Verily, struggling to turn profits, taps a Starbucks veteran and ‘Warcraft’ master

The newly minted CEO of the Alphabet health tech spinout Verily is not a doctor or a Ph.D. scientist. He’s never run a top-flight lab or published a seminal paper in health care. His breakthrough executive job, far from the halls of science or medicine, was at Starbucks.

But Stephen Gillett, 47, now finds himself in charge of one of the most ambitious (some would say overhyped) efforts to transform American health care with technology.

If that sounds like a mismatch, and the makings of a corporate calamity, Gillett has made a career out of navigating unfamiliar terrain. He took a top position at Best Buy with no background in consumer electronics, other than being an accomplished gamer. When he joined Starbucks in 2008 under CEO Howard Schultz, his only previous retail job was bagging groceries at Albertsons. He didn’t even drink coffee.

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