Walmart director Michele Burns, the former Chief Financial Officer of Delta Airlines, is the treasurer of the Elton John AIDS Foundation and is apparently BFFs with Elton. Back in 1994, she accompanied him to the Academy Awards, where he won a Best Original Song Oscar for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from the Lion King, and got to hoist up the little gold man herself. Since there are apparently no pictures of that moment (1994, back before everything was on the internet instantaneously!), we have created a re-enactment:

We know Walmart heir/board of directors member Jim Walton is a big-time political donor at the federal level. He’s also quite active in his home state of Arkansas. Check out this time that he gave more to a ballot initiative than the statewide chamber of commerce, a local chamber of commerce, and a couple ginormous companies:

Steuart Walton—son of Walmart director/heir Jim Walton and grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton—is apparently working for his family’s company in London “as part of his induction into the Walmart business.”  When he’s not figuring out how to push Walmart into Europe, however, he’s flying aerobatic planes in competition.

Here’s his plane, a Pitts S-2C:

Here he is winning a trophy (Steuart is second from right):

…and another trophy:

…and here he is inexplicably hiding behind what appears to be a toy plane:

Stop #2 on the Walton family house tour: Carrie and Greg Penner’s palatial estate in exclusive Atherton, CA. The nearly 13,000-square-foot home, valued at a cool $20.6 million, sits on six acres. It has six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a five-car garage, and, as you can see, a pool and tennis court.

While the Penners lounge poolside, many Walmart associates struggle just to pay their rent and rely on state-funded healthcare for their children.

[Source: San Mateo County Assessor]

Marissa Mayer, in Walmart blue?

Yahoo! CEO and Walmart director Marissa Mayer (with venture capitalist/”Big Data” guy husband Zachary Bogue) hit up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Mid-Winter Gala last week. Mayer was on the planning committee for the event, which hoped to raise $600,000 for the museums.

A report from the event said: San Francisco event planner Ken Fulk created a fantasy winter wonderland, complete with an ice-skating rink where skaters in Dutch master-inspired tweeds and mufflers twirled around a 30-foot ice rink installed in the marquee.

with apologies to MasterCard.

More than a decade ago, Alice Walton left behind her investment company and moved to Texas, where she now raises horses on her ranch and takes them to cutting competitions. (In cutting competitions, a horse and rider try to separate a cow from its herd and keep it separated for a period of time.) She’s won nearly $280,000 in cutting horse competitions. 

Raising and competing top cutting horses isn’t cheap. Alice Walton is doubtlessly spending millions and millions of dollars acquiring the land her ranch sits on, raising and keeping horses, paying trainers, buying equipment, and buying cattle for practicing the sport. (Apparently it’s important to practice with “fresh” cows that are unaccustomed to horses.)

Alice likely spends more annually on each of her horses than her family’s company—Walmart—pays the average full-time associate. We love horses, but are they more important than the people whose work at Walmart makes Alice as rich as she and her family are?

In January 2012, Walmart director and Walton family member Greg Penner (in red shirt) was the “honorary co-captain” of the Stanford Cardinal football team when it went up against Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl. (Excuse us, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.) His fellow honorary co-captain? None other than Tiger Woods. Wonder if Tiger has any advice for Walmart on how to bounce back from (alleged) scandal.

Walmart heiress Whitney Kroenke — granddaughter of Walmart co-founder Bud Walton, and daughter of former Walmart director Stan Kroenke — chilling with Tori Spelling and a dog in a pink sweater. 

This hangout happened at an epic party thrown by “dog couture experts Fifi & Romeo” (dog couture??) at Stan Kroenke’s Malibu mansion back in 2004.

Stop #1 on the Walton family house tour: Rob and Melani’s home base.

 Rob and Melani Walton live in swanky Paradise Valley, AZ. And they own not one, not two, but three adjoining properties. Does this count as a compound? Combined, the three houses are worth more than $14 million—though of course that’s pocket change for the Waltons. Don’t worry that they don’t have enough room to stretch out here, though – they’ve got vacation houses too. Stay tuned for more on those.

[Source: Maricopa County Assessor]