Will Carroll, Pharm.D., on developing future pharmacy executives | HSES 2026

The next generation of pharmacy executives will need to be business savvy, not just pharmacy experts, according to Will Carroll, Pharm.D., chief pharmacy officer at Sutter Health. Carroll spoke with Managed Healthcare Executive at the 2026 Health System Executive Summit.

Pharmacy expertise will still be important, Carroll said, but future leaders will need to understand business, finance, AI and digital technologies and workforce development, along with “the ability to lead change through influence across really complex systems.”

One of the biggest barriers to pharmacy leadership pathways today is a lack of intentional succession planning or leadership development programs, he said. Sutter Health’s program isn’t a once-a-year evaluation or development plan discussion but an intentional, repeated approach with multiple encounters, in which leaders mentor their team members, develop sponsorships and expose them to opportunities outside pharmacy so they can see how health systems work at a larger scale.

Moving from informal mentorship to real sponsorship and succession planning takes intentional effort and programmatic design, Carroll said. That means a playbook in which leaders ask team members what they aspire to do and what skills they need to develop further, and then managers deliberately invest in that development.

Carroll also tied expanding pharmacy’s accountability to building more diverse and inclusive leadership pathways. “High-performing teams really have inclusive, diverse culture,” he said, and that range of experience contributes to making the best decisions. Developing a workforce that reflects patients, team members and the communities a health system serves is important, he said.

The one change he would like health system leaders to make this year is to create sponsorship programs that take aspiring pharmacy leaders out of the pharmacy realm and expose them to system-wide initiatives, strategic planning and problem-solving. That helps them contribute beyond their operational lens and learn to communicate with and navigate the rest of the health system.

In this video, Carroll discusses the skills future pharmacy executives will need and how health systems can build stronger leadership pipelines.