Walmart Taps WWE, Halliburton Alums to Split Top Legal Duties

Walmart Inc. has appointed a pair of in-house lawyers relatively new to the retail giant to temporarily fill the vacancy left by the exit of its chief global governance and legal officer Rachel Brand.

Jeffery Spalding and Elisebeth Collins have assumed interim oversight for global governance leadership responsibilities in addition to their current duties and began reporting to Walmart’s new president and CEO John Furner as of Feb. 1, a company spokeswoman said. Walmart’s market cap topped $1 trillion for the first time this week.

Collins, special counsel and global chief ethics and compliance officer for Walmart, was hired in December 2023 after briefly serving as general counsel for World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. following stints at Caterpillar Inc. and the Boeing Co. She also worked in private practice and at the Justice Department.

Spalding, chief counsel for Walmart’s international and global sourcing business, joined the company a year ago from Halliburton Co., where he spent more than a decade, most recently as the oilfield services giant’s deputy general counsel and chief commercial counsel. Michelle Benavides, a former chief ethics and compliance officer at Halliburton, has also joined Walmart as general counsel for its affiliate in Mexico, an important market for the company.

A search continues for Brand’s permanent replacement.

Walmart confirmed that Meghan Hart, longtime senior director for ethics and compliance governance, is now reporting to Spalding and Collins.

Elizabeth Norton, chief counsel for regulatory, specialty legal, and digital citizenship, has separately taken on an expanded position as chief counsel for growth. Norton, who reports to Spalding on an interim basis, now oversees legal for Walmart’s paid membership programs and global marketplace platform, as well as data ventures, digital advertising, and Vizio, a television maker it acquired in 2024.

Brand, who spent almost eight years as Walmart’s top lawyer and corporate secretary, announced last year that she would officially leave the Bentonville, Ark.-based company as of Jan. 31. Brand said in a LinkedIn post this month that she’s proud of her time at Walmart but “moving on to do something geographically closer to my family is the right thing for me” at this phase of her life. Walmart recruited Brand from the Justice Department in 2018.

Walmart will still have Brand in its corporate orbit going forward, as she is a member of the board for its Mexican subsidiary, Walmex, as well as PhonePe, an Indian digital payments platform in which Walmart is a majority shareholder. Walmart didn’t list Brand among its six highest-paid executives in 2025, although she did sell $8.1 million in company stock last year. She owns roughly $58.9 million in Walmart shares, according to Bloomberg data.

The large legal team that Brand led at Walmart, which eliminated its general counsel role in 2023 and saw another lawyer leave last year to lead the Federalist Society, has made several other changes to its organizational structure in the weeks prior to her departure.

Gordon Allison, the company’s longtime chief counsel for finance and corporate governance, retired last month and has been replaced by corporate secretary Joseph Ruschell, who joined Walmart last year from Humana Inc., where he was an associate general counsel and corporate secretary for the health insurer.

Walmart also recently hired Jane Duke, a former compliance chief at Tyson Foods Inc., to be chief ethics and compliance officer for Flipkart Inc., an online retailer in India that’s preparing for a long-awaited initial public offering. Walmart took control of Flipkart in 2018.