Target's next CEO started as an intern—and rose up the ranks over 22 years

CNBC

6 hours ago

Twenty-two years ago, Michael Fiddelke was a finance intern at Target. Now, he's set to become the company's next CEO.
Fiddelke, currently Target's chief operating officer, will take over the top position and join the board of directors on February 1, 2026, the company announced on Wednesday. He'll replace Brian Cornell, who's run the retailer for the last 11 years — overseeing it through record stock highs in 2021 and an ongoing market slump essentially ever since.
When Fiddelke interned at Target in 2003, he was a graduate student at Northwestern University studying business administration and finance. Target hired him as a full-time analyst the following year, and he got promoted or changed jobs within the Minneapolis-based company roughly every two years, all the way up to his CEO appointment.
His resume at Target between 2007 and 2024 includes several director titles, vice president, senior vice president, executive vice president and chief financial officer. "I can tell you that the intern that walked through those doors down the road 22 years ago wouldn't have predicted a Target path that leads to today," Fiddelke, 49, said in a video on LinkedIn on Wednesday.
Fiddelke's job as CEO may not be easy. For the past four years, Target's sales have been generally flat, a trend that the company's leaders have described as a blip — but customers, former employees, vendors and analysts say is largely a result of subpar experiences in leanly staffed stores and a Trump-era turn away from diversity efforts, CNBC reported on July 15.
"They have kind of lost their identity," said one former employee, who worked at Target for nearly 10 years.
Target's fiscal second-quarter results exceeded Wall Street's earnings expectations, but its full-year outlook still predicts a single percentage point decline in sales.
"Getting Target back to growth is my top priority," Fiddelke wrote in his LinkedIn post. "We'll need to operate differently, move with urgency and focus, and make bold choices to get there. We have the foundation to build new momentum, and I'm eager to accelerate work already underway and find new ways to deliver the incredible products and experiences our guests expect from us."
When Fiddelke takes over, he'll join the likes of Nike's Elliott Hill, Microsoft's Satya Nadella and General Motors' Mary Barra as people who went on to lead the companies they joined as interns. His decades of experience at Target during both high and low periods help him "understand this business" and what makes it "distinctly unique," he said on Wednesday during a call with reporters.
"I know you're not satisfied with where Target is today. Neither am I," he said in the LinkedIn video, speaking to consumers. "Getting us back to growth is my No. 1 priority and I'm eager to get to work."