Bill Stewart has resigned his position as senior vp and chief marketing officer of Kmart Corp. (Hoffman Estates, Ill.) According to the Chicago Tribune, Stewart will be working on a campaign to protect gay marriage in California.
When Stewart joined Kmart in 2006, he was the first marketing executive hired under Maureen McGuire, chief marketing officer of parent company Sears Holdings Corp. McGuire, a former executive at IBM Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.) had been hand-picked by Sears chairman Edward Lampert to reinvigorate both the Sears and Kmart brands. Stewart had been marketing vp for the Dockers division of Levi Strauss & Co. (San Francisco). Before that, he’d held marketing jobs at The Coca-Cola Co. (Atlanta) and General Mills Inc. (Minneapolis).
According to the Tribune, Stewart said he plans to be a full-time volunteer for Equality for All, a group waging a campaign to defeat a measure appearing on ballots in November to ban gay marriage in California. He’s on the national board of GLADD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
“I don't know what my role is yet,” he told the Tribune. “I imagine it will involve advertising strategy and communications strategy. One way or another, history will be made in California this year and I want to be a part of that.”
A Sears spokesman said a search to replace him is underway.