Vikas Bhalla has been appointed as Chief Transformation Officer at Choice Hotels International, Inc.
As a key member of Choice Hotels' senior executive leadership team reporting directly to President and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pacious, Bhalla will advance the company's data-driven culture and lead the corporate strategy, business transformation, and data analytics teams. In addition to identifying new business opportunities, Bhalla will work closely with Pacious to develop strategies that fuel the company's long-range growth.
Bhalla has more than 20 years of experience shaping business strategies for large corporations. He joins Choice Hotels from CVS Health, one of the nation's premier health innovation companies, where he served as vice president, strategy and business development, pricing and analytics. In this capacity, Bhalla was CVS's core retail strategist, driving both identification & execution of the company's multi-year growth initiatives across 8,000 locations and e-commerce. Prior to that, Bhalla led several large-scale transformation projects as a principal at Strategy&, now the global strategy consulting business for PwC. Bhalla also was a member of the leadership team at startup technology company Exela Technologies.
Bhalla earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in electronics engineering from Nagpur University in India. He will be based at Choice Hotels' Rockville, Maryland, headquarters.