General Mills has picked its next chief executive, and for the first time in the Golden Valley company's history, it's a woman. Dana McNabb, a 27-year veteran of the food giant who currently serves as chief operating officer, will become CEO on January 1, 2027, succeeding Jeff Harmening as he moves into the role of board executive chair.
The transition was formally announced as an internal leadership move, according to Twin Cities Business, capping a path that began in June 2026 when McNabb was named COO and joined the board, a move Hoodline flagged at the time in a piece asking whether she was on the fast track to become Minnesota's next female CEO. McNabb, 50, is currently responsible for all four of General Mills' operating segments — North America Retail, Pet, Food Service and International — along with key operating functions across the company. The General Mills board unanimously chose her for the top job, and Maria Henry, the board's lead independent director, said the board is confident McNabb is the right executive to lead the company through its next chapter.
A Rocky Financial Backdrop
McNabb takes the helm as General Mills works through a difficult stretch. The company reported $18.4 billion in fiscal 2026 net sales, a 5 percent drop from the prior year, while operating profit fell 73 percent to $886 million. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, net sales came in at $4.4 billion, down 3 percent, with organic sales flat — a decline the company attributed largely to its divestiture of the U.S. yogurt business.
That yogurt exit was substantial: General Mills completed a $2.1 billion sale of its North American yogurt operations in mid-2025, offloading the Yoplait and Go-Gurt brands to Lactalis and its Canadian assets to Sodiaal, according to Food Engineering. Yogurt had generated roughly $1.5 billion in fiscal 2024 net sales before the sale, and the deal freed up capital that General Mills has since funneled toward higher-margin snack and pet food categories. General Mills has also cut prices on two-thirds of its North America retail grocery portfolio, even as it shifts its fiscal 2027 focus toward product innovation and renovation.
McNabb's Playbook for a Turnaround
McNabb has said returning the company to profitable growth is now the priority, and her plan leans on building digitally enabled demand generation while modernizing the supply chain. In September financial presentations covered by Investing.com, she noted the company has increased its rate of new product launches by 50 percent over two years, pushing new-product contributions from 3 percent to 5 percent of net sales with higher-margin items like Honey Nut Cheerios Protein. She also reported that e-commerce now makes up more than 20 percent of the human food business and over 30 percent of the pet food business, both outpacing brick-and-mortar growth.
Cost discipline is part of the equation too. General Mills is targeting $3 billion in cumulative cost savings by fiscal 2030, with $2 billion expected to come from Holistic Margin Management and $1 billion from organizational transformation — including $750 million in savings targeted for fiscal 2027 alone, per the same earnings coverage. Outgoing CEO Harmening called the first quarter an encouraging start to the fiscal year.
Pet Food and Portfolio Shifts
Pet food has become a central growth lever for General Mills, whose brand roster includes Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Nature Valley, Old El Paso and Blue Buffalo. In December 2024, the company completed a $1.45 billion acquisition of Whitebridge Pet Brands' North American cat feeding and treats portfolio — its fifth pet-category acquisition since buying Blue Buffalo in 2018, according to Business Wire. General Mills brands are now sold in more than 100 countries, and the company traces its roots back to a flour business founded in 1866 before being formally named General Mills in 1928.
Locally, General Mills' supply-chain restructuring has already reshaped the St. Charles area. Hoodline previously reported that the company shut down a St. Charles pizza plant, eliminating 163 local jobs, before Italian pasta maker Bertagni later moved into the vacated site with a $36.4 million plant investment.
A Milestone Amid Industry Turnover
McNabb previously served as president of General Mills' U.S. Cereal operating unit, where she oversaw marketing and product strategies that helped the company reclaim overall U.S. cereal market share leadership for the first time in 15 years, according to General Mills. She has praised Harmening for modernizing the company during his tenure, which ran from June 2017 through late 2026. Under Harmening, General Mills returned more than $17 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks while reshaping roughly one-third of its net sales base, per Quartz.
McNabb's ascension arrives amid a wave of leadership turnover across the packaged-food sector. When she takes office, she'll become the only female CEO currently leading a major packaged-food company, following a string of CEO changes at rivals including Hershey, Kraft Heinz and Conagra Brands over the prior year, as reported by Transport Topics. Nationally, the number of female CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies hit an all-time high of 56 in 2026, though women still hold only about 11 percent of top leadership roles at major U.S. corporations, according to Statista.
McNabb's compensation package, disclosed in filings accompanying the announcement, includes an annual base salary of $1.35 million and a target annual incentive bonus equal to 180 percent of her base pay, Quartz reported. She joins a growing roster of Minnesota-based female chief executives, including Best Buy's Corie Barry, Land O'Lakes' Beth Ford, Thrivent's Terry Rasmussen and U.S. Bancorp's Gunjan Kedia — though Barry herself is set to hand the Best Buy CEO position to Jason Bonfig at the end of October.
