Nike, Inc. has appointed Hannah Jones, director of corporate responsibility for Nike's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region for the past four years, to vice president of corporate responsibility. She succeeds Maria Eitel, who will become president of the Nike Foundation. Both moves are effective immediately.
Jones, who joined Nike in 1998 as director of government and community affairs in EMEA, will have overall responsibility for managing Nike's global corporate responsibility function, including labor compliance, global community affairs, stakeholder engagement and corporate responsibility strategic planning and business integration. She will report to Nike Brand President Mark Parker.
Eitel, as president of the Nike Foundation, will be responsible for building and managing a newly restructured Foundation that will focus on giving the world's most disadvantaged girls an opportunity to participate more fully in life. The work of the Foundation will launch in the spring of next year. Eitel will report to Parker and the Foundation board of directors.
“Over the past seven years, Maria and the entire corporate responsibility team have made great progress in helping Nike define its role as a responsible global citizen, engage with the outside world and integrate corporate responsibility more fully into our business. We cannot thank her and the team enough for helping establish Nike's leadership position in corporate responsibility,” Parker said. “Maria's experience in corporate responsibility and partnership development will be critical to establishing the Nike Foundation as a world class global organization.”
Since 1998, Nike has established an environmental sustainability policy and initiatives; targeted to give three percent of the company's pre tax income to communities around the globe, which amounted to $37.3 million in cash and product in fiscal year 2004; developed an internal and external contract factory monitoring program; and driven greater integration of corporate responsibility into the business.
“We are very fortunate to have someone with Hannah's broad corporate responsibility experience to take over the management of this important function at Nike. She has built a strong corporate responsibility team and strategic program in our EMEA region and has been an integral part of the global corporate responsibility team. We look forward to Hannah and the global Corporate Responsibility team building on our accomplishments over the last seven years,” Parker added.
Prior to joining Nike, Jones was a consultant to Microsoft and Kimberly-Clark on their community affairs programs and the European manager of Community Service Volunteers Media, a U.K.- based non-governmental organization where she led pan-European campaigns around youth issues. She began her professional career as a reporter, researcher and producer as part of the social action unit for BBC Radio One and Radio Five. A British citizen who speaks French, Spanish and Welsh, Jones and her family will relocate from Brussels to Nike's world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon USA.
Eitel joined Nike in 1998 as Nike's first vice president of corporate responsibility. Prior to joining Nike, Eitel served as European corporate affairs group manager for Microsoft Corp., director of public affairs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and was senior manager of communications at MCI Communications Corp. From 1989 to 1992, she served the White House as deputy director of media relations and later as special assistant to the President for media affairs.
