Target's New CEO: Michael Fiddelke

Michael Fiddelke's mornings started long before the school bell rang. Growing up on a farm, he rose early for chores, day after day, season after season. That relentless routine forged the resilience and work ethic that would define his career. It carried him from a summer internship at Target all the way to the CEO's office, where he took the helm in February 2026.

Key insights

• From farmhand to CEO: Fiddelke grew up on a farm in Iowa where daily chores shaped a work ethic that has followed him since.

• The turnaround: When Fiddelke took the CEO role, Target was coming off several difficult years, and turning the company around became his first and most pressing challenge.

• Reclaiming Target taste: His strategy centers on reclaiming Target's design and style identity, backed by more than $2 billion in incremental investment in 2026.

Early life and the introduction to Target

Fiddelke was born and raised in Manchester, Iowa. His parents were entrepreneurs at heart, and over the years, they expanded beyond the farm, taking on a liquor store and eventually several Super 8 hotels. That meant business was always part of the dinner table conversation. For young Fiddelke, it was an informal education in how businesses operate, one that stayed with him. Combined with the discipline he learned on the farm, that business grounding would prove invaluable.

After graduating from high school, Fiddelke enrolled at the University of Iowa and earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering in 1999. He then joined Deloitte Consulting, where he spent three years before pursuing an MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. During his time there, Fiddelke landed a summer internship in Target’s finance department in 2003. It was his first introduction to the big-box retail industry – and Target itself.

Building a career across the business

After completing his MBA, Fiddelke joined Target full-time in 2004 as a financial analyst. What followed was a broad path through the company. Over the next 15 years, he held roles across finance, merchandising, human resources, and store operations, getting experience from every part of the business while moving up the ranks.

By 2018, he was named Senior Vice President of Operations, leading cross-functional initiatives across merchandising, supply chain, stores, and guest experience. Fiddelke handled the responsibilities well, and about a year later, he was appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in November 2019.

In the announcement, the then-CEO Brian Cornell said:

When Fiddelke became the CFO, the company had experienced a period of stable growth. In the last three years, Target's average comparable revenue growth has been around 3.2%. That growth was about to accelerate. In fiscal years 2020, 2021, and 2022, sales were boosted by the pandemic, with comparable sales growing 19.3%, 12.7%, 2.2%, respectively. But that was about to change.

The first chapter as Target's CEO

In the aftermath of the pandemic, comparable sales fell 3.70% in fiscal 2023, were essentially flat at +0.10% in fiscal 2024, and then declined another 2.60% in fiscal 2025.

It was time for something to change. Leadership was about to be shifted, and Fiddelke was being discussed as one of the leading contenders for the top job.

After serving as CFO, he transitioned to COO in 2024. Not long thereafter, Target’s board unanimously elected him CEO, effective February 1, 2026. Fiddelke had reached the top, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

Cornell (Fiddelke's predecessor) was explicit in his framing at the Q2 2025 earnings call (sourced through Quartr Pro): "Results over the last few years have fallen short of our expectations and our potential". Fiddelke followed that up and said, “We need to move faster, much faster.”

The urgency was well-founded. By the time Fiddelke became CEO, Target was losing ground on multiple fronts. Walmart had spent years investing heavily in its digital capabilities and supply chain, and was now attracting the higher-income and style-conscious shoppers that had long been Target's core. Walmart's U.S. comparable sales grew 4.7% in fiscal 2025 – a big difference compared to Target’s declining growth. Meanwhile, Amazon and other value-driven retailers were chipping away at their digital channel as well. The divergence was hard to ignore.

To turn this around, Fiddelke laid out four priorities for growth: a sharper, more trend-forward assortment, a better shopping experience both in-store and online, smarter use of technology, and investments in the employees running the stores. The first two are where Fiddelke spent most of his time, because that is where guests will feel the change most directly.

On the assortment side, the focus is on curating with conviction in the categories where Target's design and style identity is strongest, rather than trying to stock everything. On the experience side, the company committed to more in-store changes in fiscal 2026 than in any single year in the past decade.

Backing up these priorities, Target has committed more than $2 billion in incremental spending for fiscal 2026: $1 billion toward building new stores and remodeling existing ones, and another $1 billion directed at the shopping experience, staffing, and making stores easier to navigate. Fiddelke also restructured parts of the leadership team, brought in new board members with design backgrounds, and pushed headquarters toward faster, less layered decision-making.

Closing thoughts

By now, Michael Fiddelke has spent more than two decades at the company he now leads. Spurred on by a work ethic built during early mornings on the farm in Iowa, he's now responsible for getting Target back on a stable trajectory of growth. Will his approach work? Time will tell.