Front End Lead Trainee

Mike Wysong in his own words: A look back at MMR and CDR coverage. Here is a look back at some of CDR and MMR's coverage of Wysong and his views on the future of pharmacy. October 6, 2026. 11:15 AM NEW YORK - Mike Wysong, the newly appointed President and CEO of NACDS, has been a familiar voice in Chain Drug Review and Mass Market Retailers, speaking with retailmediaIQ over the years about leadership, advocacy, community pharmacy, and pharmacists' evolving role in American health care. Through interviews, Video Forums, roundtables, columns, and retailmediaIQ events, Wysong has consistently emphasized collaboration across the industry, pharmacy benefit manager reform, the importance of community pharmacy, and the opportunity for pharmacists to provide more clinical care. Here is a look back at some of CDR and MMR's coverage of Wysong and his views on the future of pharmacy. In April 2023, Wysong became chair of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores board, succeeding Brian Nightengale. NACDS president and CEO Steven C. Anderson said Wysong brought "extraordinary energy, focus, insights, and passion" to the association. Wysong used his first address as NACDS chair to emphasize collaboration, pharmacy access, PBM reform, chronic disease, health technology and an expanded role for pharmacy in health and wellness. "Our founders would be pleased to know that we have remained faithful to the charter they implemented back in 1933: the idea that our industry and patients are better off if we work collaboratively in good faith, and in the service of something larger than our individual companies," Wysong said. He also looked ahead to a larger role for pharmacy in health care. "We are clearly entering an important time for interdisciplinary care, for food as medicine, for behavioral and mental health, for point-of-care testing, for screenings, and for immunizations," Wysong said. Near the end of his term as NACDS chair, Wysong joined retailmediaIQ editor-in-chief Jeffrey Woldt for a March 2024 Video Forum. He reflected on what he had learned from traveling across the country and meeting with industry leaders, while discussing PBM reform, scope of practice, food as medicine and the state of retail pharmacy. At the 2024 NACDS Annual Meeting, Wysong concluded a chairmanship that had taken him to 21 states and 42 cities. "Being the Chair of NACDS was the honor of my life," Wysong said. The experience, he said, reinforced his belief in industry collaboration. "When you conceive a vision and pursue it together, there is not a problem that can't be solved." Wysong continued discussing the pressures facing pharmacy with CDR at the 2025 NACDS Annual Meeting. In another Video Forum with Woldt, he addressed the challenging operating environment, prospects for PBM reform, clinical services and CARE Pharmacies' expansion. Later that year, Wysong joined John Marraffa Jr. of Kinney Drugs, Jim Tsipakis of Giant Eagle and Aaron Wiese of Hy-Vee at retailmediaIQ's NACDS Total Store Expo breakfast in San Diego. The discussion focused on regional retailers' ability to compete with much larger national companies through their community connections, agility and understanding of local customers. "This is a very pressing topic," Wysong said. Wysong also participated in CDR's 2025 Diabetes Care Roundtable, where he discussed the growing role community pharmacists can play in chronic disease management. "Community pharmacies have long been viewed as trusted health partners and have largely served as primary access points for high-need patients, particularly those suffering from chronic diseases like hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes," Wysong said. He also addressed the expanding use of GLP-1 medications and the opportunity for pharmacists to provide consultations, monitoring, shared decision-making and longer-term patient support. In January 2026, CDR took a deeper look at Wysong's career and leadership in "Wysong's latest 'Tour of Duty' is a triumph." The feature traced his career through Baxter Healthcare, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, as well as his leadership of CARE Pharmacies. "Every role I assumed prepared me for the next one," Wysong told CDR. "They've all been good 'tours of duty.'" He also made the case for pharmacy's potential to play a larger role in health care. "No profession has the same capability as pharmacy to transform our healthcare system," Wysong said. CDR returned to Wysong in April as part of its "Leadership That Empowers" coverage, focusing on his approach to leadership at CARE and within NACDS. "One of the strengths of CARE is that we're able to meet with our individual pharmacy owners to map out their vision for effective patient care, and then equip them with tailored resources like procurement, technology and advocacy to meet their unique needs," Wysong said. "The reciprocal dialogue, built on trust and candor, yields proven strategies that scale value across our network." Looking ahead, Wysong said pharmacy was moving toward a more connected model of care. "The next chapter of pharmacy will include a much more integrated model, with health tech accelerating the change," he said. "It is imperative that as leaders we pay reverence to the past but prepare and refine our model for the future. This means assuming the role as the essential connector in tomorrow's health care." Another CDR feature that month examined CARE's growth and Wysong's priorities for the cooperative, including reimbursement pressures, PBMs, clinical services, technology, AI, biosimilars and GLP-1 therapies. Wysong said meaningful PBM reform could ultimately be "transformative for retail pharmacy's sustainability and innovation." In May, Wysong sat down with retailmediaIQ president Jeffrey Friedman for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of community pharmacy. "We're no longer just filling prescriptions," Wysong said. "We're becoming high-tech, high-touch care providers, delivering proactive, personalized and preventative care where patients need it most." Wysong also discussed CARE's expansion into specialty pharmacy, technology and efforts to provide more care outside traditional pharmacy settings. "Our goal is to meet patients where they are - literally and figuratively," he said. "We want to treat them with dignity and give them the support they need to live healthier lives at home." Wysong expanded on that vision in a July MMR column, "Community pharmacy's next chapter: Turning industry challenges into opportunity." He acknowledged reimbursement pressures, DIR fees, PBMs and the difficulties facing independent and rural pharmacies, but argued that pharmacy also has an opportunity to redefine its role. "The pharmacies that will thrive are the ones that embrace this shift, moving from simply dispensing medication to delivering meaningful clinical care," Wysong wrote. "This is our moment. Not because the challenges have disappeared but because we now have the trust, the tools and the opportunity to redefine what community and neighborhood pharmacy means in this country." Most recently, Wysong joined retailmediaIQ's breakfast session at the 2026 NACDS Total Store Expo in Boston alongside John Marraffa of Kinney Drugs, Angie Nelson of Hy-Vee and Mike Stigers of Wakefern Food Corp./ShopRite. The discussion again centered on the strengths of regional retailers, including their community knowledge, agility and relationships with suppliers. Across those conversations, a consistent view of pharmacy emerges. Wysong has repeatedly argued for greater collaboration within the industry, meaningful PBM reform and an expanded role for pharmacists as health care providers. He has also emphasized that technology should complement, rather than replace, the relationships community pharmacists have built with their patients. As he wrote in MMR this summer: "The future isn't something that happens to us; it's something we build together." Get the latest Chain Drug Review news delivered straight to your inbox. Have news to share? 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How Kroger, Giant Eagle and DoorDash are building their agentic AI assistants. AI was the hot topic of conversation at this year's Groceryshop, as executives from Kroger, Giant Eagle, DoorDash and more took to the stage to share their philosophies on agentic technology. What many companies are finding is that rather than relying on simple search tools or intrusive chatbots, they must deploy practical AI tools that bridge the gap between physical stores and online ordering. Much of the focus now is on training shoppers to naturally integrate agentic shopping into their busy routines. Yael Cosset, the chief digital officer at Kroger, said the retailer's big focus is on removing any friction between the time when a customer is inspired to buy an ingredient for a meal and actually going to order it. "The shopping assistant is helping close the gap that exists between inspiration and basket shopping," he said. But for many large retailers, the main challenge lies in integrating agentic tools into shopping journeys that are already complex. Shweta Prabhu, vp of digital, e-commerce, MarTech, loyalty, data analytics and AI, enterprise systems at Giant Eagle, said the company's focus is on using agentic AI to turn single-channel shoppers into omnichannel shoppers. That's because Giant Eagle's omnichannel shoppers tend to have a 30% higher lifetime value when compared to shoppers that buy from one single channel, whether in-store or online. As such, Prabhu said every dollar that the retailer invests in making those experiences seamless for users "is one that will keep our most valuable customers coming back to us." On its main grocery app, Giant Eagle now has an AI recipe generator, which helps customers scan meal ideas and seamlessly add ingredients to their cart. Another focus for Giant Eagle as it invests more in AI is doing a better job of integrating fragmented teams on the backend operational side. Heather Feather, Giant Eagle's vp of digital, e-commerce and customer analytics, explained that one way the retailer began doing this last year was by combining the e-commerce operations team with the marketing and merchandising teams. "No store receives as much weekly traffic as our website and mobile app do," Feather said. "I think that's a great reframe for all of us and our partners as we think about investment and priorities." By working more closely together, the departments can better target potential crossover in-store and digital shoppers. And there may be more integrations to come in 2027 - earlier this year, Kroger announced its intention to acquire Giant Eagle, with the deal expected to close next year. Building a naturally conversational shopping assistant. Kroger's Cosset emphasized the need for grocers to build out a steady strategy to help shoppers get accustomed to using agentic grocery shopping. "Customers don't wake up and say, 'Oh, I'm going to shop online today,' or 'I can't wait to go into the store,'" Cosset said. Instead, busy people have many different needs and occasions that retailers like Kroger have to address. "It's on us to remove that friction and the burden of having to think differently about how they engage with us," Cosset said. "And that's where I think AI really is transformational." Cosset said Kroger spent the past 10 years building its digital and physical experiences together. For example, shoppers should be able to see and track their online orders and in-store hauls in one hub, with that data informing their future shopping journey. The retailer recently launched its own AI shopping assistant, which Cosset said aims to solve universal grocery shopping problems, like busy parents needing to make last-minute grocery runs or figuring out what to make for dinner when hosting someone with multiple dietary constraints. The tool then instantly creates a Kroger basket with items that address all those requirements. Shoppers can also add personal context to inform recommendations, like a photo of a handwritten shopping list or even their grandma's favorite recipe. "The investments we're making right now are to actually continue to inject the personalization capability we've built over decades into that shopping assistant," Cosset said. With this contextual shopping experience, Kroger's CPG partners also have the opportunity to get Kroger's shoppers to engage with their brand, whether through retail media advertising or recipe content. Identifying what people don't want from agentic shopping. DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang said that, for delivery platforms, the challenge is learning what users want from AI-powered shopping tools as the company builds them out. "Oftentimes when people think of using AI to order, they think of a chat window popping up," said Fang. The problem DoorDash found is that when people see a chat window pop up, they're not sure what to talk to the bot about and end up ignoring it. "So a lot of work that we've done is not only to incorporate intelligence into the experience," he said. "But also picking up on the trends of actual problems that people want AI to solve for them." Fang said most users, instead, appreciate simple, practical tools. For example, they like the ability to automatically prompt "reorder my usuals" during the browsing journey, instead of sifting through their order history page. He said DoorDash is trying to go beyond populating a cart by building tools natively into the app that make it easier to modify real-time orders, such as finding similar SKUs or alternatives to out-of-stock items. While retailers are getting a lot of real-time feedback on how customers use agentic AI, there are still many unknowns and lessons to learn. On the big pressure retailers face to deploy AI technology, Cosset said, "Of course everybody wants to go fast [because] it's a huge opportunity. But with speed comes risk, so speed with precision and direction is good."