Elizabeth Stephenson joined consulting firm AlixPartners as a managing director based in Los Angeles.

Stephenson has more than 20 years of leadership and operations experience. She most recently served five years at The Wonderful Company as president of two portfolio companies; the FIJI Water & Luxury Wine Group and, prior to that, POM Wonderful.

Overall, she has overseen multiple global brands, product verticals and businesses with responsibilities in sales, marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, finance, e-commerce, human resources and government relations.

She also led M&A efforts for The Wonderful Company, including the merger of the Neptune Pacific Line and the Pacific Direct Line.

From 2001 to 2015, Stephenson worked at McKinsey & Company, where she was a partner specializing in global strategy development and implementation, including portfolio transformation, growth strategy and M&A. She co-founded McKinsey’s service line focused on trends, macroeconomics and scenario planning.

Earlier in her career, she co-authored the New York Times bestseller “RealAge: Are You as Young as You can Be?” and helped found RealAge, an online health-and-lifestyle publishing company. That company was later acquired by Hearst Communications.

“Elizabeth’s deep expertise in operational transformation, in both growth or turnaround situations, including her experience as a C-suite executive, will be of great value to consumer-oriented companies facing disruption in today’s unprecedented times,” Simon Freakley, CEO of AlixPartners, said. “We are delighted to welcome Elizabeth to AlixPartners; she is an excellent addition to our team.”