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Jim Gibbons

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Jim Gibbons
Born
Indiana, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationPurdue University (BSIE, 1985)
Harvard Business School (MBA, 1994)
OccupationNonprofit executive
CompanyGoodwill Industries International
TitlePresident and Chief Executive Officer, Goodwill Industries International (2008 to 2018)

James D. "Jim" Gibbons is an American business and nonprofit executive who was president and chief executive officer of Goodwill Industries International (GII) from April 2008 to August 2018. Before joining Goodwill, he led National Industries for the Blind (NIB) for a decade, and before that spent 13 years at AT&T, where he rose to president and chief executive of the CampusWide Access Solutions business unit.[1]

Gibbons began losing his sight in the third grade and was completely blind by the time he was about 20, while studying industrial engineering at Purdue University.[2] He later became the first blind person to earn a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, graduating in 1994.[3] He has described an early run of 50 rejections from employers, and a summer job as a janitor, as experiences that shaped his view of what he calls "the power of work".[2]

At GII, Gibbons headed the international association that supports a network of more than 160 autonomous local member organisations in the United States and Canada. Those organisations together ran more than 3,000 thrift stores and earned more than $5 billion a year during his tenure.[2] He described his role as working with local leaders to spread their best ideas rather than directing them from headquarters. His tenure included a social impact loan fund for member organisations, partnerships with community colleges and funders on credentials and job training, and public advocacy on employment for people with disabilities.[2][4]

His time at Goodwill also drew criticism. Disability rights groups objected to some member organisations using a federal exemption to pay certain workers with disabilities less than the minimum wage. Critics contrasted those wages with Gibbons's own pay, which GII's tax filings reported at more than $700,000 a year in several years.[5][6] In April 2018, GII's board announced that Gibbons would resign to pursue opportunities in social impact investment and entrepreneurialism. Lorna G. Utley took over as interim chief executive on August 6, 2018.[7][8]

Early life and education

Gibbons grew up in Indiana.[3][9] His father, Tom Gibbons, had once been a Purdue engineering student.[10] Gibbons has said that his father and his brothers were engineers.[2] He began to lose his vision to a genetic eye disease as a boy. Purdue's profile of him describes it as a degenerative condition similar to retinitis pigmentosa.[3][10] A sister, ten years older, had gone through the same loss of sight. Gibbons told Dow Jones columnist Al Lewis in 2011 that his parents treated his blindness matter-of-factly, and that his father never let him off chores or responsibilities because of it.[3]

Gibbons kept playing sports as his sight faded. He played baseball until seventh grade, basketball until eighth grade and football until ninth grade, then wrestled and threw the shot put and discus through high school. He later took up sports for blind athletes, including beep baseball.[3]

Gibbons studied industrial engineering at Purdue University and earned his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering in 1985.[1] By about 19 or 20 he had lost the last of his vision.[2] He chose engineering, he said, because the men in his family were engineers and he was good at mathematics and science. He later said that industrial engineering appealed to him because it "offers the power of integrating people with systems and technology".[2][10] He credited Purdue's support, including a group of personal readers. He named Betty Nelson, then dean of students, as an early role model and mentor, and also credited Carol Barrett, a member of the placement office staff, with helping him find work.[10]

He found it hard to get summer work. After his freshman year he could not find a summer job. After his sophomore year he worked as a janitor at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and after his junior year he took an unpaid position for experience and academic credit.[2][11] Of the janitorial job he later said: "I realized that every job matters. Those guys counted on me to make sure the place was kept up."[3] As a senior, he said, he interviewed with 50 companies and received 50 rejection letters before offers came from AT&T and IBM.[2][10]

While working at AT&T, Gibbons applied to the MBA programme at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He was admitted on his second attempt and graduated in 1994, the first blind person to earn the degree there.[1][12][3] He later said the degree let him show that "pathways for blind people in the business arena are important".[11]

Career

AT&T (1985 to 1998)

Gibbons joined AT&T after graduating from Purdue and stayed for 13 years.[1] Purdue's record of his career lists these roles:[10]

  • operations supervisor, AT&T Network Systems Division, 1985 to 1990
  • product planning manager, AT&T Business Markets Division, 1990 to 1993
  • senior manager, mergers and acquisitions, 1994 to 1996
  • director of competitive strategy and analysis, AT&T Consumer Markets Division, 1996 to 1997
  • president and chief executive officer of AT&T CampusWide Access Solutions, 1997 to 1998

Biographies of Gibbons describe CampusWide Access Solutions as a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, and summarise his AT&T career as leadership roles in operations, product management, and mergers and acquisitions.[13][14]

National Industries for the Blind (1998 to 2008)

In 1998 Gibbons became president and chief executive officer of National Industries for the Blind, a nonprofit that works with associated agencies across the United States to provide employment for people who are blind. He held the post for ten years.[10][12] NIB then worked with more than 88 associated agencies.[13] Gibbons later said he had not known the term "social enterprise" when NIB approached him. He had expected that he might one day join the board of an organisation for blind people, he said, and instead found that NIB "was a business business", where he could use business skills to affect the lives of blind people directly.[2]

Biographies published by GII and others credit Gibbons with turning the roughly 70-year-old organisation into "a results-oriented social enterprise for the 21st century" through marketing and branding strategies and an emphasis on what they call "aggressive mission measures".[15][13] According to GII, Gibbons led the marketing of the SKILCRAFT brand of products made by people who are blind, and its sales rose by 50 percent over ten years. He also developed NIB's Business Leaders Program, which GII described as the first executive training programme for people who are blind. GII reported that more than 75 percent of participants had received at least one promotion.[16] Gibbons has called his work at NIB to create jobs for blind people his greatest accomplishment.[10] He has also said that NIB taught him he "could use business to impact the lives of people in need".[11]

Goodwill Industries International (2008 to 2018)

Gibbons became president and chief executive officer of Goodwill Industries International (GII), based in Rockville, Maryland, in April 2008.[3][12] He succeeded George Kessinger, who had held the post since 2001.[17] GII is a membership association rather than an operating company. Each member organisation has its own board and must meet common membership standards, but otherwise runs independently. Gibbons described the national headquarters, called the "Member Services Center", as "not top-down".[2]

Recession years

Gibbons took office during the 2008 financial crisis and the recession that followed. In a December 2010 interview with DailyFinance, Gibbons said more people were "knocking on the Goodwill door" for job training. Donations and retail sales across the network, he said, were each up by a little over 10 percent. He also said the network served about two million people a year and had more than 2,500 stores and another 2,000 donation centres.[18] He said the online auction site shopgoodwill.com was growing at about 33 percent a year and had made about $100 million in sales over roughly ten years.[18]

In September 2011, Dow Jones reported that the network was serving 2.4 million people a year and generating $4 billion in annual revenue. The network's workforce, it said, had grown by 15,000 to 98,000 during his tenure, and the network was adding more than 100 stores a year.[3] Gibbons argued that many of the people now seeking help were "dislocated workers" whose skills belonged to "an industry that doesn't exist anymore". He urged employers to "invest in the work force" and to think beyond quarterly results.[3] In 2010, during Gibbons's tenure, GII launched the "Donate Movement", a campaign to show donors how donated goods turned into social impact.[11]

Credentials, colleges and employers

Gibbons placed growing weight on postsecondary credentials for people in entry-level work. In 2015 he publicly welcomed President Barack Obama's State of the Union call for employers to help workers gain skills and credentials, and Obama's proposal for free community college. GII said the network already provided workforce development programmes to more than 9.8 million people and employed 122,000 people.[19] Through the GoodProspects for Credentials to Careers initiative, supported by Accenture, participating members committed to connecting more than 15,000 workers with postsecondary credentials and placing 12,000 of them in middle-skilled jobs. Building on a four-year initiative supported by the Lumina Foundation, the network reported 141 partnerships with community colleges. GII was also a founding partner in the Community College/Career Collaboration, launched in 2009 with the American Association of Community Colleges, the Aspen Institute and Jobs for the Future.[19]

In 2016, Gibbons told Philanthropy magazine that 75 member organisations were working with 144 community colleges. He said a programme with Walmart to move floor employees into manager jobs involved about 500 people.[2] Gibbons said the organisation counted it as a success when one of its own employees left for a better job elsewhere: "we're ringing the bell".[2] He argued that predictions of half of today's jobs disappearing within 20 years meant workers would have to "upskill" to compete for mid-market jobs.[2]

Disability employment policy

GII credited Gibbons with a policy platform that pressed for more employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Under Gibbons, GII supported the bipartisan agreement in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that became the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act in 2014.[16] GII said the network employed more than 27,000 people with disabilities in 2015, in jobs from donation processing to senior management.[16] In 2016, Gibbons gave the figure as nearly 30,000.[2] In a 2010 interview, he said that only 32 percent of working-age adults with disabilities were employed. He argued that the greatest obstacle they faced was employers' "misconception that they can't do the work adequately", and that most employers found accommodations cost little or nothing.[18]

Network scale

In 2016, Gibbons said the network had 164 member organisations, more than 3,100 stores and more than $5 billion in earned revenue. It placed more than 312,000 people a year into jobs, he said, and gave job help to almost two million people a year in person and to tens of millions through online learning.[2] According to GII, its members provided more than 36 million people with workforce training and financial literacy education in 2016.[7] GII's own 2017 release described a network of 162 organisations in the United States and Canada, with a presence in 13 other countries. It reported that its members had collectively placed more than 313,000 people in jobs the previous year.[4]

Resignation

In April 2018, the GII board announced that Gibbons would resign "to pursue new opportunities in social impact investment and entrepreneurialism". He agreed to stay until a successor was found.[7] Board chair Karla Grazier said: "During his tenure, Jim led our organization to new heights."[7] Gibbons said he was "humbled to have had the opportunity to serve GII for more than ten years".[7] The board and Gibbons later agreed to bring his departure forward so that he could move into new ventures. Lorna G. Utley, a retired local Goodwill chief executive from Detroit, became interim president and chief executive on August 6, 2018.[8][20] On October 30, 2018, the board named former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steven C. Preston as the next president and chief executive, to take office in January 2019.[21]

After Goodwill

Independent Sector describes Gibbons as the past president and chief executive of Goodwill Industries International.[13] As of November 2026, no reliable published source has been found describing a specific executive post that he has held since leaving Goodwill in 2018.

Leadership and management style

Gibbons described GII's role as coordinating a network rather than commanding it. "My job is to work with the leaders throughout the network to expand their best ideas, and harness our collective energy for maximum impact. My job is not to dictate and direct," he told Philanthropy in 2016, calling it "a hard leadership job".[2] He described the national office as a "Member Services Center" for an association of independent organisations with a common brand and membership standards.[2]

Gibbons set out a "leadership at all levels" philosophy, which brought leadership and management training together and applied them throughout the organisation. Part of this was "community building": activities meant to give staff a shared identity and a sense of belonging.[11] He said Goodwill's leaders needed to "lead with both their head and their hearts". Their main competition was for-profit retail, he said, and their costs were higher because they hired people with barriers to employment and paid for mission programmes.[2] Gibbons described Goodwill as "a workhorse, not a show horse organization".[2]

Resilience is a recurring theme in his interviews, and he links it to his experience of rejection as a job seeker. "Rejection is painful and scary but it's important," he said in 2016. He said resilient people have a sense of purpose, relationships and some control over their lives. He encouraged people to remember how they got through their hardest times, rather than "bury it and act like it didn't happen".[2] At a Wharton Leadership Lecture in September 2015, he told students: "if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together".[12]

Gibbons has also stressed measurement. He said nonprofits would need to keep innovating in how they measure social impact, and that GII was piloting new measures of its effect on the people it served.[11]

Major deals and strategic decisions

  • Job creation loan fund. With the Kresge, Casey and Ford foundations, GII set up a $10 million fund that lent money to member organisations for new stores, donation centres and warehouses. Gibbons said in 2016 that it had financed improvements at 39 facilities, creating more than 550 jobs, with no late repayments. He called it "social-impact investing" and said it could later expand to other social enterprise programmes run by members.[2] The NonProfit Times cited his work developing and coordinating the fund when it named him to its 2017 Power & Influence Top 50.[4]
  • Community college strategy. GII worked with the Lumina Foundation and Accenture to tie members to community colleges and postsecondary credentials, as described above.[19]
  • Employer partnerships. Gibbons described the network as "a sandbox to pilot, expand, and sustain new strategies" for funders and corporate partners, including the Walmart programme to promote floor staff.[2]
  • Online sales. shopgoodwill.com, set up in 1999 under Kessinger in Orange County, California, grew during Gibbons's tenure. GII reported a record $5.6 million in sales on the site in 2015 and more than 1.3 million registered bidders.[17] Gibbons said more than 80 percent of member organisations sold goods on the site.[17]

Financial and market performance

GII is a tax-exempt nonprofit, so it has no share price or market value. Its own accounts are much smaller than the combined revenue of the members it serves. GII's annual Form 990 returns, as compiled by ProPublica, report the following total revenue for the national organisation from 2013 to 2018:[6]

Tax year Total revenue (US$) Reported compensation of Gibbons (US$)
2013 46.1 million 533,342 plus 105,743 other
2014 42.8 million 565,925 plus 123,493 other
2015 44.9 million 585,604 plus 126,598 other
2016 42.5 million 992,120 plus 122,255 other
2017 58.0 million 598,300 plus 118,927 other
2018 58.1 million 920,520 plus 67,104 other (through August 2018)

Across the wider network, reported scale grew during Gibbons's tenure. Dow Jones reported $4 billion in annual revenue and 98,000 employees in 2011.[3] The Daily Pennsylvanian described the organisation Gibbons led as a "$5.4 billion" social enterprise in 2015.[12] Gibbons gave a figure of more than $5 billion in earned revenue across 164 member organisations in 2016.[2] Store counts rose from more than 2,500 in 2010 and 2011 to more than 3,200 in 2017.[18][4] GII said it consistently received GuideStar's Platinum Seal during his tenure.[7]

Board memberships and outside roles

In December 2010, President Obama appointed Gibbons to the newly created White House Council for Community Solutions. He was one of 25 leaders from nonprofits, companies and foundations on the council, which was asked to advise on cross-sector collaboration and civic engagement in education, youth development and employment.[14] The appointment was for two years and ended in 2012.[13]

Independent Sector's biography lists him as a board member of Independent Sector, the National Workforce Solutions Advisory Board (sponsored by ACT, Inc.) and SourceAmerica. It also lists him as an advisory board member of the Charity Defense Council, a member of the executive committee of Leadership 18, a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) Social Enterprise, and a member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council.[13]

Earlier roles listed in a 2012 conference biography include:[15]

  • member of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association board of directors and executive committee
  • board member of the National Association for the Employment of People Who Are Blind
  • president of the World Blind Union's North American/Caribbean Region
  • member of the World Blind Union's executive committee
  • chairman of the World Blind Union's employment committee

Controversies

Subminimum wages and executive pay

During Gibbons's tenure, Goodwill organisations became a main target of a campaign against Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Section 14(c) allows certified employers to pay workers with disabilities below the minimum wage, based on assessments of their productivity. Nonprofit Quarterly reported that certified agencies such as Goodwill could pay some workers as little as 22 cents an hour.[22] The National Federation of the Blind organised a boycott of Goodwill stores in 2012. On October 31, 2013, the federation and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network delivered petitions with 170,000 signatures to Goodwill offices. Representative Gregg Harper introduced the Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities Act of 2013 to repeal Section 14(c). A Goodwill spokesperson said the organisation did not intend to change its policies, which it said gave people with disabilities a chance to work and earn wages they might not otherwise have.[22]

The criticism focused on Gibbons personally because he was blind and his pay was high. Nonprofit Quarterly reported in June 2013 that he had received $729,000 in salary and deferred compensation in 2011. It quoted him defending the subminimum wage system: "It's typically not about their livelihood. It's about their fulfillment. It's about being a part of something. And it's probably a small part of their overall program." The publication's writer, Louis Altman, responded that at 22 cents an hour "it certainly is not about livelihood".[5] GII's later tax returns reported Gibbons's base compensation at between about $533,000 and $598,000 a year from 2013 to 2015 and in 2017, with more than $100,000 a year in other compensation. Base compensation was $992,120 in 2016, and $920,520 in 2018, the year he left.[6] GII's returns for those years also noted first-class or charter travel.[6]

Personal life

Gibbons is blind, and has been fully blind since college. He has a sister, ten years older, who is also blind. In 2011 he relayed a joke from his oldest brother: "I have a blind brother and a blind sister. My brother went to Harvard Business School. My sister is the smart one."[3] In the same 2011 interview, he said he still occasionally skied and played golf. "There are some really good blind golfers," he said. "I don't happen to be one."[3]

He has described a daily routine of prayer and reading: "A staple for me is the Lord's Prayer." He reads each night, from spy thrillers and presidential biographies to books on business, management and economics, and reflects at the end of each day on what he has accomplished.[11] A 2011 Goodwill profile listed his favourite film as For Once in My Life, a documentary about the Spirit of Goodwill band, a group of musicians with disabilities.[9]

Recognition

  • 2007: Purdue Outstanding Industrial Engineer of the Year award[13]
  • 2009: Young Presidents' Organization Social Enterprise Leadership Award[14]
  • 2010: National Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, presented on June 22, 2010, in Washington, D.C.[23]
  • 2010: SmartCEO EcoCEO award for organisational commitment to the environment[13]
  • 2014: Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award, Purdue University College of Engineering[1][10]
  • 2014, 2015 and 2017: The NonProfit Times Power & Influence Top 50[4]
  • 2015: Henry Viscardi Achievement Award from the Viscardi Center, one of nine international recipients[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Blind Boilermaker who was CEO of Goodwill Industries International Inc.". Purdue University College of Engineering. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 "Summer 2016: Interview with Jim Gibbons". Philanthropy. Philanthropy Roundtable. 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 Lewis, Al."A Blind Man Who Leads". September 2, 2011. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Goodwill Industries International President and CEO Jim Gibbons Named to the Nonprofit Times' "2017 Power & Influence Top 50"". Goodwill Industries International. 2017. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Altman, Louis."Federal Law Allows Employers of Those with Disabilities to Skirt Minimum Wage". Nonprofit Quarterly. June 27, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Goodwill Industries International Inc: Nonprofit Explorer". ProPublica. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 "Goodwill Industries International Announces Resignation of President and CEO". Goodwill Industries International. April 2018. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Goodwill Industries International Announces CEO Transition". Goodwill Industries International. 2018. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Get to Know Goodwill Industries International President and CEO Jim Gibbons". Goodwill Industries International (reposted to the NFB of Michigan mailing list archive). February 17, 2011. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 "James D. Gibbons: Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award 2014". Purdue University College of Engineering. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 "Forbes Nonprofit Council Member Q&A: Jim Gibbons, President and CEO of Goodwill Industries International". Forbes Councils. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 McNeese, James."Goodwill CEO shares his selfless path to success". September 22, 2015. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 "Jim Gibbons". Independent Sector. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 "Goodwill Industries International President and CEO Appointed to White House Council". Goodwill Industries International. December 2010. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Jim Gibbons Biography". League for Innovation in the Community College, Innovations 2013 conference. 2012. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 "Goodwill's Gibbons Receives Henry Viscardi Achievement Award". Goodwill Industries International. 2015. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 "Retired President and CEO of Goodwill Industries International Inducted into Goodwill Industries Hall of Fame". Goodwill Industries International. 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 Williams, Latif Lewis."CEO's Corner: How Goodwill Forges On Amid the Jobless Recovery". December 14, 2010. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 "Goodwill Leads President's Charge to Help More Workers Advance Into Better-Paying Jobs". Goodwill Industries International. 2015. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  20. ↑ "Goodwill Chooses Former HUD Secretary as CEO: Transitions". November 2, 2018. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  21. ↑ "Goodwill Industries International Announces New President and CEO". Goodwill Industries International via PR Newswire. October 30, 2018. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Meiksins, Rob."Does Goodwill Discriminate against the People It Serves?". Nonprofit Quarterly. November 21, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
  23. ↑ "Goodwill Industries International CEO Receives Jefferson Award for Achievements in Public Service". Goodwill Industries International. 2010. Retrieved November 12, 2026.
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