C-suite consumer products expert Elizabeth Stephenson joins AlixPartners as a managing director
NEW YORK (November 2, 2020) – AlixPartners, the global consulting firm, announced today that Elizabeth Stephenson, a seasoned C-suite executive with comprehensive experience leading global businesses and consumer brands through periods of transition, has joined as a Managing Director. She will be based in Los Angeles.
Elizabeth brings more than 20 years of leadership and operations experience, including most recently five years at The Wonderful Company LLC (TWC), one of the fastest-growing consumer packaged goods companies in North America. At TWC, she served as President of two portfolio companies—the FIJI Water & Luxury Wine Group and, prior to that, POM Wonderful, organizations with combined revenues of more than $1 billion and featuring two of the most iconic brands in the food and beverage space.
Overall, she has overseen multiple global brands, product verticals, and businesses, with responsibility for sales, marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, finance, e-commerce, human resources, and government relations. At FIJI, her biggest accomplishment was leading an end-to-end transformation of its global supply chain, including a complete transformation of FIJI’s North American distribution. At POM Wonderful, Elizabeth led a dramatic turnaround of the business.
She also led the M&A function for The Wonderful Company for much of her time there, including the merger of the Neptune Pacific Line and the Pacific Direct Line, creating the largest regional container shipper in the South Pacific and solidifying FIJI’s supply chain.
From 2001 to 2015, Elizabeth worked at McKinsey & Company, where she rose to become a partner, specializing in global strategy development and implementation, including portfolio transformation, growth strategy, and M&A. She co-founded McKinsey’s service line focused on trends, macroeconomics, and scenario planning.
Earlier in her career, she co-authored the New York Times bestseller RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be? and, subsequently, helped found RealAge Inc., an award-winning online health-and-lifestyle publishing company. That company was later acquired by Hearst Communications. While there she was instrumental in developing an innovative business model that used advanced analytics to deliver targeted content and advertising, making the company one of the first Internet-based businesses to develop a data-driven, customer-relationship-management (CRM) model.
Elizabeth holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a master’s degree from Columbia University, and undertook doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. She is a former Fulbright Scholar and Mellon Fellow. Elizabeth is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, has been named to the “Cohort of Women Leaders” by the Exceptional Women Awardees Foundation, and serves on the board of Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles non-profit focused on gang member rehabilitation.
“Elizabeth’s deep expertise in operational transformation, in both growth or turnaround situations, including her experience as a C-suite executive, will be of great value to consumer-oriented companies facing disruption in today’s unprecedented times,” said Simon Freakley, CEO of AlixPartners. “We are delighted to welcome Elizabeth to AlixPartners; she is an excellent addition to our team.”
About AlixPartners
AlixPartners is a results-driven global consulting firm that specializes in helping businesses successfully address their most complex and critical challenges. Our clients include companies, corporate boards, law firms, investment banks, private equity firms, and others. Founded in 1981, AlixPartners is headquartered in New York, and has offices in more than 20 cities around the world. For more information, visit www.alixpartners.com.