Kissimmee-based
Tupperware picks chief operating officer Tricia Stitzel to replace E.V. “Rick” Goings when he retires this spring.
The Kissimmee-based company built on the entrepreneurship of women will have a female CEO for the first time in its history as the board of Tupperware Brands Corp. picked chief operating officer Tricia Stitzel to replace E.V. “Rick” Goings when he retires this spring.
Goings announced Wednesday afternoon he was stepping down from day-to-day operations and will become executive chairman and that Stitzel will be promoted by the board of directors to president and CEO.
She’s been at Tupperware since 1997 and most recently has been its president and chief operating officer. Stitzel, 51, also has run manufacturing and human resources divisions at Tupperware. Goings, 72, has been with Tupperware since 1992 and has been chairman and CEO since 1997. He plans to step down as CEO May 9, when Stitzel will take over.
“I look forward to transitioning the role to Tricia, who has demonstrated strong leadership abilities for the current and future needs of the company,” Goings said in a statement. “She is the right person to lead Tupperware Brands into the next era, reinforcing Tupperware’s purpose of empowering women through economic opportunity.”
Stitzel also will become the public face of Tupperware, 67 years after founder Earl Tupper hired Brownie Wise. Wise helped take the company from a small home-goods brand to a pop-culture and business force that revolutionized the home parties model.
Goings joined the company when Tupperware was facing heavy competition from competing household goods brands and pushed to expand more to emerging markets in China and Brazil, while keeping Tupperware’s brand fresh.
He helped established Tupperware as an independent and publicly-traded company in 1996 and revamped many of the company’s produce offerings, said director Kriss Cloninger III.
Now Goings turns it over to Stitzel, a longtime Central Florida resident who worked at the Rollins College MBA career development program before going to Tupperware. she earned two graduate degrees from Rollins.