When Gina Drosos took over as CEO at Signet Jewelers in 2017, she inherited a company with a broken culture, seen by many as hostile to women employees, and a business in decline. Now, more than seven years later, she's is handing over the reins of a company that is stronger on all fronts.

Signet announced Drosos' retirement on Tuesday, but she will be staying in her role through Nov. 4. She will be replaced by J.K. Symancyk, the former CEO of PetSmart.

Under seven years of Drosos' leadership, Signet overcame several critical challenges. The company has become a much bigger e-commerce player, and 23% of total sales are now digital. Drosos also solved the problem of two company subsidiaries, Kay and Zales, cannibalizing each other's sales with similar products and locations. Signet is undeniably in a better business position today: annual sales are now about $7.3 billion, about $1 billion more than when Drosos took over as CEO. (Investors like her: shares fell 8% on news of her imminent departure.)

But Drosos' most notable achievement may have been to repair the company's culture. Signet, which also owns Jared, Blue Nile and Rocksbox, made national headlines in 2017 after an exposé in the Washington Post reported that hundreds of former employees alleged sexual harassment and discrimination against women at the company, in which men dominated management roles.

For Drosos, fixing the culture and making sure women felt they had great career paths was a top priority, she told Fortune in late 2022. She proactively took steps to dramatically increase the percentage of women in roles at the vice president level or higher; at the store level, an overwhelming majority of assistant managers and above are female. Drosos also jettisoned Signet's old “top-down culture of command and control." In 2022, Signet paid $175 million to settle a class action suit.

Drosos' successor is a man, but she dismisses the notion that would be surprising choice considering her achievements bringing more women into management roles.

"In my mind, it's not about gender. It's always about having a team that is diverse in its thinking and sees around corners," Drosos says of Symancyk in an an exclusive interview about her retirement with Fortune. "What is key is to continue create a culture and environment that's right for all of our team to be able to be themselves."

Finally joining the digital age

Drosos has overseen a major and largely successful transformation of Signet's e-commerce business.