Mario Rivera
Chief Supply Chain and Logistics Officer
Mario Rivera is SVP and Chief Supply Chain and Logistics Officer and is responsible for developing and executing CVS Health’s supply chain network transformation strategy.
Mario and his team are responsible for getting products to more than 9,000 stores and pharmacies across the US.
“Our pharmacy and consumer wellness business segment has a fairly complex supply chain,” he says. His role is to get products from CVS’s vendors into its supply chain and logistics network, through its distribution centres, and then into its stores.
The last part of the supply chain puzzle is the last-mile delivery of products to consumers’ homes.
“There’s a lot of direct-to consumer logistics,” he says. “Both through our fulfilment centre network and via our stores across the country.”
He says the biggest challenge of his role is the speed of change the entire industry is going through.
Mario adds: “Consumers are more and more asking for multiple options on how to get their products delivered, so we are in a very omnichannel world.
“The pandemic accelerated e-commerce and direct-to-consumer delivery but soon after we came out of that it became evident consumers wanted more. They wanted omnichannel convenience.”
As well as his supply chain role, Mario also serves as Executive Sponsor for JUNTOS, the company’s Hispanic/Latin Colleague Resource Group, and is also a board member of the CVS Health Foundation, which provides support, scholarships and grants to the company’s non-profit partners and pharmacy schools.
Mario brings over two decades of experience in the healthcare industry to CVS Health, in areas including MedTech, life sciences and pharmacy. He also had a spell in retail.
He graduated from the Monterrey Institute of Technology with a BSc in Industrial Engineering and from the University of Cambridge with a MPhil in Engineering.
Through college and then his long career, one principle has guided Mario: “When I was young,” he says, “my father told me that you must never allow anything or anyone to recommend you more than the quality of your work. That has always stayed with me.”