Nimesh Jhaveri

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Nimesh Jhaveri is recognized for his role in making the retail pharmacy experience more pleasant for consumers.

Photography: 
Nick Romanenko

During visits to India as a child, Nimesh Jhaveri understood what it took to provide customer service. Today, as the divi­sional vice president for pharmacy transformation at Walgreens, the nation’s largest drug store chain, Jhaveri PHARM’90 remembers the hard work of his family, which still runs successful businesses ranging from textiles to health care. “It has always been in our gene pool to always make someone happier, to make a service better,” he says.

Jhaveri joined Walgreens as a pharmacy technician, where he learned the value of customer satisfaction and bene­fitted from a management scholarship. The experience underlies his conviction that a successful business is about people, whether customers or employees. With five patents to his name and six more pending, Jhaveri is recognized for his role in reinventing the practice of pharmacy. His Well Experience model, for instance, changed how pharmacists treat customers by providing consultations in a private setting adjacent to the pharmacy itself.

Jhaveri has spent his career at Walgreens, a reflection of his loyalty as well as his integrity and passion. In 2004, he joined the Dean’s Leadership Council at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, a satisfying way, he says, to give back to Rutgers. In 2011, Jhaveri became a member of the Rutgers Board of Trustees, which consists of 59 voting members and increasingly reflects the diversity of the university. The board was the governing body of Rutgers from the time it was founded as Queen’s College in 1766 until the university was reorganized under a 1956 state law that created a Board of Governors as the new governing body of the university. The Board of Trustees retains many of its advisory functions and also has vital fiduciary responsibilities that help the university retain its operating independence.

“It couldn’t have come together more perfectly,” says Jhaveri of his role on the board as chair of the health affairs committee. “Rutgers is part of my big family, along with Walgreens and my little family,” says Jhaveri, married and the father of two. “Rutgers gave me the shot to do what I do today.”                                                                

To learn more, visit governingboards.rutgers.edu.