When Susan Morris became CEO of Albertsons on May 1, she strongly hinted that broad changes were coming. And come they have. Most recently, a company realignment of the Boise, ID-based retailers merchandising department has been announced which has also impacted key divisional personnel.
Specifically, Tom Lofland, who had been president of the chain’s Mid-Atlantic division, will move to the same position at sister firm Jewel-Osco, and Albertsons newcomer Sean Thompson becomes president of the large Mid-Atlantic unit with approximately 300 stores located in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Washington, DC. Those stores trade under the Acme, Safeway, Kings and Balducci’s banners.
The catalyst for those changes began in June when Albertsons veteran executive Michelle Larson was named by Morris to become executive VP and chief merchant, replacing the departed Omer Gajial.
Earlier this month, Larson unveiled her team which includes former Jewel-Osco president Mark Laryea being promoted to president of merchandising, where he will supervise all merchandising strategy nationally.
The new executive merchandising team is comprised of these leaders:
June Zheng, VP-merchandising strategy and business development, will report directly to Larson and will be responsible for leading merchandising strategy support and business ventures.
Other group VPs include Jewel Hunt, who will continue to lead merchandising strategies for bakery, deli and Starbucks; Anthony Suggs will continue to lead center store merchandising strategy; Teresa Whitney, will continue to lead merchandising strategies for meat and seafood, produce, and floral; Chris Cowgill, will become GVP business intelligence and analytics; and Christopher Lanoue, lead merchant for the NorCal division, will become group VP-merchandising operations overseeing systems, item governance, pricing, promotion, and space planning.
“It’s a new day at Albertsons Cos., and we are sharpening our customer value proposition to drive long-term growth faster than the market,” said Larson. “I look forward to working with this talented team of leaders to support our associates and serve our customers, inspiring them to return again and again.”
With Laryea’s shift to Boise, Lofland returns to Jewel where he served as director of center store in 2014. He began his career at Albertsons in 1990 and first came to the Mid-Atlantic area as VP-merchandising and marketing for Safeway’s eastern region in late 2014 (in early 2015, Albertsons acquired Safeway) based in Lanham, MD. In 2018, he was named president of the that division and when Albertsons combined its Acme and Safeway (eastern) divisions in 2020, Lofland relocated to the new Mid-Atlantic division’s headquarters in Malvern, PA and became senior VP-merchandising and marketing. When then-division president Jim Perkins was tabbed to run SpinCo (Albertsons’ divestiture spin off subsidiary created when Albertsons and Kroger announced their merger effort), Lofland was named president of the retailer’s Mid-Atlantic division. At Jewel he will oversee approximately 190 stores in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. Jewel-Osco is based in Itasca, IL.
Heading up Albertsons Mid-Atlantic division is Sean Thompson, 51, who joined Albertsons in May 2025 from Apex Strategy Consulting. Thompson has a long career in retailing. He spent nearly five years at Party City rising to the level of interim chief executive and prior to that worked for 7-Eleven (more than seven years) and Target (five years). He began his career with marketing research firm The Farnsworth Group. Thomson has undergraduate and MBA degrees from Indiana University.
