SEPTEMBER 2007

SSI Profile: Stephen Wing

When Steve Wing was growing up in a small town in Minnesota, he and his six brothers and sisters learned two big life lessons: “We were taught that all people are equal and everyone should get the chance to be successful,” says Wing. “And we learned the value of hard work and its rewards.” One of his major role models was his sister, who was born with cerebral palsy and yet pushed herself to learn and to connect with others, using an electronic communication board. Her perseverance in the face of a profoundly disabling condition showed Wing that, given the chance, people can rise above even extreme hardship – and throughout his career, Wing has made it his business to give them that chance.

Wing started out in education and says he “loved teaching” but that retail was in his blood. Now the director of government programs for CVS Pharmacy, he has been in the drugstore business for over 30 years, devoting the last 16 to working with government agencies, nontraditional employment organizations, and faith-based institutions in recruiting targeted groups of people, many of them low-income, for employment. “In 1996 we started our first Welfare to Work program with six people in Akron, Ohio,” he says. “Today, we have hired over 60,000 former welfare recipients, with a 60 percent retention rate.”

For Wing and CVS, education is critical to helping current and future employees do well. “Education is the way out of poverty for folks in the inner city and rural areas. We encourage employees not only to get their high school diploma but to go on to postsecondary education.” Wing has also helped develop educational programs within CVS – which he says give the company a decided “competitive advantage.”

The CVS Pathways to Pharmacy program, for instance, gives a boost to young people living in inner city or rural areas who are interested in a career in pharmacy: last summer some 2,000 participated. Another initiative, recently launched, is CVS’s Pharmacies of Promise, which gives students in inner city schools an opportunity to see pharmacy as a career path. Wing has also helped to develop the nationally renowned One-Stop/CVS Regional Learning Center design in Washington, D.C., and the Cassadaga Job Corps Pharmacy Technician Program in upstate New York. All of these programs link back to his original love, teaching. “In this position I really feel that I have been able to do even more for education than I could ever have done in high school.”