<\/p>\n
CSG\u2019s Trailblazers<\/a> series celebrates leaders who have made their own way and lifted those around them. February is Black History Month, and Bender is one of a still-small group of Black executives running a Fortune 500 company.<\/p>\n Bender\u2019s career didn\u2019t start in retail. It started at PepsiCo<\/strong>, where he spent more than a decade learning the fundamentals of how big consumer businesses actually work. Sales. Finance. Operations. The kind of unglamorous, foundational work that either burns people out or builds them into something exceptional. He left PepsiCo with a set of instincts about how large organizations move or fail, that would serve him for the next thirty years.<\/p>\n From there he moved into specialty retail at Victoria\u2019s Secret<\/strong> under L Brands, one of the most aggressively merchandised retail concepts in the country at the time. Then into healthcare services at Cardinal Health<\/strong>, building up a kind of cross-industry fluency that most executives never develop. Every time he changed sectors, he wasn\u2019t starting over. He was adding another layer. By the time he arrived at Walmart<\/strong>, he had seen more of the business world than most people twice his age.<\/p>\n At Walmart, he rose to become COO of Global eCommerce and EVP and President of the Walmart West business unit, putting him squarely at the center of one of the most consequential digital transformations in retail history. Walmart\u2019s e-commerce push was a full-scale rethinking of how a 4,000-plus store footprint could compete in an Amazon world. Bender wasn\u2019t watching that happen from the sidelines. He was running parts of it. That experience matters more now than it ever has.<\/p>\n Then he ran Eyemart Express<\/strong> as CEO from 2018 to 2022. Full P&L. Running a company of that size as its chief executive is a different job than being an operating executive inside a giant. You feel the decisions differently. The accountability is total. Bender thrived in it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the resume he walked in with when Kohl\u2019s handed him the interim job. He got to work immediately.<\/p>\n The first order of business was product. Under previous leadership, Kohl\u2019s had quietly pulled back from some of the categories that had defined it for decades. Women\u2019s apparel had been thinned out. The jewelry assortment was a shadow of what it used to be. Petite sizing, a category that generates fierce loyalty among the shoppers it serves, had been significantly reduced. These weren\u2019t abstract strategic decisions. They were the kind of changes that caused a shopper to walk in, not find what they came for, and go somewhere else . Bender understood that. He started restoring those assortments.<\/p>\n The second order of business was people. A company that has cycled through three CEOs in three years has a culture problem, not just a leadership problem. Employees stop believing things will stabilize. Managers stop making long-term plans. The organization starts managing defensively rather than building offensively. Bender moved to change that. He was visible. He was direct. He communicated a clear sense of where the company was going and why. The workforce noticed.<\/p>\n The results followed. Within months of taking over as interim CEO, Kohl\u2019s raised its 2025 financial forecasts. That\u2019s not a small thing for a company that had been delivering disappointing results for years. Analysts who had been skeptical started paying attention. In November 2025, the board made it permanent.<\/p>\n The numbers he\u2019s working with are serious. More than 1,100 stores across the country. Roughly 87,000 associates. Decades of brand equity with middle-income American families who have counted on Kohl\u2019s for everything from back-to-school basics to holiday shopping. That loyalty is worth protecting. The challenge is connecting it to a retail environment that looks nothing like the one Kohl\u2019s was built for.<\/p>\n Amazon<\/strong> didn\u2019t exist when Kohl\u2019s opened its first stores. Off-price giants like TJX Companies<\/strong> and Burlington<\/strong> were a fraction of their current size. The smartphone hadn\u2019t been invented. Today, every one of those forces is bearing down on Kohl\u2019s simultaneously. Shoppers can compare prices in real time while standing in the aisle. They can have almost anything delivered by tomorrow. They have more choices than any previous generation of consumers had ever had. Surviving in that environment requires more than operational excellence. It requires a genuine reason for people to choose you.<\/p>\n Bender\u2019s answer to that challenge is rooted in value and experience. Kohl\u2019s rewards program is one of the largest in retail, with tens of millions of active members. The store\u2019s partnership with Amazon, which allows customers to return Amazon purchases at Kohl\u2019s locations, drives meaningful foot traffic and introduces Kohl\u2019s to shoppers who might not have thought of it otherwise. The company\u2019s positioning in national brands at accessible prices still resonates with a large swath of middle-income American families. These are real assets. The job is to build on them rather than let them erode.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also spoken about what it means to hold this position. Fewer than ten Black executives are running Fortune 500 companies right now. For context, there are 500 companies on that list. The math is stark. That number is both a recognition of how far corporate America has come and an honest measure of how much further it still has to go. Bender carries that awareness, has spoken about it publicly, and has been intentional about building inclusive teams and culture inside Kohl\u2019s. The customer base that walks through Kohl\u2019s doors looks like America. He believes the leadership of the company should too.<\/p>\n That belief isn\u2019t abstract. Getting to the top of a major institution requires preparation, persistence, and a willingness to take on hard problems that others might pass on. He has done all three across a career spanning more than three decades. He\u2019s not here to manage decline. He\u2019s here to build something, and based on what he\u2019s already done, Kohl\u2019s may have finally found the leader it\u2019s been searching for.<\/p>\n Follow CSG as we continue celebrating Black History Month with more Trailblazers<\/a> shaping the future of retail and foodservice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n Kohl\u2019s Corporation Investor Relations<\/em><\/p>\n Kohl\u2019s Corporate Newsroom<\/em><\/p>\n Fortune 500 Executive Leadership Data<\/em><\/p>\n National Retail Federation Board of Directors<\/em><\/p>\n Chain Store Guide Retail Database<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael J. Bender The Man Who Stepped Up When Kohl\u2019s Needed It Most There\u2019s something telling about the fact that when Kohl\u2019s needed a steady hand, they didn\u2019t have to look very far. Michael J. Bender had been sitting on the company\u2019s board since 2019 and serving as Board Chair since 2024. He… Continue reading Trailblazers: Black Leadership in Retail<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":19024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-with-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-19014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trailblazers","tag-csg-exclusive","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19014"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19016,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions\/19016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere\u2019s something telling about the fact that when Kohl\u2019s<\/strong> needed a steady hand, they didn\u2019t have to look very far. Michael J. Bender had been sitting on the company\u2019s board since 2019 and serving as Board Chair since 2024. He had watched the turbulence up close. Declining sales. A workforce stretched thin by years of uncertainty. A brand that had lost some of its footing with the very shoppers who built it. When the board let the last CEO go in May 2025, they turned to Bender and said, it\u2019s your turn.<\/p>\n