Colleen Lindholz, president of Kroger Health, will retire after more than three decades with the Cincinnati-based grocer — closing the book on a career that fundamentally reshaped how the country's largest pure-play supermarket chain thinks about health, pharmacy, and nutrition.
Lindholz joined Kroger in 1995 as a staff pharmacist in the Cincinnati-Dayton division. Over the next two decades she moved through pharmacy management, coordination, sales promotion, recruiting, and merchandising before being elevated to director of Pharmacy Sales and Marketing in 2013. Two years later she became president and CEO of the Little Clinic, Kroger's in-store health-clinic network, and in 2017 was named president of Kroger Health — the umbrella operation covering pharmacy, nutrition, and health-and-wellness services across Kroger's roughly 2,700-store footprint.
Building Food as Medicine
Industry observers credit Lindholz with crystallizing what has become one of grocery retail's most-watched strategic bets: positioning the supermarket pharmacist and dietitian as frontline healthcare providers, and linking the food assortment directly to health outcomes. Under her leadership, Kroger Health launched the Nourishing Change movement, a platform designed to connect underserved communities with better-for-you products and nutrition education — a program that gave Kroger a differentiated story in the increasingly competitive health-and-wellness aisle against mass, drug, and club rivals.
The strategy has real planogram implications. Kroger has used its OptUP nutrition-scoring tool and its dietitian network — embedded in stores with significant ACV coverage — to influence shelf placement, private-label development, and promotional mechanics around better-for-you categories. That intersection of scan data, clinical credentialing, and in-store execution is a model competitors in the mass and drug channels have watched closely.
Recognition and Transition
"Throughout her career, she championed ways to help families live healthier lives by eating better-for-them foods," said Mary Ellen Adcock, Kroger's Chief Marketing and Merchandising Officer, in a statement. Adcock did not announce a successor or a transition timeline.
Lindholz's accolades span both the retail and healthcare worlds — a reflection of how thoroughly the grocer-as-health-destination thesis has moved from fringe to mainstream over the past decade. She received Kroger's Chairman's Award and Leadership Award, was named one of Modern Healthcare's top women leaders in 2023, and earned MMR Influential Woman recognition in both 2024 and 2025. Kroger Health was named Mass Market Retailer's Retailer of the Year in 2022, and the Kroger Family of Pharmacies earned Forbes Best Customer Service recognition during her tenure.
Beyond the retailer, Lindholz served as chair of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) and as executive chair of the American Heart Association's Heart Mini — roles that gave Kroger a significant seat at the table on federal nutrition and pharmacy policy. Her departure leaves a leadership gap at one of the few grocery banners with the scale to influence both health and wellness category dynamics and private-label nutrition positioning simultaneously. Succession planning will be closely watched by category managers and vendor partners alike.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
