From GM to Amazon to Alto Pharmacy, Alicia Boler Davis’ talks talking chances and leading with inspiration

At JPMorgan Chase’s eighth annual Women's Leadership Day, Byna Elliott,  the firm’s Global Head of Advancing Black Pathways, sits down with Alicia Boler Davis, CEO of Alto Pharmacy and JPMorgan Chase Board Director. They discuss Alicia's extraordinary career, from her engineering roots at GM to her pivotal decision to join Amazon, and eventually, lead Alto Pharmacy.

It's all about people

That’s a lesson that Alicia learned early in her career: “No matter what you're doing, no matter what you're leading, it's all about people.” She tells Byna the story of how she started as an engineer at GM, but after just a few years, she asked to work in an actual plant to learn more about “what it really means” to build cars. She says most of the leadership discouraged her from making that move, but in the end, she ended up in a plant where she led a team of 60. She recalls feeling both nervous and excited, and a bit overwhelmed at first—before she realized she had made exactly the right decision. “And so I think it started for me being curious and not being afraid to go into areas and do things that people may not think are easy.”

After nearly two decades and a number of promotions, Alicia’s next big move was to Amazon—a whole new industry, in a different part of the country. She says it was one of the hardest decisions she ever made. She says she loved her time at GM, had great mentors and colleagues, and advanced in her career—but she was ready for a new challenge. “I felt like even though I had an opportunity and there were more opportunities to come, there was a level of comfort being there that actually made me uncomfortable being that comfortable,” she tells Byna.

She made the move to Amazon just a year before the pandemic shut down businesses worldwide—and changed Amazon’s trajectory immeasurably. She says it was one of the best decisions she ever made. “Joining Amazon was really about joining a company that I thought was very innovative,” she says. “A very customer-obsessed company, a technology-based company. I thought I could have an impact.”

She did have an impact, taking on more and more responsibilities until by 2021 she was Senior Vice President for Global Customer Fulfillment. She recalls that she started getting recruiting calls for CEO positions but she barely had time to breathe. One of the calls was about a startup pharmaceutical company called Alto. At first Alicia wasn’t even intrigued, but, she says: “The more time I spent with the founders at Alto, the more I felt like this was the right thing for me to do. And it was a leap of faith, but I finally told myself: Alto is about challenging the status quo. That's who you've been. That's what you've always done. It's about fixing something that's broken, and it can have an impact on so many people's lives, and if it doesn't work out, you can always go run something big.”

On women and mentoring

Alicia tells Byna that she’s always had great mentors—and nearly 80 percent of them have been men. She says she’s very grateful for those invaluable relationships, but she now focuses on mentoring women—75 percent of the people she mentors are female. “And so I like to give examples and I like to be very vulnerable around, This is what happened to me, this is how I felt. I'm not saying this is what happened to you, but I'm saying that it's okay. Let me tell you how I work through it."

In the end, Alicia says, she likes to listen and learn. “I have a responsibility to help create opportunities for other people and also to encourage people to see beyond what they think is possible. For me, I think that's important, because sometimes, we think about what we can see, but there's so much opportunity if you can see beyond that. What's your wildest dream? What's the thing that you can just say this will never happen? Then that's the thing that you should be going for. And for me, that's how I think about it, and not to run away from those things, but to run towards them.”

Disclaimer: The speakers’ opinions belong to them and may differ from opinions of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and its affiliates. Views presented on this podcast are those of the speakers; they are as of December 21^st, 2023 and they may not materialize.

 

Full transcript here