Giving a major presentation as chief financial officer of a company that does about $9.4 billion in retail sales each year can be overwhelming. Brenda Galgano gave her first such CFO talk at the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company headquarters in Montvale two weeks after giving birth. “It was a very short maternity leave,” Galgano says. “And a very stressful time.”
But Galgano, 39, does not focus on the fact that she is a woman in a leadership role (which adds items like childbirth to the schedule), and finds it funny to be recognized for that piece of who she is. “It’s weird,” she says. “Some people make such a big deal about it, and I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
To be sure, being a mother of three doesn’t distinguish Galgano on the A&P executive management team. Three of the six executives in the company’s top tier are women, and all three are moms. This makes Galgano less of an anomaly at staff meetings, but it sets A&P—which is about to celebrate its 150th anniversary—apart from the pack. An October report from the Forum of Executive Women in Philadelphia, for example, found that women held fewer than 10 percent of the top executive positions in the city’s biggest companies. Corporate Women Directors International reported that women account for only 6.6 percent of senior executive officers within the Fortune Global 100 companies.
At A&P, things are different—and it’s fitting that women are leading the way in the grocery industry, where three-quarters of household primary shoppers are female. “They’re taking over,” says president and CEO Eric Claus, with a laugh. “It really has nothing to do with women and men. I always pick the best person for the job.”
The jobs are not easy. Soon after taking over three and a half years ago, Claus, 52, restructured the company to consolidate executive positions. “You walk through the building, and I think you feel a lot of energy, but a lot of stress, too,” he says. “We cut out $150 million of administrative overhead to do the same work.”
In addition, A&P acquired Pathmark last year, an integration (led by Galgano) that added the grocery chain to a list that also includes Waldbaum’s, Super Fresh, Food Emporium, and Food Basics. The company is in the process of renovating many of its 447 locations in eight states—all at a time when grocery stores across the country are struggling amid rising food prices and tightened consumer spending. New competition with big-box stores such as Target and Wal-Mart hasn’t helped. Still, A&P released a glowing quarterly report in July, which found significant sales increases over the year before. (Share prices still dropped in recent months, along with the rest of the stock market.)
But Claus is confident in his team and believes the ability to attain executive positions boosts morale and attracts the best workers to the company. Nine of the company’s associates were named Top Women in Grocery by Progressive Grocer in September, a reflection of a company that not only has a high proportion of women among its executives, but also as 43 percent of its corporate employees, and touts female-friendly policies and perks, from maternity leave and pay parity to a mentorship program among women at all employment levels.
Senior vice president of marketing Jennifer MacLeod, 48, came to A&P three years ago from a company where she was the only female executive. “I was always cautious to not be the token woman,” she says. “Here, that’s not a concern.”
Rebecca Philbert, 47, A&P’s senior vice president of marketing and supply, says she doesn’t worry about being held to a different standard. “I don’t think anybody could hold me to a higher standard than I hold myself to anyway,” she says. As someone who rose through the ranks at Safeway—as clerk, store manager, district manager, and corporate vice president before coming to A&P—Philbert welcomes the opportunity to be a mentor for others working their way up the ladder. “I think there’s a responsibility for women to be role models, both as businesspeople and as women,” she says. “I try to encourage women to figure out their own way.”
With all the chatter about stay-at-home mothers versus working mothers, equal pay, and maternity leave, there is little question that taking on such a high-level role is a more loaded decision for women than for men. In the cases of Galgano and Philbert, their husbands became the stay-at-home spouses. “There needs to be that support; otherwise you just can’t do it,” says Galgano. Although men in similar roles would probably say the same thing, it is not a question they are generally asked.
MacLeod has no problem with women who would reject her position. “If you want to be a stay-at-home mom, that’s great,” she says. “For me, it’s a challenge, but I found a balance. My daughter is very proud of me, and she knows she can do whatever she wants to do. So in that way I’m a leadership example to her. And she knows she’s number one.”
These are exciting—if economically tumultuous—times at A&P. Walk through a new “Fresh” store and it becomes clear that the company is changing things in ways other than just executive representation. Softer lighting, lower ceilings, and more local-market themes have taken over. Claus rattles off specific food items he’s excited about (barbecued ribs in particular), and lays out his broad ideas for all of the chains under the A&P umbrella. “We’re always looking forward,” he says. “It’s the culture we create.”
As the company looks to expand and evolve with the marketplace, MacLeod says she frequently applies her role as a mom to business decisions. “Every mom wants to be the food hero,” she says, recalling how she and her siblings would anxiously wait to see what goodies her mother would bring home from the grocery store. “We want to allow our customers to be that food hero, too.”
But for MacLeod, Galgano, and Philbert, the hero persona doesn’t just come from the content of the grocery bags they bring home—it comes from the content of their résumés, too.
“Once women are comfortable in their own skin, it allows them to drive these roads and overcome obstacles and thrive,” says Philbert. “That’s something you see here, and it’s so exciting.”