Rhode Island's new Governor Helena Foulkes spent 25 years at CVS and lost her first election - she says failure and bad bosses made her a better leader. 1 hour ago 24 Amidst the wave of democratic victories in Tuesday's 2026 midterm elections, Rhode Island voters elected Helena Foulkes, a former Fortune 500 executive, as their next governor. Foulkes spent 25 years at CVS, eventually rising to president of its pharmacy division, before leaving to become CEO of Hudson's Bay Company, the now-defunct Canadian department-store operator. She was also repeatedly named one of Fortune's Most Powerful Women, reaching No. 12 on the list in both 2015 and 2016. While becoming governor marks her first elected office, Foulkes's career has been defined by ambitious pivots, taking chances, and learning to see failure as something other than a dead end. "You can go for something and it doesn't work, and yet other gifts come," she said on a Harvard Business School podcast in 2024. "I've had a lot of those experiences in my life, in my career. I think it's redefining what failure looks like and asking yourself, not only what could go wrong, but what could go right?" Her own political career offered a recent example. In 2022, Foulkes first challenged incumbent Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee in the Democratic primary, losing by roughly 4,000 votes. Rather than walk away, she ran against him again in 2026. This time, she defeated McKee by more than 40,000 votes in the primary before winning the general election by more than a 100,000-vote margin. It's a lesson that echoes the advice Foulkes has offered young people navigating their own careers: "Do not hold yourself back. Go for it." A Harvard MBA alum, Foulkes says careers are like being a 'marathoner' Foulkes grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, as the oldest of five children. Her dad was a businessman while her mom stayed home to raise the family. When she arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate in 1982, she had "no idea what I wanted to do," she told Fortune in 2018. She studied economics before spending two years at Goldman Sachs and later taking what she described as a "relatively boring" finance job at Tiffany & Co. She eventually returned to Harvard Business School to earn her MBA. After graduating, Foulkes joined CVS, where she would spend the next 25 years climbing the corporate ladder - but it wasn't always easy. Foulkes acknowledged that early-career jobs don't always live up to expectations, and that it's easy to become discouraged when they don't. "It's like being a marathoner," she said. "Sometimes you're going through some really hard things, and you've got a bad boss, and you're in a crummy situation. I can tell you, I learned more in those moments than I did in the easy moments, and I became a better leader because of those moments." One of her secrets for landing promotion after promotion wasn't sweating the small stuff - but rather always pushing for progress. "Don't wait so long for perfection on something, because you're going to lose the attention, energy, and enthusiasm of the top team," Foulkes said. "I focused really early on producing something tangible, then refining it and making it bigger. It was a constant journey, and it still is. That's the fun thing about doing things like that." During her tenure at CVS, she helped launch the company's loyalty program as well as played a key role in its decision to stop selling tobacco. But she also faced scrutiny over the company's role in the opioid crisis, which became an issue during her gubernatorial campaign. Foulkes says career success means knowing when to move on. Even as Foulkes rose through the ranks at CVS, she had ambitions beyond her current role. She wanted to become its CEO but felt the path to the top was taking too long. So in 2018, she took a leap into the unfamiliar, leaving after 25 years to become CEO of Hudson's Bay Company, a struggling Canadian retailer that owned Saks Fifth Avenue at the time. "I felt like I needed to get out of my comfort zone a little bit and do something different," she told Fortune that same year. "I was liberated in many ways." While Foulkes kept the CEO job for just two years, the move reflected a broader lesson Foulkes had learned throughout her career: Sometimes advancing means taking a chance on something new rather than waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along. That same willingness to take a risk has carried into politics. As she prepares to move into the governor's office in the nation's smallest state by area, Foulkes faces a new set of challenges, from affordability to data center development. "I'm always trying to think about tapping into what makes you spark and what your special strengths are," she said. "Sometimes I was good at that, and sometimes I wasn't, but it has been a thread for me throughout my career." * Homepage * Fortune Magazine * Rhode Island's new Governor Helena Foulkes spent 25 years at CVS and lost her first election - she says failure and bad bosses made her a better leader.

Foulkes defeats Rhode Island's Gov. McKee. He's the first governor in 8 years to lose a primary. KIMBERLEE KRUESI Updated Tue, September 8, 2026 at 9:00 PM PDT Election 2026 Rhode Island. Candidate for Rhode Island governor Helena Buonanno Foulkes speaks during a Get Out the Vote event, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, in Providence. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell) (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell) PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Helena Foulkes has defeated Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee in the state's Democratic primary Wednesday, making him the first governor in any U.S. state to lose a party primary since 2018. McKee's defeat ends his bid for a second full term and marks the first time in more than 30 years that a sitting Rhode Island governor has been beaten in a primary. Foulkes, a former senior executive at CVS and the retailer Hudson's Bay, wasn't the only challenger to oust an incumbent Wednesday. The mayor of Providence lost to David Morales, a young democratic socialist endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. For Foulkes, the win was a redemptive rebound from 2022, when she narrowly lost to McKee in a more crowded primary field - on a night when the governor notably refused to take her concession call. In their rematch, McKee was dogged by questions about his administration's work to replace a critical bridge in the state capital that was abruptly closed due to safety problems in 2023. Foulkes leveraged public exasperation over the cost and pace of the bridge project for her argument that McKee's administration isn't working for most Rhode Islanders. "Tonight, we may have won the Democratic primary for governor, but let me be clear about what happens next: You will have a governor for everyone," Foulkes told a large crowd in Providence during her victory speech Wednesday. "Because there is so much work that needs to be done, and we need to do this together." McKee attempted to characterize Foulkes as an out-of-touch elite who turned a blind eye to the opioid crisis during her tenure at CVS, arguing that he had a stronger record. However, in his concession speech in Providence, McKee promised to work with Foulkes to ensure a "smooth transition." "This is something that I think is difficult to deal with, but we just got to hold our heads high," McKee said, adding that he has his head "very high because I know the work we've done together is really special." Incumbent governors rarely lose party primaries. The last time it happened in Rhode Island was in 1994, when Democrat Bruce Sundlun lost to state Sen. Myrth York, ending his bid for a third term. In that race, Sundlun was facing multiple controversies and voter fatigue while York ran on reform. In a separate election shakeup, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley lost his reelection bid to Morales, 27, in the Democratic primary. Smiley, 47, has held the seat since 2022. Aside from Sanders, Morales also had the backing of U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna and several high-profile labor unions. McKee has been governor since 2021. In 2023, McKee closed the Washington Bridge, a vital link that carries Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River and connects Providence to its eastern suburbs, the south coast of Massachusetts. During the summer, it also carries traffic bound for Cape Cod. State transportation officials had flagged a "critical failure" in an older part of the bridge, but demolishing and replacing it has taken longer than the governor initially estimated. Traffic continues to flow but has been squeezed into fewer lanes on a newer part of the span, leading to lengthy commute times. McKee maintains that his decisions kept people safe and that the bridge construction will be finished by 2028. He often points to Maryland, saying the Washington Bridge will be complete ahead of the replacement of Baltimore's much larger Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed and killed six construction workers in 2024 after a container ship crashed into it. Foulkes' grandfather and uncle, Thomas and Chris Dodd, were both Democratic U.S. senators in Connecticut. She worked at CVS for 25 years, eventually becoming president of the company's pharmacy division between 2014 and 2018. She then became chief executive officer of the Canadian retail giant Hudson's Bay before leaving in 2020. When pressed on her time at CVS, Foulkes argued that CVS reduced its opioid dispensing by 40% when she was president of CVS' pharmacy division. In 2022, after Foulkes had left CVS, the company agreed to pay $5 billion to settle lawsuits nationwide over the toll of opioids without admitting wrongdoing. The last governor to lose in a primary was former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, who narrowly lost the Republican nomination to Kris Kobach in 2018. In the Republican gubernatorial primary, Aaron Guckian and Elaine Pelino are vying for the nomination. Guckian is a state trade association executive and was the nominee for lieutenant governor in 2022. Pelino is a former actor and first-time candidate. The state party has endorsed Guckian.