Starbucks Loses a Top Lawyer to Foot Locker for Lead Legal Role

Aug 01, 2023

Starbucks Corp. has lost a top lawyer for the second time this year, with deputy general counsel and corporate secretary Jennifer Kraft joining Foot Locker Inc. as general counsel.

She follows the departure of former Starbucks deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer Tyson Avery. Both lawyers, along with former acting general counsel Zabrina Jenkins, were part of a senior leadership team grappling with a growing unionization drive by workers in Starbucks stores.

Starbucks had hired Kraft in 2020 from United Airlines Inc., where she spent nearly a decade, most recently as a deputy general counsel. Prior to that she worked for eight years at professional services company Aon PLC.

Kraft is listed on Foot Locker’s online leadership page in lieu of its longtime legal chief, Sheilagh Clarke, who joined the New York-based company in 1988 and took over its top legal role in 2014. Clarke, who served as general counsel and corporate secretary, wasn’t one of the eight highest-paid executives at Foot Locker in 2022, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement.

Foot Locker, an athletic retailer that’s benefited from a strong sneaker market, noted Kraft’s new role last month in a securities filing. Kraft also confirmed her hire in a statement posted within the last week to her LinkedIn profile.

Mary Dillon, who took over last year as Foot Locker’s CEO, was also reportedly a candidate for the same job at Starbucks. Dillon joined the board at Starbucks in 2016 but stepped down last year.

Foot Locker’s corporate secretary role—a job that often requires expertise in securities law, corporate governance, and interacting with directors and shareholders—was given in July to Anthony Foti, a deputy general counsel and former assistant secretary at the company.

Foot Locker, Starbucks, Kraft, and Clarke didn’t respond to comment requests.

Kraft, who as corporate secretary presented before an annual Starbucks shareholders meeting this year, joins two other lawyers who have left the company in recent weeks.

Jessica “Jessie” Grodstein Kennedy, a corporate counsel specializing in advertising and brand protection, this month became senior counsel for digital and marketing at Instacart Inc. Andria Kelly, a risk compliance manager with responsibility for anti-corruption, investigations, and labor relations, last month became a principal counsel for compliance, ethics, and legal affairs at T-Mobile US Inc. Both lawyers collectively spent almost 25 years at Starbucks.

Jenkins, who has spent 18 years at Starbucks and preceded Bradley Lerman as its top in-house lawyer, is now an executive adviser to the company’s new CEO Laxman “Laks” Narasimhan.

The Seattle-based coffee and fast-food chain, which installed Narasimhan as leader in March, announced the following month its hire of Lerman, a litigator and former top lawyer at Medtronic PLC and Fannie Mae. Lerman replaced Rachel Gonzalez, who received nearly $12 million in total compensation after being terminated by Starbucks last year.

Gonzalez is now general counsel at GE Vernova, an energy company spun-off from General Electric Co.

Lerman’s appointment came amid internal turmoil at Starbucks, where dozens of white-collar employees and managers earlier this year signed an open letter objecting to the company’s labor strategies and other corporate policies.

While the in-house legal staff at Starbucks has played a key role in its labor battles, the company’s outside counsel from Littler Mendelson has also had more than 100 attorneys working on various union-related cases across the US, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Law.

On Aug. 11, lawyers from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati helped Starbucks defeat a conservative activist investor’s lawsuit targeting the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Starbucks has pledged to invest $100 million in small businesses and projects in underserved communities by 2025.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Baxter in New York at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at [email protected]; John Hughes at [email protected]; Alessandra Rafferty at [email protected]

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