HP has chosen Emma Walmsley as its next chief executive, turning to a British leader best known for running one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to steer one of the world’s largest personal computer and printer makers. Walmsley, the former chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, will take over in January, marking one of the more unexpected chief executive appointments in the technology sector in recent years.
From pharma and beauty to hardware
Walmsley does not arrive at HP with a background in hardware. Before leading GSK, she spent 17 years at L’Oreal, the French beauty conglomerate. Her tenure at GSK lasted almost nine years, ending when she stepped down in December 2025. During that time she became the first woman to run a major global pharmaceutical business and regularly ranked at the top of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International list.
Her lack of direct technology experience is likely to draw scrutiny. She faced similar questions at GSK, where an activist investor challenged her appointment because she did not have a scientific background. Her response was to focus on transformation and operational discipline rather than technical domain expertise. HP’s board appears to be betting that the same approach will serve a company undergoing its own reinvention.
A record of transformation
What Walmsley brings is experience in navigating large, complex organizations through upheaval. During her time at GSK she oversaw the spinoff of the company’s consumer healthcare business, steered the company through the pandemic, and reshaped its drug development pipeline. Those moves required balancing scientific investment with financial discipline, managing regulators, and maintaining the confidence of investors.
That skill set is what HP says it wants. The personal computer industry has been buffeted by post-pandemic demand swings, supply chain disruptions, and the rise of artificial intelligence. HP generated $55 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year and ranks 84th on the Fortune 500, but it faces pressure to show that its hardware business can thrive as computing shifts toward AI enabled devices and cloud based services.
Not new to the tech world
While Walmsley has never worked inside a technology company, she is not entirely new to the industry. She has served on Microsoft’s board since 2019 and will step down from that position before taking over at HP. That boardroom exposure has given her a close view of cloud computing, software strategy, and the competitive dynamics between the major technology platforms.
Her appointment also highlights the shallow pool of women leading the largest companies. There are fewer than a dozen female chief executives among the Fortune 100, and the number is similarly small among Britain’s FTSE 100, where Walmsley was counted while at GSK. HP’s decision to hire her will add one more prominent name to a still short list.
The AI challenge
The central task awaiting Walmsley is defining HP's role in the artificial intelligence era. Rivals are racing to build AI PCs, integrate on-device models, and capture spending from enterprises refreshing their hardware. HP has the scale and brand recognition to compete, but it must convince customers that its machines offer something distinctive in a market where much of the innovation is driven by chipmakers and software companies.
Walmsley's own framing of leadership suggests she understands the scale of the task. At the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in October 2025, shortly before leaving GSK, she dismissed chief executives who complained about the difficulty of the job. "There are few things more obnoxious in life than CEOs complaining about how hard their life is," she said. She added that she had not grown up expecting even half a chance at such a role.
What success would look like
For Walmsley, the measure of success will be whether HP is in better shape when she leaves than when she arrived. She offered that standard herself in 2025, saying, "You just hope that in the time you are given the responsibility to do something like this, you make it better than it was when you started."
That will mean proving that a leader from outside technology can adapt quickly enough to guide a hardware giant through the AI transition. It will also mean showing that the skills she honed in pharmaceuticals, transformation under pressure, investor management, and large-scale operational change, translate to an industry where product cycles and competitive threats move just as fast.
