Katie Young

Katie Young is senior vice president of Store Operations at Starbucks. In this role, Katie is responsible for driving systematic store excellence and enterprise-wide trade area transformation. 

With the relentless focus on improving the partner experience and delivering our financial commitments, Katie focuses on all things ‘store’—how we innovate and standardize store formats, operationalize excellence, sequence change, and activate programming to set our store partners up for success.  Katie is passionate about embedding accessibility and sustainability into the end-to-end store ecosystem.   

Katie attributes much of her success over the years to her ability to unlock co-creation and speed of innovation in a large organization through systems thinking, integrated teams, customer-led insights, obsession with data, and relentless focus on joyful learning. 

Katie has held numerous leadership positions at Starbucks during her 10-plus years with the company, including leading global growth and concepts, driving urban market operations and leading the food category and innovation teams.  

Prior to Starbucks, Katie was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company, specializing in the social sector, consumer packaged goods, and agribusiness. Her strategic focus was “growth under uncertainty.”  She was part of the team that developed the first-ever agriculture strategy for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Other strategy work included food security for 16 countries and creating transformational frontline change for the Ethiopian government’s 60,000 extension agents.    

Katie holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Chicago and bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and Honors Political Science from Kenyon College.  She currently sits on the boards of Global Washington and University of Washington Bothell School of Business. 

Katie, her husband, and two children enjoy constantly exploring what Seattle has to offer. She can often be found at her local West Seattle Starbucks enjoying the daily dark roast or indulging in a caramel macchiato.