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By Harriet Alexander For Dailymail.com
02:17 15 Apr 2023, updated 02:51 15 Apr 2023
- Brendan Whitworth, 46, joined Anheuser-Busch in 2013 and worked his way up to become CEO in July 2021
- He studied at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, intending to follow in his doctor father’s footsteps, but joined the Marines in 1998 and served three years
- Whitworth joined the CIA in 2001, working to recruit and handle spies in DC, Pakistan, Tunisia and Iraq before going to Harvard Business School
When the CEO of Anheuser-Busch interviews prospective recruits to the world’s biggest brewing conglomerate, he has a favorite question.
‘Tell me about a time that you didn’t succeed or things didn’t go as planned,’ he likes to ask.
If Brendan Whitworth ever finds himself asked the same question, he now has plenty of material to draw on.
Whitworth, 46, has seen his biggest brand – Bud Light – engulfed in a firestorm of controversy since they teamed up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on April 1.
Mulvaney was issued with her own special-edition can of the beer to mark her year of transitioning from male to female: a move that enraged Bud Light drinkers, and saw $6 billion knocked off the value of Anheuser-Busch. Factories across the United States were even hit with bomb threats amid the furore.
Whitworth on Friday issued a statement declaring: ‘We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.
‘We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.’
The decision to team up with Mulvaney was reportedly made by a low-level marketing executive, but that has not stopped Whitworth and his vice president of marketing for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid, from facing a torrent of criticism.
Yet few are better positioned to draw on a lifetime of challenging situations than Whitworth – an ‘all American hero’ and trainee doctor who joined the Marines – where he was a star athlete – and the CIA, recruiting and handling spies across the Middle East, before going to Harvard Business School.
Whitworth has lived across the United States, and has been a registered Republican for most of his life.
‘I felt fortunate to have been born in the United States,’ he said. ‘I felt like I needed to pay that back – like I had a bit of indebtedness that I needed to pay.’
Whitworth grew up in the Alapocas Woods area just outside Wilmington, Delaware – the son of a doctor, Michael Whitworth, and his wife Sara.
He attended Salesianum School, a Catholic high school in Wilmington, and graduated in 1994, having led the school soccer team to win the state championship. He was also fiendishly academic, earning straight As in honors pre-calculus.
Whitworth then decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and study medicine, attending Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Yet midway through his college career, he had a change of heart.
Having always admired military and government service, he decided he wanted to join the Marines, attending Officer Cadet School and being commissioned as a lieutenant in his senior year.
His grandfather worked at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), serving under President Hoover, before running the training in Quantico, Virginia.
‘That’s where kind of the attachment to serving the country came from,’ Whitworth told Fox News in an October interview.
By the age of 25, Whitworth, 6ft 2 and 185lbs, was stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, and making headlines as an Ironman.
He ran the Marine Corp Marathon in a remarkable two hours 55 minutes, and the following year qualified for the Ironman World Championship – an ultra-triathlon held annually in Hawaii.
Whitworth did not take up his place, however: by then, he had decided to leave the Marines, after three years, and join the CIA.
In the aftermath of 9/11, from 2001-6, Whitworth worked in some of the toughest spots around the globe at the height of the War on Terror – Pakistan, Tunisia, Iraq.
His LinkedIn describes his role as: ‘Specialized in the recruitment and handling of human sources with access to vital intelligence that prevented and disrupted terrorist threats.’
His family were proud, but worried.
His older sister Kelty – an All-American swimmer at Ursuline Academy in Delaware, who then went to Harvard – told him it was time to get out.
‘While she appreciated what I had been doing she, as any protective sibling would be, was constantly saying, ‘OK, you’ve done eight years now … What do you think about prioritizing yourself?” he told Fox Business.
Whitworth described his sister as being a ‘strong, well-grounded opinion’ in his life.
He reluctantly agreed with her, but on the condition that he would only leave if he got in to Harvard, like her.
‘There are a bunch of great business schools but I always felt like she had something on me, too,’ he explained.
‘So, I was like, ‘All right, fine, I’m going to go there’.’
He prepared for his Graduate Management Admission Test while in Baghdad, studying late at night after his CIA shifts ended.
In 2006 he arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Whitworth continued to play sports, particularly rugby.
But he focused on his studies, and on graduation landed a prime job with PepsiCo.
In 2013, he joined AB-Inbev – the Belgian-based brewing company, formed from the merger of US firm Anheuser-Busch with brewing companies around the world.
He rose up the ranks, leading trade marketing, category and sales technology divisions before becoming US Chief Sales Officer in November 2017, and finally US CEO.
‘It’s hard to find a few things that are as closely attached to the United States of America than Anheuser-Busch,’ he said at the time of his appointment, in July 2021.
‘That passion for the country just naturally connected to a passion for Anheuser-Busch and I grew up drinking Budweiser.
‘I would bring Budweiser to college parties, and not even really care what was in the keg.’
Whitworth credits his Marine training with helping him rise to the top of corporate America.
‘They put you through a process to screen you, to see if do you have the capabilities to lead Marines,’ he said.
‘Then they give you what they believe are the right leadership principles and then they give you a platoon of Marines, and you have to go see if that all works.
‘That early experience gave me an appreciation that I’ve continued to build upon — what it means to connect with, sell to, market to someone from Philadelphia or somebody from San Antonio.’
It’s certainly made him a wealthy man.
Whitworth is believed to earn $12 million a year, and lives with his wife Meredith in a $7 million apartment on the Upper East Side, close to Central Park.
He will draw on all of his experience as he helps Anheuser-Busch weather the Mulvaney storm.
‘None of us get it right every time. We’re not supposed to,’ he told Business Insider, in the November 2021 interview about his hiring technique.
‘But I want to see people that get it wrong and then quickly move on to try and get it right.’
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