Shirine Khoury-Haq has faced hard times and family tragedy in a career that has taken her from working in Pizza Hut to the head of the boardroom
She has served pizzas and sold vacuum cleaners to pay the bills, almost lost her life in childbirth and lived on every continent but Antarctica. So taking on the British grocery market is only the latest challenge for Co-op boss Shirine Khoury-Haq.
She took the reins as the first female chief executive of the Co-operative Group – the venerable British institution that encompasses 2,400 convenience stores, funeral homes and insurance and legal services – in August 2022. The crisply spoken Beirut-born former accountant initially joined the group in August 2019 as finance director, just months before the pandemic hit.
