Sam’s Club’s CTO is leaving following parent company Walmart’s return-to-office mandate

• Sam’s Club CTO Cheryl Ainoa is leaving following a return-to-office mandate, a company spokesperson confirmed.
• The company earlier this year required US corporate employees to work at one of three office hubs.
• Walmart is readying a new corporate campus in Bentonville, Arkansas.

A top Sam’s Club executive is leaving their role following parent company Walmart’s return-to-office mandate.

Sam’s Club chief technology officer Cheryl Ainoa — who has been with Walmart for nearly five years and in her current role for one — will leave the position and won’t be moving to Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

Walmart earlier this year required US corporate employees to work at one of three office locations, near New York, in the Bay Area, and in the hometown of Bentonville.

Last week, Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas told BI that in-person work is helping the company innovate more quickly.

“We deeply believe in the power of collaboration, and that power of collaboration by being together,” he said. “It always has been a superpower, and it will continue to be.”

Ainoa, who did not respond to a request for comment from BI, has been based in San Jose, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Bloomberg reported that Ainoa is exiting the company because of the RTO mandate along with personal reasons, and that many C-suite executives are expected to move to Bentonville. Walmart has been working on a sprawling new corporate campus that’s slated to officially open early next year.

Before she joined Sam’s Club, Ainoa led Walmart’s emerging tech team, helping to integrate generative AI into the company’s suite of apps for employees and customers.

Walmart is one of the biggest companies to require its corporate workforce to return to the office since the remote-work era of the pandemic. In September, Amazon announced that employees would be expected to work in-person five days a week beginning next year.

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