Alexander Weatherall

Consulting Partner

Alex Weatherall | ERA Group

Alex Weatherall has more than 25 years of procurement experience in a breadth of industries including food retail, office products retail, vehicle fuels, and healthcare. He has held positions as VP, Senior Administrative Director, and Group Manager at Wegmans Food Markets, Office Depot, Staples, Partners Healthcare, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Alex has a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Prior to ERA Alex spent 10 years in healthcare, most recently as Senior Administrative Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Pharmacy. In that role Alex had profit and loss responsibility for 350 staff and a $250m drug budget.

While at MGH, Alex:

  • Built a pharmacy supply chain organization and put in practice industry-leading procurement methods.
  • Provided timely leadership to a central pharmacy operation struggling to service patients, stay in stock, control inventory, and manage costs.
  • Assembled a Budgeting and Business Analytics team.
  • Introduced lean manufacturing techniques to the Pharmacy’s sterile and non-sterile production areas: slashed lead times, smoothed production cycles, improved productivity.
  • Coached the production team on make-versus-buy analysis and saved millions in purchases avoided and waste eliminated.
  • Overhauled the hospital’s drug budgeting methodology to improve forecast accuracy.
  • Developed plans for two major remodels that improved workflows and increased throughput.
  • Instituted robust procedures to measure, manage, and minimize drug waste: achieved 7-figure savings by reducing drug ‘shrink’ 48% in three years.

In earlier healthcare leadership roles Alex led initiatives to drive down costs, for instance by spearheading a 7-hospital conversion of anesthesia gas suppliers through collaboration with Biomedical Engineering, Pharmacy, and Anesthesiology. He also managed the Accounts Payable operation for the largest healthcare provider network in New England, instilling a culture of excellence by reorganizing supervisory staff and adopting automation technologies.

In addition to his operational and financial work in healthcare Alex has held merchandising, procurement, and warehousing & distribution roles in retail, specifically food and office products.

In his free time Alex owns and oversees a small retail operation of his own – an upscale gas station and convenience store – and serves on the Board of Directors of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association.