Walgreens fills vacancy in photo dept.

DEERFIELD, Ill. Filling a void created by the departure last month of merchandising guru Chong Bang, Walgreens said Monday it has promoted Mona Kelly to general merchandise manager in charge of photo and front-end services.

Kelly is no stranger to the job. She joined Walgreens in 2005 as divisional merchandise manager of photo operations, and saw her role expanded in October 2008 to include oversight of Walgreens’ front-end services department. In February of 2009, she was given additional responsibility for gift cards, prepaid phone cards, cameras, film and digital media.

Prior to joining Walgreens, Kelly was VP photo at Eckerd Drug. According to Walgreens spokesperson Tiffani Washington, “Kelly has 35 years of experience in the photo industry in both operations and merchandising.”

As previously reported, her predecessor in photo and front-end management, Chong Bang, left the company in mid-December – after spearheading the creation and launch of Walgreens’ sweeping Customer Centric Retailing [CCR] initiative – to join Shoppers Drug Mart as SVP merchandising. His replacement as VP of CCR is 20-year company veteran Mike Arnoult.

At Shoppers, Bang reports to Mary Kelly, Shoppers’ EVP merchandising and category management. Kelly, the former head of pharmacy and healthcare merchandising at Target, joined Shoppers in early 2009.