Bonnie Nixon Steps Down as Head of Sustainability Consortium

After 10 months as the leader of the Sustainability Consortium, Bonnie Nixon is stepping down, according to an email sent today to TSC stakeholders.

“The Sustainability Consortium brought Bonnie Nixon in to provide executive leadership and help the organization move beyond its initial start-up phase,” the statement read in part. “She has set us on a path that includes the opening of TSC’s European office with plans to expand into additional countries in 2012, which will allow TSC the opportunity to build a leadership structure that better reflects our new global mission. As she departs as Executive Director, we thank her for her contributions and wish her great success in the future.”

The statement only hints at how the organization will move forward in its management and leadership, saying that Sheila Bonini, a Senior Expert in McKinsey‘s management consulting business, will help implement the strategies developed by Nixon during her time at the organization.

Nixon took on the role of Executive Director in April 2011. GreenBiz.com published a profile of Nixon’s role at TSC just before her appointment began.

As Tilde Herrera wrote at the time:

The development comes as TSC enters a second stage of development that Johnson called a delivery and growth phase, where the nonprofit becomes more professional and structured in is processes and policies.

“We have to grow up,” Johnson said. “We know Bonnie will lead us through that phase quite successfully.”

Nixon was instrumental in the formation of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), the electronics industry group that developed a common code of conduct to improve supply chain working conditions. In a 2006 BusinessWeek article, the senior director of social and environmental responsibility at Foxconn Electronics, an HP supplier, said dealing with Nixon “is like being kissed and slapped at the same time. It can make you psychotic — but it needs to be done.”

In addition to HP’s supply chain program, Nixon considers the creation of the EICC to be one of her greatest accomplishments during her time at the company, where she worked since 1998.

The Sustainability Consortium, originally launched in 2009 in partnership with Walmart, with a mandate to help create an index that standardizes and simplifies making consumer products more sustainable, now has 98 members, up from 60 when Nixon took over in 2011.

We’ve asked the Consortium and Nixon for comment, and will update the news as it develops.