Sightings | Alumni Profile
Turning Ordinary Consumers Into Green Consumers p.3
An avid Duke basketball fan to this day, Zimmer camped out
all three years for tickets in the graduate student cheering
section—the first year in driving rain—finally scoring season
tickets in her third year. “I’d do anything to get into a
Duke basketball game at Cameron,” says this Nike employee.
Once she completed her degrees at Duke, Zimmer pursued an
admirable career trajectory, with each successive job a building
block for her eventual position at Nike. First, she headed
west—a longtime dream—for a position at Boise Cascade. There,
in an extension of her Nicholas School Master’s Project, she
worked on a marketing plan for a building product made of
recycled plastic and wood. Then, she moved to a job with Monsanto
in which she test-marketed a genetically modified potato,
introducing it into two markets and gauging consumer response.
When Monsanto reorganized, she went to work for Hewlett- Packard,
where for four years she honed her Internet marketing skills
by working with a team developing a business-to-business Web
site. In addition to solidifying her business credentials,
the job with Hewlett-Packard enabled Zimmer to remain in Boise,
where she had met her husband, Chris Zimmer. It was Chris,
then her fiancé, who noticed a job posting on Nike’s Web site
and pointed it out to Zimmer. “This is your job,” he told
her. “Go after it.”
She immediately contacted Malloch, who had interviewed her
for a position eight years earlier when she was fresh out
of the Nicholas School. At the time, he reports, he was looking
for someone with engineering skills. But the second time was
the charm, and Malloch invited her to join the relatively
new footwear sustainability group in 2002. “I was elated,”
Zimmer reports. “The opportunity to work at Nike, a big brand—it
was everything I’d hoped for.”
Thoughtful, Interested, Passionate
After three years with the company, Zimmer is beginning to
see her influence on new products. Nike has just unveiled
Considered, a design philosophy and product line that calls
for less waste, less energy use and reduced solvents. Zimmer
provided consumer research data, offered packaging ideas and
prepared information that has helped the company communicate
the benefits of the products to consumers.
Living in environmentally friendly Portland, Ore., is ideal
for an environmentalist who loves telemark skiing, backpacking
and camping. “There is so much more to do outdoors in the
west because there is so much more public land,” She says.
“And living in Portland is in itself a great education in
sustainability and environmental issues.” The city is home
to a number of cutting-edge environmental organizations that
provide educational programs as well as opportunities for
partnerships with Nike. Portland also has one of the highest
rates of recycling in the country and boasts a number of retailers
promoting organic or sustainable products.
Outside of Nike, Zimmer has been active in the Portland-based
Northwest Earth Institute’s self-taught education programs,
organizing a neighborhood discussion group on raising children
without so much commercialization and exposure to television.
That topic has been of greater interest to her since the birth
of daughter, Marlee, in June 2004. Additionally, as a member
of the Religious Society of Friends, she is interested in
peace. In some way—in her future career, in her retirement,
or through her community work—she hopes to advance the cause
of peace, perhaps through the prism of environmental justice.
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