Colleen Mitchell has exited Nordstrom after two years as its head of diversity, equity, inclusion.
In a Monday LinkedIn post, Mitchell shared that she was leaving Nordstrom to start her own coaching and consulting practice catered to executives, corporations and personal growth.
“My time at Nordstrom has been filled with personal growth, amazing support, and impactful work in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging,” Mitchell wrote on LinkedIn. “To my Nordstrom team: I’ll be cheering you on every step of the way and feeling immensely proud of the work you will continue to do. But there comes a point when you realize that your calling extends beyond your current role. For me, that calling has been persistent – a gentle nudge that’s grown into an undeniable force.”
Nordstrom said the company is conducting a search to backfill the role, which is currently being filled by HR leader Carlos Rios on an interim basis.
Prior to joining Nordstrom, Mitchell served as the head of DEI at Petco and held a similar role in Amazon’s global customer fulfillment division. She reported to the company’s HR chief Farrell Redwine until November of 2023, when Lisa Price took over the role.
The average tenure of a chief diversity officer is just 2.9 years, according to a December report from board and leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart. That ranks as the shortest tenure across all C-suite roles tracked by the firm, which found that the average total tenure across the C-suite was 4.6 years.
In February of 2023, Mitchell told FN that she was initially attracted to the role at Nordstrom because of the company’s existing infrastructure. Nordstrom in 2020 outlined a set of concrete DEI goals, including increasing Black and Latinx representation in people manager roles by 50% by the end of 2025. Having this framework meant Mitchell’s role would focus more on the implementation of predetermined metrics rather than creating — and petitioning for — an entirely new program from scratch. It also meant Nordstrom was willing to invest funds and hiring power to bolster this unit.
“One person who’s underfunded and under-resourced is not going to solve the organization’s problem,” said Mitchell at the time. “Organizations need to enable a person in this role to help the organization and all of us get there together.”
