About AXIS Performance Advisors

AXIS Performance Advisors is a sustainability consulting firm offering products and services to help organizations implement sustainable practices—in their internal operations, in the design of their products and services, and in managing relationships with external stakeholders. The owners, Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard, are the authors of the award-winning book, The Business Guide to Sustainability, which translates the abstract concepts of sustainability into plain language for organizational managers. They now spend much of their time teaching and supporting others to work in the sustainability field.

We became a B Corporation to be a model for our clients.

AXIS provides practical tools for sustainable business, including their SCORE™ sustainability assessment, their SPaRK™ (Sustainability Planning and Reporting Kit) electronic files to support sustainability planning and reporting. They also provide training and facilitation tools (e.g., a process and system for uncovering the strategic business reasons to pursue sustainability.) Marsha and Darcy also co-founded the International Society of Sustainability Professionals to raise the field to the next level of performance and competence.

The Change We Seek™

As interest in sustainability started to explode, AXIS decided they could do more good in the world by teaching others how to use their methods (rather than hoarding them and just working with their own clients). That way others can profit from AXIS's tools, and sustainable practices can spread even faster.

• In 1995, AXIS hosted a think tank on the just emerging buzzword: sustainability. During that think tank, it became clear that they had left out a key stakeholder: the environment. Improved organizational performance often came at the expense of natural systems. This epiphany led to their refocusing their business on sustainability, where the economy, community and environment are not traded off against one another, but instead are jointly optimized. It wasn’t easy; sometimes it felt like they were creating a business out of wishful thinking. But how times have changed! Marsha and Darcy now teach Foundations of Sustainable Business for the prestigious Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s MBA and certificate programs. They consult, coach, teach and write, all in service of creating a more sustainable and just world.

AXIS Performance Advisors

• Industry: Education & Training Services
• Product/Services: sustainability consulting
• Location: Portland, OR
• http://www.axisperformance.com