Leadership Tuesdays: The Most Important Tool...Laura Sen

I think that the tool that we all have at our disposal, and the tool that is most important to use in forging relationships and finding solutions and to move along in the career ladder, is communication. 

--Laura J. Sen, Chief Executive Officer, BJ's Wholesale Club

Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage, and strengthen women leaders. This week on the last Tuesday in May, in honor of Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Leadership Tuesdays is featuring Laura Sen, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BJ's Wholesale Club, a low-cost, low-margin, high-volume, membership-only warehouse club that sells food, electronics, office equipment and other general merchandise.

Sen was promoted to CEO of BJ's in 2009, but her rise to the top job took a circuitous route.  After spending 14 years at BJ's, she was an Executive Vice President and considered one of a few internal candidates for the CEO job. Six month after one of her peers was named CEO, she was asked by him to leave the company.  She went home to spend more time with her teenage children and her husband of over 20 years.  During her time away from BJ's, she also started a consulting business providing her expertise to consumer retail companies, some of them suppliers to BJ's.

In 2006, she was asked by the then acting CEO and Chairman of the Board, Herb Zarkin, to rejoin BJ's and promised that she would become the company's next CEO. Shortly after becoming CEO, she suffered a personal loss when Michael Egan, her husband of 27 years, died of cancer.  She came back and plunged herself into her work after taking a short time away.  Based on reports, Sen has been well-received.  Before the company was sold in late 2011 and became a private company, The Boston Globe reported...


For the rest of the story and interview, click here. For more information on Leadership Tuesdays, see here.