Brad Ulrich and the extra trip inside

Brad Ulrich had found a curious use for store pickup: collecting an order, then going into the store anyway. The service had saved him a trip through the aisles. He promptly added one back. His reason was the team inside.

In a 2023 shopping promotion, the Walgreens executive described himself as constantly on the go. His two oldest children were preparing to return to college, and the family shopping list was growing. Even an operations executive, it seems, cannot send children away with a loyalty balance in place of shampoo.

“I also love getting in the stores to engage with the team, so sometimes I do the pickup, then go inside anyway!” he said.

It is a small detail, but a useful place to begin. Convenience was available; conversation still mattered. A collection point and a front door offered two different ways of encountering the same business. Ulrich chose to use both. Today, as chief executive officer of Thrive Physical Therapy Partners, he works in a business organized around relationships with local practices. That extra trip inside supplies an apt opening image for the work.

A return to West Lafayette

Another store visit brought him back to West Lafayette, Indiana. In June 2023, Ulrich posted a photograph with the team at Walgreens store 6456. Seven people stand together, smiling, with the working space visible behind them. Ulrich is third from the left, in a light checked jacket. It is a group picture, with the executive taking his place among the people he had come to see.

His accompanying message thanked Jill, Dan, and the team for their insights and enthusiasm. A colleague, Joey Dyer, thanked him for joining them over the previous two days. The exchange has the texture of an actual visit: names, a location, and a conversation continued afterward.

West Lafayette also puts the story near Purdue University, where Ulrich earned a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy. Thrive’s July 2024 introduction described his service on the university’s dean’s pharmacy advisory council. His connection to Purdue therefore extends beyond the degree itself. Education, executive work, and an ongoing university connection occupy different parts of his professional life. The store photograph catches one of those connections in an everyday setting.

An operations title, a roll call of people

Ulrich announced a new Walgreens role in August 2022: group vice president of pharmacy operations and services. His message also described a visit to store teams in Oklahoma. Rather than stopping at the promotion, he named people whose work he had been recognizing.

Stefanie Ferguson had received the Walgreens Excellence in Residency Precepting award at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Store manager Eugene Campbell was being honored for 35 years of service. The award belonged to Ferguson; the service milestone belonged to Campbell. Ulrich’s part was to visit and recognize them. That distinction matters in a profile of a senior executive, where everybody else’s accomplishments can easily disappear into the person at the top.

His stated enthusiasm included getting to know the teams better and meeting more of them in the coming months. The promotion enlarged his responsibilities; the announcement kept individual employees in view. Taken alongside the West Lafayette visit, it shows a recurring emphasis in his public communication. He names teams and gives their contributions space. A job title occupies one line. The people doing the work require rather more room.

The size of a transition

Before Thrive, Ulrich held Walgreens leadership responsibilities across pharmacy and retail operations. A Massachusetts report listed him as regional vice president for Boston and upstate New York. By 2022, his public role announcement placed him in the group vice president position. These titles locate his career in the practical work of coordinating teams across a large organization.

A 2023 transaction gives that work a more concrete setting. Brookshire Grocery Company agreed to sell 120 pharmacies in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas to Walgreens. Most were to become Walgreens locations operating inside Brookshire stores. Ulrich spoke for Walgreens about the transition, including employment opportunities for eligible existing employees.

A deal can be counted in locations. Its implementation is experienced by people who already work there. The announcement placed both in the same frame: a sizeable transfer of businesses and the question of what would happen to their staff. That is relevant background for Ulrich’s later work at Thrive, whose partnerships also involve existing local teams. It does not make the two businesses identical. It does put transitions, established workplaces, and the responsibilities surrounding them into his career before the chief executive title arrived.

March 2024: a different seat

On March 25, 2024, Ulrich announced that he was becoming chief executive officer of Thrive Physical Therapy Partners. His message emphasized the team he was joining and a collaborative environment. He presented the appointment as a new chapter, with support teams included in the mission he described.

The replies offered a small glimpse of the professional connections accompanying the move. Mark Wagner praised his ability to empower others. Jerry Moreno referred to the inspiration he had provided at Walgreens. These are colleagues’ assessments, rather than a performance scorecard, but they show how some people who knew his work chose to greet the appointment.

The move also changed the setting for his operations experience. At Walgreens, his titles sat within a national retailer. At Thrive, he took the chief executive role at an organization partnering with local practices. The headline on a business card became shorter; the question of how to work with established teams remained. The appointment is the turning point in this story because it brought his background in a large operating organization to a business whose proposition depends on understanding the goals of individual partners.

A job title occupies one line. The people doing the work require rather more room.From this profile

What the support business actually does

Thrive describes its work in concrete administrative terms. Its services include recruiting, marketing, human resources, payroll, finance, data reporting, and operations. Expansion assistance can involve finding a location, negotiating a lease, and arranging a build-out. These are jobs with deadlines, documents, and consequences for the people waiting for them to be completed.

For a chief executive, a service list also describes a coordination problem. Recruiting and payroll belong to different disciplines, yet both affect the same workplace. Technology and reporting can inform decisions, but somebody still has to make those decisions and explain them to a team. The appeal of an operations background is easy to understand in this setting.

Thrive’s leadership listing includes Justin Novinger as chief operations officer, Dave Majewski as chief financial officer, Mary Jo McManamon leading revenue cycle management, and Keisha Roche’ Wilson leading talent acquisition. Ulrich’s CEO role sits alongside these specialties. The organization’s public emphasis on collaboration has a practical counterpart in that division of responsibilities. Support is a collective undertaking, dependent on people with different kinds of expertise working toward the needs of the same local business.

The local name on the door

Thrive’s stated partnership approach includes retaining a practice’s local identity and adapting acquisition terms to the owner’s intended future role. Its process moves through evaluation, collaboration, and onboarding. Financial analysis is part of evaluation; personal goals are part of the partnership planning that follows.

Those goals can include further professional development or retirement. An owner considering a partnership is therefore being asked about a future life as well as a present business. The eventual agreement has to accommodate both. A company name can stay on the door while the arrangements behind it change substantially.

This is the distinctive business context of Ulrich’s current role. His employer publicly promises local continuity alongside shared support. The management challenge implicit in that promise is to make the central organization useful while respecting the people who know the local workplace. A headquarters can write a process. A local team will discover how well it works on an ordinary Tuesday. The distance between those two perspectives is where much of the executive’s work must be judged. Keeping a familiar name is the visible part; making the partnership useful is the ongoing task.

The conversation after the announcement

By December 2024, Ulrich was appearing with Thrive’s chief strategy officer, Peter Chung, in a discussion with Paul Martin of Martin Healthcare Advisors. The subject was the mergers and acquisitions landscape heading into 2025. The public introduction highlighted competition facing sellers and the priorities used to evaluate potential partners.

That appearance places Ulrich in the outward-facing part of the CEO role: explaining a partnership business to owners weighing their options. It also places him beside a colleague with a different responsibility. The company’s approach was being discussed by its chief executive and its strategy leader together.

The everyday public exchanges continued, too. When Thrive introduced business development associates Brooke and Jack, Ulrich added a brief note of appreciation. The company described the pair as early contacts for prospective partners, people whose work begins with listening and learning. His response was uncomplicated encouragement.

The larger story is carried by these different scales of activity: a senior appointment, a transaction discussion, a visit to a named store, a note to two colleagues. Ulrich’s career gives the operations titles their context. The smaller moments give the person a place in the picture. Back at the pickup counter, he could collect his order and leave. He had already explained why he sometimes stayed.