Nike’s head of diversity steps down in New Zealand

Antoine Andrews, Nike Inc’s vice president of diversity and inclusion, has resigned just weeks after the announcement of broad changes to the company’s HR policies.

Nike confirmed the departure, but declined to comment on the circumstances behind Andrews’ departure.

Andrews is the third high profile departure within a month, coming shortly after Nike conceded it had “failed” in promoting and hiring women and other minorities to senior-level positions within the business and would renew its efforts to address this disparity “with immediate effect.”

“While we’ve spoken about this many times, and tried different ways to achieve change, we have failed to gain traction,” said Nike’s human resources chief Monique Matheson.

“Our hiring and promotion decisions are not changing senior-level representation as quickly as we have wanted.”

The departure comes just weeks after the president of Nike Trevor Edwards resigned, followed shortly by Jayme Martin, vice president and general manager of global categories.

Nike, during Edwards’ exit, had flagged “conduct inconsistent with Nike’s core values and against our code of conduct,” though there were no direct allegations of misconduct against Edwards.

Of Nike’s ‘several hundred’ vice president’s only 29 percent are women while in the US only 16 percent are people of colour.

Andrews joined Nike in 2015, prior to which he was the director of global diversity and inclusion for Symantec.