Jonathan Mayes, senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at Albertsons Cos., the nation's second-largest grocery chain, announced on LinkedIn last week that he left the company at the end of February.

The attorney's tenure with Albertsons and its predecessor, Safeway, goes to back to 1994, when he joined Safeway's legal department. By the time Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons acquired Pleasanton, California-based Safeway for $9.4 billion in 2015, Mayes had risen to become Safeway's senior vice president of public affairs, government relations, CSR and philanthropy.

"When I began my legal career in 1994 at Safeway, I never imagined the various leadership roles I would be privileged to have over the years," Mayes said on LinkedIn. "But the greatest highlight of my 27+ years there … has been the phenomenal people I've had the pleasure to know and work with inside and outside the company."