Is Helena Foulkes the Next CEO of Rhode Island?

It was nearly a year after Helena Foulkes announced she was running as a Democrat for governor when the August 2022 public poll came out.

She’d spent millions of dollars on her campaign, including hundreds of thousands of her own money, and dedicated nearly the entire summer to shaking hands and getting voters to learn her name. 

Despite her efforts, the poll showed her support at just 14 percent, ranking her third among Democratic candidates. Now — thinking back to that moment more than two years ago, her disappointment is still palpable.

“I remember feeling a combination of mad, sad and determined,” she tells me as we’re having a cup of coffee at Seven Stars Bakery on Point Street in Providence. It’s the second time we’ve met in the past month or so.  

Foulkes, who was named one of Fortune’s “100 Most Powerful Women in Business” several times, is well known in the business world. A Harvard University and Harvard Business School graduate, she spent most of her career climbing the corporate ladder of CVS Health before leaving to run Hudson’s Bay Company, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue.

And while she has deep family roots in politics, Foulkes struggled in 2022 to build name recognition with voters, and the August poll made her look like an afterthought to Governor Dan McKee and then-Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, both leading her by double digits. 

Foulkes remembers seeking advice from her uncle, former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, and later, her then-media partner, Thomas “Tad” Devine. Together they decided she should “lean in.”

“In some ways, being so far behind was also a really good moment to reflect on not being so cautious or careful, but just being true to myself,” Foulkes says.

Her popularity surged in the final weeks of the election, as she won praise for her performances in two TV debates. She also benefited when Gorbea stumbled over an inaccurate TV attack ad and problems with Spanish-language ballot machines. Foulkes eventually lost to McKee by 2.9 percentage points, but her late-in-the-game success was evident in the results that showed she’d garnered the most day-of votes. Gorbea came in third.

“It’s really heart-wrenching to throw your whole soul into something and come up that short,” Foulkes says. “I wallowed in self-pity for a few days.” 

The wallowing didn’t last long, however, as Foulkes quietly began running for governor again, which she’s essentially been doing ever since. Technically, she hasn’t announced her candidacy yet — with the 2026 Democratic primary still more than a year and a half away. 

But she’s actively raising money, attending public events whenever possible and talking to everyone and anyone about what they want in a leader.

“I’m gearing up,” she says. 

When explaining why she wants to be governor, Foulkes offers a handful of standard Democratic talking points, including making housing more affordable, improving child care and making schools better. 

But she says she gets the feeling from Rhode Islanders that they’re not being heard by their current leaders and is trying to learn from those conversations to help inform how she can best serve them. 

“Part of being a great leader is having the humility to know what you don’t know,” she says, calling herself a political outsider. “People need real change in this state because they feel that the whole system is leaving them behind.” 

Wendy Schiller, a Brown University political science professor, keeps a close eye on statewide politics, and sees Foulkes as genuinely believing she can do a better job for the state than McKee. But she also thinks there’s a simpler explanation at play. 

“Talented, creative people who are successful always look for the next challenge,” Schiller says. “That’s what they do. That’s how they’re built, and she strikes me as that kind of person.”  

Foulkes’ shadow campaign is being felt across the state’s Democratic Party, including by the governor, whose popularity has declined in recent months amid widespread frustration over the Washington Bridge failure. 

Without using her name, the governor brought up Foulkes repeatedly in recent media appearances; namely, to accuse Attorney General Peter Neronha of conspiring with her. 

“He’s working for someone who could potentially run against me in 2026, and he’s trying to take me out of office as we speak,” McKee said during an October news conference. 

Last year, Neronha told Rhode Island Monthly he voted for Foulkes over McKee in 2022 and that he meets with her periodically; the governor pointed to his comments as evidence they’re working against him. Foulkes says there’s no conspiracy. 

“I get coffee with Peter occasionally, just like I meet a lot of people around the state,” she says. “He’s a really nice, nice person, but we have no deeper relationship than that.” 

McKee, through his campaign spokesperson Mike Trainor, declined to be interviewed for this story. But his advisers are watching Foulkes closely and are already strategizing against a potential rematch between the two Democrats. 

“Forewarned is forearmed,” says Bob Walsh, a longtime union leader who’s a member of McKee’s political advisory team. Walsh has helped run campaigns for decades and sees Foulkes as having vulnerabilities that would be exposed, unlike in 2022 when she wasn’t seen as a frontrunner until the end. 

He points to her 2014 campaign contribution to longtime U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, her role at CVS when the company sold “alarming” amounts of opioids across the state and the country, and her time at Hudson’s Bay, when she cut hundreds of jobs while earning a compensation package worth $29 million.  

“No one who ran in the five-way race last time ran hard negatives against Helena because she and Nellie [Gorbea] were splitting the votes,” Walsh says. “She’s going to have to answer these questions this time, and handle the fact that people are going to put money behind those issues.” 

A Family History of Politicians 

The first time Foulkes meets me for coffee, we’re at L’Artisan Cafe in Wayland Square — not far from where she and her husband live on the East Side of Providence. 

She’s wearing an unassuming dark-colored jacket, which almost isn’t needed on the surprisingly warm October day. 

She’s enthusiastic, albeit slightly guarded, while talking about her life, career and family. When she needs a moment to think through any particular topic, she takes a deep breath in, smiles and absentmindedly reaches for her jacket zipper. 

“It’s a big family,” she says, noting her brother and three sisters live nearby; her father — Bernard “Bernie” Buonanno Jr. — has eighteen grandchildren. 

Buonanno was born into a similarly large family with deep Italo-American ties in Rhode Island. His grandparents “came on a boat” separately from Italy. Foulkes’ grandfather coached former Governor Bruce Sundlun at Classical High School, and he met Foulkes’ grandmother at nearby Central High School, where she worked as a librarian. 

“The story was that she locked him into the library because she thought he was cute,” Foulkes says with a laugh. 

Foulkes’s mother, Martha Dodd Buonanno, who passed away from lung cancer in 2009, was one of six children, and college roommates with longtime U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi at Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University) in Washington, D.C. (Then-vice president Joe Biden was among the attendees at Martha’s wake.) “Martha loved Democratic politics,” Pelosi told colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives during a 2009 speech honoring her friend’s life.  

The connection led Pelosi to stump for Foulkes in 2022.

“As governor she will not only be a job creator — she’ll be a job attractor of people, of companies, to Rhode Island, who respect her role, which is well acclaimed in the private sector,” Pelosi said at the time. 

Martha was the daughter of U.S. Senator Thomas Dodd, who served from 1959 to 1971, and was known for prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s. He served as trial counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials. 

As a result of her grandfather, Foulkes says politics played a big role in that side of the family. 

But it wasn’t always a positive influence, especially when the Senate censured Dodd later in his career for using campaign funds for personal use. 

Foulkes says the censure affected her family, especially her mother, along with her uncle, Chris Dodd, who she says spent his time in the Senate trying to show the positive effects the Dodds could have in politics. Chris Dodd represented Connecticut from 1981 to 2011. 

“My mother was a bit leery about the impact of politics on family life,” Foulkes says. “There were times when my father thought he might be interested, and I think she felt like it would be a big challenge for the family.” 

Her mother’s outlook on family impact dissuaded Foulkes from pursuing public office when she was younger. That didn’t happen until 2021, when people started asking her to run for governor after then-Governor Gina Raimondo left to become U.S. Commerce Secretary.  

Asked point blank if Raimondo — who’s always had a frosty relationship with McKee — asked her to run for governor, Foulkes tells me, “I won’t say.” Foulkes is sometimes referred to as “Gina 2.0,” a moniker she doesn’t particularly care for. 

“It’ll be an amazing day when there will be so many women governors that we don’t need to pick the only one and say that someone else is ‘2.0,’” Foulkes says. “I have my own strengths and weaknesses, and I think it’s wasted energy to make a comparison. We don’t tend to do this about the men.” 

Foulkes spent her early childhood in East Greenwich before moving to Providence when she was nine. After attending Henry Barnard and the Lincoln School, she got accepted to Harvard, which she described as “a bit overwhelming at first.” 

There was a professor she wanted for her adviser, but he was helping too many other students, so he encouraged Foulkes to work with a younger professor named Larry Summers. Summers went on to serve as president of Harvard, as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton and as National Economic Council director under President Barack Obama.

“We’re still close to this day,” says Foulkes, who was elected to the influential Harvard University Board of Overseers in 2016. 

Despite always feeling drawn to retail and consumer-related business, Foulkes briefly got involved in investment banking after graduating in 1986. She married her husband, William Foulkes, in 1989 at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Narragansett. 

After returning to Harvard and graduating from its business school, Foulkes was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, who worked at Gillette in South Boston. She was hired at CVS Health, where she spent most of her professional career. She had four children, ran marathons and worked on issues related to the rollout of the Affordable Care Act in Washington, D.C. 

Less than a year after having her fourth child, Foulkes was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She was thirty-five at the time. Her eldest was five, and her twins were three. Foulkes remembers crying when the doctor told her. 

“It’s a very scary thing, especially when you have little kids,” she says. “You’re really not so much worried about yourself. It’s more: Will my kids remember me if something terrible happens?”

She continued to work as she went through surgery and treatment, which she says depleted her strength and energy, and lauds CVS for supporting her through that time. She says it’s given her an appreciation for what others are going through. 

“I realized, anyone walking around here right now is dealing with something that we don’t see,” she says. “If you looked at me at that time in my life, I looked fine; I looked successful. But I was very stressed and sad, and navigating the health care landscape is complicated.”  

After battling cancer, she continued to succeed at CVS and eventually became the head of CVS Pharmacy. She helped grow the pharmacy and its retail business into the largest in the country, and was widely celebrated by health advocates in 2014 when she eliminated the sale of all tobacco products in stores — a $2 billion per year revenue source for the company. 

In return, CVS brought her great wealth, earning her accolades, high-profile coverage in national newspapers and consideration for other powerful jobs, including CEO of Uber, among others. 

At her peak, Foulkes earned an annual compensation package worth about $6 million, according to documents filed with federal regulators.

But CVS will likely continue to be one of her biggest vulnerabilities in politics because of the well-documented role the pharmacy giant played in fueling the opioid epidemic that continues to kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.  

“She has to have a better answer on opioids than she did in 2022,” Schiller says. “She didn’t really address it well.” 

‘We Just Didn’t See All of That’ 

When Foulkes took over CVS Pharmacy in 2014, nearly 30,000 Americans had died that year from opioid-involved overdoses. 

That same year in Rhode Island, “the volume of opioids sold in the state would provide every man, woman and child in Rhode Island roughly 161 10mg pills,” according to a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Neronha, the same man the governor now thinks is helping Foulkes politically. 

In East Providence, a single CVS pharmacy purchased more than 800,000 dosage units in the community of fewer than 48,000 people, according to the complaint, and Neronha alleged CVS “had a crucial role to play in stopping the diversion of opioids but failed to do so.” 

The company has paid millions to the state in settlements since 2015. Walgreens, Walmart and other pharmacies have similarly paid out a litany of settlements over the years throughout the country.

When faced with criticism that she got rich by “pumping opioids into our homes,” as the McKee campaign said in an attack ad during the 2022 election, Foulkes has often pivoted to talk about the work she did to reduce opioid dispensing in the years after becoming head of pharmacy. 

“I feel really sad about the impact of opioids on Americans, but also proud of what I personally did,” she tells me, echoing statements she made during the 2022 election. 

But she acknowledges the company missed troubling signs along the way, saying CVS was one player in a “really complicated situation” and that she wishes they “could have done more.” 

“Did I ever see a particular store and say, ‘Wow, how does that compare to the number of people who live there?’ No — so I missed that,” she says. “We just didn’t see all of that and I would say as soon as we had a sense of the impact, we did a lot.” 

As it stands now, Foulkes is the biggest political threat to McKee’s path to reelection, and Joe Fleming, a longtime Rhode Island pollster, sees CVS as a vulnerability for Foulkes. 

“In the last campaign, no one really attacked Helena Foulkes because she wasn’t looked at as a key factor,” Fleming says. “She had somewhat of a clean ride. Obviously, if it’s him and her, they’ll go after her record at CVS.” 

But attacking CVS is a double-edged sword in Rhode Island politics, as McKee learned in 2022 when the company’s former longtime CEO Tom Ryan blasted him for “publicly attacking and slandering the largest company in Rhode Island.” 

Ryan, who retired in 2011 after seventeen years at the helm, endorsed Foulkes in the race. She named Ryan when asked what business leader she most looked up to, and Ryan tells me he’s supporting her again this time around — regardless of who’s in the race. 

“The skills she displayed at CVS and subsequently after in various positions are transferable to running the state — becoming the CEO of the state,” Ryan says. “She’s an effective leader, and leaders matter.”

Foulkes is also likely to face scrutiny over her role in the state’s response to the collapse of 38 Studios, the defunct video-game company created by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. The state invested $75 million in taxpayer-backed bonds into the company in a deal struck toward the end of then-Governor Donald Carcieri’s administration.

Carcieri’s successor, Lincoln Chafee, had campaigned against the investment. After Foulkes served on his transition team, Chafee appointed her vice chairperson of the R.I. Economic Development Corp., the state agency where the deal was struck. 

Foulkes resigned in 2012 after disagreeing with Chafee over how to handle the company running out of money, and issued a statement at the time, saying, “I wish him good luck in this very difficult challenge.”

Looking back at that time, Foulkes says it was stressful, and she wanted to explore ideas other than simply letting the company fail. Chafee had no interest. 

“I thought our job at the EDC was to explore every possible option,” she says. “But look, he was a politician, so what did I know? I was just looking at it from a business perspective, trying to look at all the various options and make sure we explored the pros and cons of everyone so we could do right by the taxpayers of the state.” 

The butting of heads has fueled narratives over the years that Chafee and Foulkes don’t get along. But when I call Chafee, the former governor offers a surprisingly glowing review, saying his feelings about her have shifted somewhat ever since his wife and Foulkes started working together on the board of the Wheeler School, a private school on Providence’s East Side. 

“My wife had nothing but good things to say about her decisions at Wheeler,” Chafee says. “You don’t rise up in CVS without some talent, but on [38 Studios], we disagreed sharply, and I felt, and still do, that I was very right, and she was very wrong.” 

Chafee also says he’s concerned about Rhode Island’s leadership, pointing specifically to the westbound Washington Bridge. The bridge carried 90,000 vehicles per day before it abruptly closed to traffic more than a year ago, and critics say the crisis response has since been riddled with unforced errors by the McKee administration. 

Schiller says the bridge is McKee’s top challenge and his handling of it moving forward could dictate his political future. 

“The bridge is such a disaster for McKee, and I think nobody sees how he comes out of that looking good,” Schiller says. “The bridge will still be under construction when the primary happens, and he will come under attack for wasting an entire year like this.” 

Recent polls have shown McKee’s favorability slipping to levels just above Chafee’s in 2013, when the former governor ultimately decided not to run for reelection. 

McKee so far has given no indication he’s not running for reelection in 2026, but the weak polling coupled with challenges he’s faced during his first full term in office have fueled speculation that he might follow the Chafee route and choose not to run again.

“Politics change,” Fleming says. “I don’t see anyone running for governor besides Dan McKee and [Foulkes] at this point. If Dan McKee doesn’t run, it’s a whole different story.” 

‘2026 Starts Today’ 

If the 2024 presidential election taught political observers anything, it’s that a lot can change in a very short time.

With Trump winning back the White House, Walsh says the 2026 gubernatorial election will come into focus more quickly, and there’s already talk about how it might play out. 

“2026 starts today,” Walsh tells me, shortly after the presidential election was called for Trump. 

Foulkes says she’ll likely announce her candidacy before the summer ends, giving her six to eight months to continue running a shadow campaign, which will include raising as much money as possible in a state where individual donations are limited to $2,000 per person annually. 

State records show her campaign account had about $842,300 at the end of last year’s third quarter, revealing a widening financial gap between the governor’s account, which totals $505,000. 

Schiller says the Washington Bridge is hurting McKee’s fundraising efforts in the heavily affected East Side of Providence, the capital city’s wealthiest neighborhood. In contrast, Foulkes’ business connections give her a comparatively larger donor base to tap into nationwide, she says. 

“She’s already raising a lot of money,” Schiller says. 

Money isn’t everything in politics, but it’s often one of the most important tools to getting elected at any level of government. As of early November, Foulkes had only two people on her campaign payroll. They were both hired to fundraise.  

But she’s not counting on money alone to get her elected, as it didn’t work last time when she ran one of the most expensive unsuccessful primaries of all time in Rhode Island. Campaign finance reports showed she spent more than $4.6 million by the end of 2022. She’s also looking to change some strategies, such as starting earlier and not avoiding talking about her business acumen — which she’d been advised against last time. 

“I was thinking a lot about my perceived weaknesses, for example, a businessperson running as a Democrat,” she says. “But my business career is who I am, and I’m proud of it, so I think that’s something I need to be aware of, but it’s not something I need to hide. It is what I am.”  

During the two hours we spend talking, Foulkes avoids using McKee’s name, or even criticizing him directly, saying, “I really don’t want to throw stones.” But she talks a lot about the need for new leadership, saying, “people feel that politicians in general aren’t being held accountable.”  

It comes up a few different times, including when she’s talking about the Washington Bridge fiasco and the threat of losing Hasbro, the toymaker that’s eyeing a move out of Rhode Island after being headquartered here for more than a century. 

“If I had won the last race, I would have spent the first thirty days going to the top ten employers of the state and asking each of those leaders: What can we do as a state to help them expand their workforce?” she says. “Hasbro should want to double down on Rhode Island.” 

Walsh, however, says McKee should be glad Foulkes is showing her hand so early because it’s keeping other potential challengers at bay. 

He also doesn’t see much that divides the two Democrats ideologically, which he says gives voters little reason to support a businesswoman who’s unproven in public office over an incumbent, who’s served as a mayor, lieutenant governor and governor. 

“My comment to the governor’s office is that Helena’s your best friend because she’s clogging up the lane and you know what an election against her looks like,” he says.

McKee’s campaign told reporters he’s likely to make his announcement for reelection sometime in the beginning of this year. And while stressing that he’s heard nothing from McKee other than that he’s planning to run, Walsh still likes to theorize political scenarios. 

If McKee, for whatever reason, doesn’t run in 2026, Walsh says he’d be looking at House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Secretary of State Gregg Amore as possibly joining the fray. Both men have publicly expressed interest in the job, but only if McKee isn’t in the picture. Neronha, who last spring said it was doubtful he’d run for governor, surprised political observers in November when he told reporters he’s still interested in public office when his term ends after next year. 

Neronha is now signaling interest in the lieutenant governor’s position — spurring some to imagine a Foulkes-Neronha joint bid for the top two executive branch positions. “I think a ticket of Foulkes for governor and Neronha for lieutenant governor (with a portfolio of health issues) would be extremely strong,” M. Charles Bakst, a retired longtime Providence Journal political columnist, posted on social media. “They would not be listed together on the ballot, but they could campaign together and run joint ads.”

Rumors also started to fly in November after The Public’s Radio reported unnamed sources saying Raimondo, who’s leaving the U.S. Department of Commerce amid the Trump transition, was considering another run for Rhode Island governor.

The former governor didn’t immediately reject the rumors, but several people close to her expressed skepticism. 

“I think it’s unlikely,” said Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, who was Raimondo’s chief of staff and later administration director when she was governor, during a radio interview in November.

Shekarchi — who has flirted multiple times with seeking office outside of the General Assembly — would immediately become a formidable candidate with statewide political influence and the largest campaign account of any state-level politician, totaling nearly $3 million. 

“He may want a different leadership experience and also look at Gina Raimondo, who became the governor of a small state, which really catapulted her into national prominence,” Schiller says.

Shekarchi and Amore both have strong union support — something that Foulkes so far has lacked — and Walsh can see a scenario where one of the Democrats gets into a McKee-less race, forcing Foulkes to consider whether to run as a third-party independent candidate. 

“She goes the Linc Chafee route and looks to win with a plurality,” Walsh says, referencing how Chafee won as an independent candidate in 2010. 

I ask Foulkes whether she’d consider an independent run. She doesn’t dismiss the idea outright, but later firmly replies she sees herself squarely as a Democrat. 

“My plan is to run as a Democrat,” she says. “It’s always important to keep your options open in life, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.”

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Eli Sherman is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning reporter with the CBS affiliate WPRI-TV. He’s a member of the station’s Target 12 investigative team.