A new NACDS chairman was inaugurated on the final day of the 2017 NACDS Annual Meeting.

Alex Gourlay, co-chief operating officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, took the gavel from outgoing chairman Martin Otto, chief merchant and chief financial officer at H-E-B, at the conference’s Tuesday morning Business Program.

“I think my role, really, is to take a patient/customer view at these opportunities and make sure that we’re proactive and leading particularly through pharmacy and health,” Gourlay told NACDS-TV.

Otto also reflected on his term as chairman of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

“The thing I think I’m proudest of is the conversation that we have started around this Future Value Targeting and what the future of the industry and the future of health care ought to look like, and what our role should be,” Otto said in an NACDS-TV interview. “I’ll be eager to see what it looks like going forward, and I’ll look forward to being involved in that.”

Also at the Business Program, former Dallas Federal Reserve chief Richard Fisher gave a confident outlook for the U.S. economy.

“America has a wonderful economy, and we’re a great people and have a great spirit and have an opportunity to do even more,” Rite Aid senior vice president and chief communications officer Susan Henderson told NACDS-TV after Fisher’s presentation. “We can be very capable of really performing well and doing extraordinary things for our economy.”

Others appearing in the day-four NACDS-TV recap included Dave Gibbons of The Swanson Group, Todd Watkins of Scientific Technologies and Joe Cavaliere of Newell Brands.

Next year’s Annual Meeting is scheduled for April 21-24, 2018, at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla.