Laura Varn has retired from Parkland USA after six years with the convenience-store retailer and fuel marketer. Varn, who was vice president of people and culture and communications with the company, said in a LinkedIn post she was proud to have helped Parkland Corp. grow its U.S. division.
“As one of the first Parkland USA leaders, I’m proud to have helped grow the U.S. division tenfold from 300 to 3,000 employees through 20 acquisitions, build the [human resources] and communications divisions from scratch, develop our culture, systems and processes nationally, establish a strong HR team, hire numerous executives and standardize many HR processes. It’s been a great ride!” Varn said.
- Parkland Corp. is No. 38 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
Parkland Corp., Calgary, Alberta, had 211 c-stores in the United States under its Parkland USA division as of Jan. 1, 2024. Since then, it has announced it would be selling its Florida retail business, as well as making other divestitures.
Varn (pictured below) said she is most proud of developing strong leaders, implementing strategy and creating a caring culture throughout her tenure. She plans to ease into “semi-retirement” after 30 years as an executive in the energy industry by taking a pause, she said.
“I’ll then be engaging in some meaningful projects which I believe have the potential to do some good in our world and can share more on this later,” Varn added.
Simon Scott, Parkland’s vice president of corporate affairs, told CSP Daily News they would not be filling Varn’s position, which she left at the end of August.
“Similar to recent adjustments in our supply and trading business, we are simplifying and consolidating our operating model to capture efficiencies and drive performance,” Scott said. “This includes our people and culture team which is now centralized under one executive. We thank Laura for her contributions and wish her all the best for the future.”
Ferio Pugliese leads Parkland’s people and culture, health, safety, environmental and sustainability teams, Scott said.
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