Ex-CVS Executive Helena Foulkes Wins Rhode Island Governor's Race

Rhode Island voters elected Helena Foulkes, a former CVS president, as their next governor on Tuesday, handing a Fortune 500 executive her first elected office in the 2026 midterms. Her win came as part of a broader wave of Democratic victories nationwide, and it capped a remarkable political comeback: two years ago, she lost the same primary by roughly 4,000 votes.

Foulkes spent 25 years at CVS, rising to president of its pharmacy division. Fortune named her one of its Most Powerful Women, and she reached No. 12 on that list in both 2015 and 2016. She left in 2018 to become CEO of Hudson's Bay Company, the now-defunct Canadian department-store operator that owned Saks Fifth Avenue at the time, and held that job for two years.

Her political arc mirrors the career philosophy she has articulated for years. In 2022, she challenged incumbent Gov. Dan McKee in the Democratic primary and lost by about 4,000 votes. Instead of walking away, she ran again in 2026 — and this time defeated McKee by more than 40,000 votes in the primary before winning the general election by a margin exceeding 100,000.

What does failure teach a leader?

Foulkes has long framed setbacks as raw material rather than endings. "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 advice to young professionals is blunt: "Do not hold yourself back. Go for it."

Foulkes grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, the oldest of five children. Her father was a businessman; her mother stayed home. She arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate in 1982 with "no idea what I wanted to do," she told Fortune in 2018. She studied economics, spent two years at Goldman Sachs, then took what she called a "relatively boring" finance job at Tiffany & Co. before returning to Harvard Business School for her MBA.

How bad bosses built a better leader

Foulkes doesn't romanticize the early grind. She acknowledged that first jobs often disappoint, and that discouragement comes easily.

"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."

Her promotion formula favored speed over polish. "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."

At CVS, she helped launch the company's loyalty program and played a key role in its decision to stop selling tobacco. She also faced scrutiny over CVS's role in the opioid crisis, an issue that resurfaced during her gubernatorial campaign after litigation and settlement coverage of her tenure leading the pharmacy business.

When does moving on beat waiting?

Foulkes wanted the CVS CEO job but felt the path was taking too long. So in 2018 she left after 25 years for the struggling Hudson's Bay. "I felt like I needed to get out of my comfort zone a little bit and do something different," she told Fortune that year. "I was liberated in many ways."

The lesson she drew: advancement sometimes means betting on something unfamiliar rather than waiting for the perfect opening.

Now, as she prepares to govern the nation's smallest state by area, Foulkes confronts a fresh agenda — affordability and data center development among the challenges. "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." Practitioners watching Providence will see whether a retail operator's tolerance for risk and iteration translates into statehouse results.