Greg Drew is pictured in the office of his Altoona home. Drew, who recently retired as president of Value Drug Company and Value Drug Specialty Pharmacy, will be the 23rd recipient of the Blair County Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award for Business Excellence. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

A local man who became a leader in the pharmacy industry will be the 23rd recipient of the Blair County Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award for Business Excellence.

The prestigious award will be presented tonight, Monday, Oct. 6, to Greg Drew, who recently retired as president of Value Drug Company and Value Drug Specialty Pharmacy, at the chamber’s Business Excellence Dinner at the Blair County Convention Center.

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an individual who is regarded as a business leader in the region and has positively impacted the Blair County business community for an extended period of time.

“I am very honored and humbled. The list of past winners is like a who’s who in the history of Altoona. To be in the same class with them is very rewarding,” Drew said.

A native of Westbrook, Maine, Drew knew from a young age he wanted to become a pharmacist.

“While in high school, I started working for a pharmacy. I always had respect for pharmacists. Over time, I watched them interact and help patients. I said ‘wow, I could do that,'” Drew said.

Politician or pharmacist?

In 1981, Drew graduated from the Massachusetts School of Pharmacy with a bachelor of science degree in pharmacy and started his career as a pharmacist and manager of a small drug chain, LaVerdiere’s Super Drug in Waterville, Maine.

In the early 1990s, he dabbled in politics and became a selectman in Buxton, Maine.

“I was like a councilman, there was no administrative government. It was a small town, there were three of us, our role was to run the town,” Drew said. “It was self rewarding, you help people and feel good when they appreciate it. I stepped up to try to make a difference.”

After that, Drew, a Democrat, ran for the Maine state senate in 1992.

“The only Democrat who won that year was Clinton. This was a very Republican district. It was quite a run, I lost by five votes in a recount,” Drew said.

“When he got out of school, he was more of a political junkie. If not for the election, he may have been a politician rather than a pharmacist. Maine’s loss was pharmacy’s gain,” said Patrick Lavella, who worked for Value Drug from 2012-24 in several positions and retired as manager of strategic pharmacy initiatives.

Win or lose, Drew had a position waiting for him.

“Rite Aid had acquired LaVerdiere’s. If I won, they would have given me a regional management position. If I lost, they were going to start a new company in Harrisburg (Eagle Managed Care), I was to run the pharmacy end of it,” Drew said. “I spent 15 years in various positions with Rite Aid.”

From Eagle Managed Care, he moved on to Rite Aid Pharmacy Health Services as vice president. In 2005, he became general manager of Rite Aid Health Solutions.

In 2008, Drew lost a daughter, Jessica, 21, in an automobile accident.

“That changed my thought process and outlook,” he said. “I voluntarily separated from Rite Aid to start the consulting company (Pharmacy Expertise LLC).”

He was recruited to come to Value Drug in 2009. A cooperative, Value Drug is a distribution company owned by pharmacy owners.

“We run the company and at the end of the year, profits are distributed as dividends. They had been very successful,” Drew said. “The mission was to protect the owners of the cooperative. When I came in, the board had been running it, (and) they recognized it was time to have someone run the company for them.”

Catalyst for growth

Drew said his years at Value Drug were the most rewarding times of his career.

“This was the first time I got to make decisions, it was great. One reason I was hired is I had always believed in what would happen to the pharmacy world, especially pharmacy. We opened our specialty pharmacy (Value Specialty Pharmacy) in 2011 and acquired another outside of Memphis in 2017. They have been very successful,” Drew said. “The reward of building a new business, the transition of Value Drug from what they were to what I thought was the vision of the future. We brought in new people, we went from 85 to over 250. We created a new culture. I am a big believer that senior management needs to let employees grow and give them responsibility, I always believed in that.”

Value Drug Company experienced great growth under Drew’s leadership.

Rowland Tibbott, chairman emeritus and former chairman of the board, said Drew was the driving force behind Value Drug multiplying in size from a $500,000 company to a $1.5 billion business.

“We were a Pennsylvania company, but now we deliver as far away as Alabama, mostly because of Greg,” Tibbott said. “Greg has taken Value Drug in Altoona to a nationally known distributor of pharmaceuticals.”

“Greg was an amazing leader. He was my mentor. He truly cared about the company and brought our company to a higher level,” said Karla Moschella, who recently retired as Value Drug’s vice president of sales and marketing.

Drew has won numerous awards over the years, including awards for both pharmacy and distribution. He won the Healthcare Distribution Management Alliance Nexus Lifetime Achievement Award and the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association/American Pharmacist Association Bowl of Hygeia Award, both in 2023.

“I never envisioned I would have the opportunity for this when I was first recruited by Rite Aid. I told my mother Rite Aid would give me the opportunity to be successful. I never knew I would be able to do what I did, but I was given the opportunities and took advantage of them,” Drew said.

Lavella nominated Drew for the Bowl of Hygeia Award, the top award for pharmacists in Pennsylvania.

“Going back through his life in pharmacy, he was always ahead of the curve, looking out not for himself, but the pharmacy industry and pharmacists. Things he started at Rite Aid were ahead of their time. Greg has been a trendsetter,” Lavella said.

Drew said he most enjoys helping people succeed and helping employees grow. He said he was able to succeed in business by “taking chances.”

“I was willing to take chances, being driven with what I saw as a vision for someone caring about the customers, pulling whoever was around you up with you. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to make a difference,” Drew said.

Drew said he had two mentors over the years.

One was Newt Trevers, a pharmacist in the Boston area.

“He taught me the business side of pharmacy, he was my mentor,” Drew said. “At Rite Aid, COO Jim Mastrian taught me a lot about business and business philosophy. Most importantly, you had to partner with vendors and customers in order to succeed. Develop relationships. When you needed help, you could go to them. It is very important to take care of your employees, but also your vendors, it is all part of a culture.”

Community presence

Drew has been active in many national and local organizations over the years.

He served on the Healthcare Distribution Alliance Board of Directors, including time as its chairman, as well as numerous other industry, professional and community committees and boards. Drew currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Mount Aloysius College and the board for Operation Our Town. He has an appointment as an adjunct associate professor of pharmacy and therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh and is a member of Pitt’s Board of Visitors.

Drew served as chairman of Operation Our Town’s Pharmacy Roundtable and received the John Iorio Community Partner Award from Operation Our Town for work focused on the opioid crisis.

“Greg came in with a great understanding of the prescription abuse issues and put together a team to address what local pharmacies could do to reduce the problem,” said Philip Devorris, OOT secretary.

“Because of Greg Drew’s support, Value Drug Company has been a sustaining member business of Operation Our Town for 13 years by providing $10,000 per year to support our efforts to take back our neighborhoods from drugs and violent crime,” said Shawna Hoover, OOT executive coordinator.

Those who know Drew say he is a worthy recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

“I can honestly say he is a credit to his profession. Even though he was my semi-boss at Value Drug, he was my friend and the ultimate professional,” said Bill Thompson III, owner of Thompson Pharmacy and a member of Value Drug’s board of directors. “Anybody who knows more about the pharmacy industry than Greg, I would like to meet him. Greg’s knowledge about pharmacy is unbelievable. What is great about him is he cares about the profession. I don’t know what more you could ask for in a guy that cares about the people.”

“Greg’s an exceptional leader and community steward. He’s an outstanding recipient of perhaps the highest honor awarded in our community. We’re fortunate he’s decided to make Blair County his home,” Devorris said.

Now that he is retired, Drew plans to remain active in the community. He’s especially looking forward to having time to pursue activities and grow relationships that he had to put on hold more often while still working.

“I can now spend more time in the community and do more things with my wife. We have a lot of things lined up,” Drew said. “I was a little apprehensive when I retired, I needed things to keep me driven and happy, with friends and finding things to do. Now I have the freedom to do things I had to bypass before.”

Mirror Staff Writer Walt Frank is at 814-946-7467.

The Drew file

Name: Greg Drew

Age: 68

Position: Retired president of Value Drug Company and Value Drug Specialty Pharmacy

Education: 1975 graduate of Westbrook High School, Westbrook, Maine; and 1981 graduate of Massachusetts School of Pharmacy with a bachelor of science in pharmacy

Family: Wife, Mary; daughters: Lindsay, Kayla and Jessica (deceased); and three grandchildren

Quote: “I have received awards for pharmacy and distribution management and now I am here, this closes the circle. I have been fortunate to be recognized by all of them.”