragedy was still fresh in his
mind. “But it didn’t take very long once I got into the EOC,” saysMcMillon, “to figure out this was a different
kind of circumstance.”
This time the shooter was not an employee
but a 21-year-old man who had reportedly
driven some 10 hours to El Paso from his
home near Dallas, intending to gun down
people of Mexican descent. Using an AK-47
style assault weapon, the gunman killed 22
people and wounded another 24. Along with
a second mass shooting that night in Dayton,
the massacre kicked off a new national debate
about gun violence—with Walmart in the
middle of the conversation.
In the days following the shooting, AndrewTHE LIST 5
5
NO.
“You’ve Got
to Be Ableto ManageChange”WalmartUnder CEO Doug
McMillon, the world’s
largest company has
invested billions to
make its workforce
more resilient.
BENTONVILLE, ARK.