Dean’s Speaker Series: CEO Elliott Hill’s vision for a reinvigorated Nike

When Elliott Hill retired from a 32-year career at Nike in 2020, he didn’t expect to return just four years later as the company’s president and CEO. 

Hill joined Nike as a sales intern in 1988, when the company was a U.S.-focused footwear business. Over the next three decades, Hill rose through Nike’s ranks, taking on leadership roles spanning sales, retail, and branding. 

“Part of why I ended up at Nike and stayed so long is because I think what Nike believed in lined up with what I believed in as a human being around human performance and potential, around commitment to the athlete, being honest and direct, a sense of integrity, a sense of irreverence and fun and playfulness,”  he said at the last Dean’s Speaker Series of the semester, in conversation with Haas Dean Jenny Chatman and his nephew, Joe Wilson, MBA 26. 

Watch the DSS interview with Hill.

Growing up in Austin, Texas, sports shaped Hill’s life from an early age, eventually leading him to work as an athletic trainer with the Dallas Cowboys before finding his way to Nike. 

About eight years into his career, he recognized the company’s growing global presence and requested to go international, eventually relocating to Europe for nearly five years. He described the experience as transformational personally and professionally.

Those experiences shaped how Hill approached returning to Nike as CEO in 2024.  Time away during retirement gave him a different perspective: that of a consumer rather than an executive. 

As CEO, he said he wanted to reestablish Nike as a sports company, with technology serving as “an enabler of the strategy and the culture” as opposed to the company’s defining identity.

That mission started with redefining who counts as an athlete. Referencing Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman’s belief that “if you have a body, you’re an athlete,” Hill described Nike’s responsibility as serving not just elite competitors, but anyone participating in sports.

Comparing the company’s structure to a sports team, Hill said Nike is now pursuing a more balanced marketplace strategy, having shifted toward smaller sport-specific groups focused on runners, basketball players, golfers, tennis athletes, and other consumer communities. He emphasized that keeping athletes and consumers at the center of decision-making has become central to how Nike approaches product creation, innovation, and storytelling. 

“You can’t worry about the external world and what everybody’s saying,” Hill said. “Put your athlete or your consumer … at the center of every decision you make.”

Hill said that same philosophy also shapes Nike’s broader approach to social impact and sustainability through what the company calls its “three Ps”: people, planet, and play. He pointed to efforts focused on improving conditions across Nike’s supply chain, increasing youth participation in sports, and designing products that balance performance, aesthetics, and sustainability. “It’s got to look good. It’s got to perform. And then, it’s got to be sustainable,” Hill said about Nike’s new Aero-FIT World Cup kits made from recycled textiles.

For Hill, that mindset traces back to the same motivation that eventually led him to Nike.

“Whatever you’re interested in, chase it,” he said. “Start with a big dream, and then just don’t look for perfection in that first job.” 

Listen to Elliott Hill’s talk on the Dean’s Speaker Series Podcast:

TRANSCRIPT

JOE WILSON: Good afternoon. My name is Joe Wilson. I’m a second-year full-time MBA student here at Berkeley Haas, and welcome to today’s Dean’s Speaker Series. Well, today we’re honored to welcome Elliott Hill from Nike. I know we’re all looking forward to learning from his

perspectives on leadership, sports, and business. But for me, today’s pretty special. Not only do I get to introduce the CEO of Nike, but I get to introduce my lifelong role model and uncle, Elliott Hill. Ah, Elliott has spent more than three decades at Nike, holding roles across North America and Europe, in areas spanning sales, retail, and brand. Over that time, he helped lead and scale Nike’s global business to more than $40 billion in annual revenue. In senior leadership roles, including President of Consumer and Marketplace, Elliott led commercial and marketing operations for both the Nike and Jordan brands, helping shape the company’s marketplace strategy and strengthen its connection to sport, athletes, communities, and consumers. After retiring from Nike in 2020, Elliott returned to the company in 2024 as president and CEO, building on Nike’s legacy and helping guide its next chapter of growth with sport and athletes at its center. Beyond Nike, Elliott has served on numerous boards and currently serves on the board of trustees at his alma mater, Texas Christian University. He has also remained actively engaged in supporting communities through sport and education in the places that he’s called home, Oregon and Texas. From his first times at Nike as an intern to becoming a CEO, Elliott has led in a way that reflects what we at Haas call confidence without attitude. He listens more than he speaks, he acts with purpose, and he lets humility guide ambition. To me, Elliott is proof that real leadership is human, not heroic, built from care, curiosity, and consistency. So now, please join me in welcoming someone whose life and leadership remind us what it truly means to stay true to yourself, Elliot Hill.

ELLIOT HILL: That was a little strange for him to call me Elliot.

JENNY CHATMAN: Yeah, yeah.

HILL: I don’t think he ever has. To Joe, I’m Unc E. That’s what he calls me.

CHATMAN: Yeah, right. 

HILL: So I thought he would’ve thrown one of those in, but anyway. Thank you, Joe.

CHATMAN: You got to be proud of your boy here. Good. One housekeeping thing before we start. I’m Jenny Chatman, I’m the dean at Haas. You have note cards on your seats. If you have a question anytime during the conversation, please write down your name, the program you’re in, and the question, and Carrie and Sarah will pick them up, and then Joe is going to facilitate the question portion of our event. So, um, so, yeah, I know we’re going to get to you, but I want to talk a little bit about me first, if I may. So I started running, well, let’s just say, well before you all were born, perhaps before your parents were born. My first and almost exclusive shoes were Nikes. They were the Tailwind and Pegasus era. And so, is there a… Oh, OK. So this actually is me in a 10K race, which I won. And it was actually an all-women’s race, which meant that I crossed the finish line first, which is rare for women. And what you see there is the person behind me, she was really tough. But there’s a person there to the left, my husband was so surprised to see me coming around the corner first that he, in his street clothes, ran with me all the way in. Like, he was a little bit behind, but he ran with me all the way in. So that was 36:24 10K back in the day. So then I ran a couple of marathons. This was San Francisco Marathon, and that’s me. And I was amazed that I could even find these pictures, but they’re both Nike shoes.

They’re all waffles. You see, I’m the short one there, Um, the shortest,

because it’s all men around me, ’cause I used to be fast. Anyway, so I did that

one in 3:06, San Francisco. And then, yeah.  

HILL: Anybody run a marathon?

CHATMAN: Back in the day.

HILL: That’s impressive, 3:06.

CHATMAN: And so— 

HILL: Qualified for Boston.

CHATMAN: I did, yeah. But I didn’t go. And then, finally, this is me current day. This was a run that we did with Haasies. You can see the logo. And, uh, there’s no time to report there. This is me in current day running. So I ended up after the marathon, I actually tore part of my Achilles tendon. And it’s actually what led me to the Berkeley PhD program. It actually changed my life. And after that, I started wearing Air Maxes, Air Max 1s and then 2s, which I’ve kind of worn ever since, and I’ve been injury-free since that time. I ran this morning, 5 miles. And so I just wanted to let Elliot know, kind of what the situation over at my house with regard to shoes. So I think I have this as— 

HILL: Looks like my closet. 

CHATMAN: Wait, here’s—this is my current collection of Nike shoes. I think I counted. You have to watch to the end here. 34. Oops. Oh, there’s a Hoka. I found a Hoka in there. So I thought I had 34, but I have 33.

HILL: I think I just figured out my growth strategy. I’m going to have you talk everybody in here to buy that many shoes, all right? 

CHATMAN: Yeah. I think I may buy four to five pairs of running shoes a year.

HILL: Thank you. 

CHATMAN: Let’s say it’s been 13 years. No, that’s not true. 

HILL: How can we get that to six or seven now? Yeah, yeah. That’s what we got to do.

CHATMAN: No, it’s been like two or 300 pairs, just me. And now I have to go on the internet because I need to look for those Air Max 2017s. 

HILL: Something tells me we can help you out. 

CHATMAN: Yeah, right. So Nike shoes have been perfect for my feet. I was at one point on the Nike shoe list, which was lovely. They have a straight last, and they’re very cushiony for long-distance runners. And running … we’re going to get to you.

HILL: No, no. Hey, by the way, there’s nothing better than a third-party authenticator telling you your brand, keep going.

CHATMAN: I mean, running has brought immense joy to my life. 

HILL: Yeah, me too. Me too. 

CHATMAN: And I just want to say thank you, to Nike and to you. Yeah, for the joy I’ve experienced as an outdoor person and a runner. And we are just incredibly excited to welcome you here to Haas.

HILL: Thank you so much for having me. I think equally as important, thank you for the lifelong testimonial that you just gave. But you know what’s interesting? You know, I think everybody here takes that one photo of you running with all men. You kind of take it for granted today that when you go out and run a 5K or a marathon, that, of course, it’s half. It’s now, by the way, more women than men. It wasn’t until 1984 that women were even allowed to run the marathon. Yeah, in the Olympics. Think about that for a second. And so, it’s just interesting how and exciting to see how far we’ve come. But anyway, thank you for sharing the journey with us. Yeah. And I was close, but I wasn’t that deep. So, well, in the backstage she said, ‘I have a surprise for you.’ And I go, in my head I said, ‘I think I know you’re a runner.’ I knew some things about running at CU Boulder, right? 

CHATMAN: Yes.

HILL: And I knew that you had a relationship with Nike, but I didn’t know that you still have that many. 

CHATMAN: All those shoes. Yeah. But thank you. Well, that was just—we have a house in Tahoe, and there are a bunch more there, but I didn’t count those.

HILL: Good. Let’s get another house.

CHATMAN: Yeah. OK. Yeah, OK. So, yeah. So let’s now focus on you. So I mean, you, too, have a connection to sport, and I wonder if you want to tell us your story of how your connection to sport has affected your career choices and what you’re doing now.

HILL: So I grew up playing sports like a lot of kids in our neighborhood where I grew up.

I grew up in a middle class neighborhood in Austin, Texas. And was raised by a single mom, and she kept me busy. Whatever the season was, I was participating in sports, and that kind of became my second home, you know, away from home, being around my friends. And so, sport was always a part of my life, including when I went to university. I wasn’t good enough to play at a Division I level, but I worked as an athletic trainer, worked my way through school. Coming out of school, I knew I wanted to be in sports, but I didn’t really know what that meant. And so, I worked for the Dallas Cowboys, went to grad school, and then ended up at Nike. And to answer your question, specifically, I think, you know, why sports for me, it’s always about potential. You know, someone pushing themselves to run a marathon, to have your best PR in the 10K. It’s about working as a team with common goals. And so, it was only natural that I wanted that kind of environment to be a part of the place that I built my career, and that’s why I ended up at Nike. And so, I think the message for all of you is, whatever you’re passionate about, and it can be as bold, and that’s what it was for me, is I want to work in the world of sports. I didn’t know what that meant. But I took a job with the Dallas Cowboys as an athletic trainer, knowing that’s not what I wanted to do, but it got me into sports, which then led me to grad school in the world of sports, which then led me to doing a paper all night. So the point there is: Whatever you’re interested in, chase it. Start with a big dream, and then just don’t look for perfection that first job. But get some experience, and then continue to move on. So anyway, it’s been a wild journey.

CHATMAN: Yeah, such good advice, though. So yeah, we were talking about the career path.

You spent 32 years at Nike, and then you retired in 2020. Your wife tells me that’s actually a fact. And you’re now back as CEO. Yeah. What? You were back four years later. Yeah. So what did that time away do to kind of help you think about Nike’s priorities? Yeah. Did that clear your mind and give you a sense of … yeah, of where the company should go?

HILL: Well, when I left, I truly thought I was retiring. So, but how about I’ll start this: How many of you worked and then came to graduate school? Raise your hand. And then, I want you to think about that time period from when you finished undergrad till you worked, to how different you approach school now having that window. Think about that for a second. How important that window was to you emotionally, whatever. You know, whatever you needed. Physically, you needed a break, and that’s, I think … I didn’t intend to come back to work. Alright? I retired. But what I would say is that break helped me in a lot of ways personally, ability to reset physically.  I’d been working 32 years. I’d flown 4 million miles, 114 quarters. I had a number, and a deadline to deliver a number. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I ended up running the P&Ls for seven years. It helped me reconnect with my family, my friends, my hometown. I hadn’t been there for 39 years. It helped me dream and chase. I started a baseball team. I play baseball now. I started a music festival. I started a nonprofit, and I got to do the things that I had always thought about. and so that gave me perspective. 

To answer your question specifically, I became a consumer. Right? And so now all of a sudden, I’m in the world, I’m not working there, I’m a consumer. But sadly, I still do shoe counts. I don’t know if you noticed me looking down. Did you notice me when I walked in? It never leaves you. So even when I was retiring, I was doing shoe counts, and I knew something was a little off, because you could just see the market share and the innovation, the things changing. 

CHATMAN: I mean, you guys could have worn your Nikes today, right?

HILL: Not judging! But so, I think it helped me get a perspective personally and then professionally. Becoming a consumer again, I think, has helped me as I’ve entered in as the CEO role, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it as we get through it, the importance of, we call it the athlete: putting the athlete at the center of every decision we make, and that helps steer and guide where we’re heading strategically.

CHATMAN: Yeah, and I want to hear more about that. But let me ask a question about your international moves. We pride ourselves here at Haas as having a very international program, and particularly in our Full-time MBA Program. Our students are always on trips.

HILL: Oh, we know. 

CHATMAN: Surprisingly, they get to class often enough. Yeah, I mean, and they go on these wonderful trips, and our international students are here experiencing, you know, school and the work world in the U.S. What did your international moves sort of do for you? How did that help kind of round out your perspective?

HILL: Yeah. If it’s OK, I’m going to maybe take this team on it, or all of you on a bit of a journey. So I was fortunate that I got in with Nike in 1988 when it was still fairly young and about to grow, and it was pretty much a U.S.-based business, primarily footwear, when I joined. And I knew it was the place I wanted to be. And I was—I never dreamed I’d sit in this chair. I didn’t have the vision, the audacity, but I always had it. I was curious. I like to learn, I like to grow, I like to develop. And I always had, like, I could look two steps ahead of me. And so I saw the company starting to diversify revenue outside of the United States. And about—this is now around year eight, for me, so call it ’96. And, at the end of—if you start doing reviews, when you get reviews, performance reviews, have to force yourself to have a career conversation with your manager at the end of the year. I’d started doing that, and I started, ‘Hey, I want to go to Europe,’ or, ‘I want to go to internat—’ I said international. I’d go anywhere. At the time, we had an office in Hong Kong. Anyway, long story short, I ended up in Europe, and part of it was personal ’cause we wanted to have that journey, but it was also strategic in terms of my career development ’cause I could see the company starting to become more global. So we were fortunate. Nike does a really nice job of moving talent around the world, not just us to out, but Europeans in and Asians and wherever country, and I got to go on that journey. And you want to talk about life-changing. Those—we were there almost five years—were transformational. I use that word. It was transformational for us as a family, my wife and I, our friends, but then me from a professional perspective. There was a moment when I was managing 12 people, and they were from eight different countries. And I know you, you probably do, when you guys have your small group sessions where you got to manage cultures, language barriers, perspectives, geopolitical ideology, all those sort of things. And so, it was transformational for me in terms of learning how to have a more global perspective, be open to thoughts, ideas. And again, I think it was without a doubt the best five years of my life and an unbelievable investment of time, and I’m grateful that Nike invested in me, frankly.

CHATMAN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So here’s a question, of course, suggested by the

students because it’s a deep strategy question. So Nike’s shift toward direct-to-consumer—it’s kind of made sense strategically, but it also created some distance from athletes, and you talk about athletes at the center, from sports communities, from wholesale partners. How are you rebuilding these relationships while keeping what got direct-to-consumer right? And where do you believe you still need to take risks to manage this balance?

HILL: So let me start with before the pandemic, and I was still there, we were making a move to be, quote, ‘more direct-to-consumer.’ And I think it was a lot of brands; it’s important to have direct relationships with fans like yourself. It’d be in your closet. Yeah, you know, and I think strategically, why do you want to have a direct relationship with the consumer is you don’t want to get disintermediated, right? And so, there was an idea that our business would become

more direct-to-consumer, but we were going to let it happen naturally. We were going to have to earn the right for the consumer to shop directly with us. The pandemic hits, supply gets constrained because manufacturing shuts down, demand goes through the roof, physical retail gets shut down. The team, rightfully so, had to survive. They’re in survival mode. I’m not there, by the way. I’m retired. But to go to survival mode, well, let’s go direct-to-consumer to keep cash flow coming for the company because all of your wholesale business is shut down. And through the roof it goes, stock goes to 170, And so, you know, it was without question the

right strategic move to make. 

Now, in hindsight, and it’s easy to sort of look backward, and there was one other move I’ll get to in a second. What you have to think about if you’re building a business or a product, where will that consumer interact with that business? And when retail opened back up, we didn’t flow back as we opened up all that shelf space and open-to-buy to the competitors. So you lose market share, you lose mind space. And so, that was probably the big strategic miss because we thought, 

‘Ah, we’ll just keep going direct-to-consumer.’ And so, again, where do we have to be bold? And there was one other move to create efficiencies. We started centralizing to invest in technology. You know, and growth isn’t free. You have to invest in it. And we moved to an organizational structure around men’s, women’s, kids. So we started designing product for men, for women, for kids, which seems logical, but if you’re a designer and you’re in charge of designing the men’s line, where do you start? So what we’ve done is we shift it back. We call it the sport offense. It’s a consumer-led offense. So in product creation, we’ve aligned up against 12 sports. You have small cross-functional teams having a relationship with runners, having a relationship with basketball players, having a relationship with golfers, tennis athletes, you get it. And it’s a—and you have different competitors there. And so, those teams are creating product and innovation. On the marketplace side, you’ve got to sell it somewhere. We have a more balanced approach because 80% of consumers will never shop direct-to-consumer. They want to shop choice, they want to shop brands, and we should be there in a meaningful, thoughtful way. And so, that’s what we’re moving to: a more balanced approach and sport-led and athlete-led focus on product, and the same thing on the marketplace. Where do we need to be bolder? Innovation. I put these on for a reason. I have really cool Travis Scott, cool hip sneakers I was going to wear, and I thought, ‘Nope, I’m wearing innovation on stage.’ And so, you know, we’ve got to push the boundaries around human performance and potential. Yeah. I think that’s the area that I’m pushing really hard, around innovation, design, aesthetics, storytelling. That’s an opportunity.

CHATMAN: I once went up to the campus and met with Tinker Hatfield, who—

HILL: A neighbor and friend.

CHATMAN: Yeah. And he took me to the Nike Kitchen, and he had boxes in his office. So the Nike Kitchen was like the innovation lab, and he had boxes in his office. I asked him why he had those boxes. He said, ‘Because the kitchen has gotten too public, and I’m moving now to the Nike Pantry,’ which was the more secret version of the innovation lab.

HILL: Is that—your credibility just went from—like, your credibility was already high.

CHATMAN: Pretty high? 

HILL: Your credibility just went here. Not many people know about—well, first of all, not many people spent time with Tinker, and not many people know about the kitchen, and certainly very, very few know about it. No, it’s not a confidential thing, but few people know about the pantry. And yeah, it was … you know, we have a group of innovators, and their job isn’t the quarter-to-quarter, designing, hitting right targets for each season. We have a group of innovators that think more long term, and that’s they go to the kitchen, quote, ‘to cook things up.’ 

CHATMAN: Yeah, so that’s super cool. OK. Well, so, you know, we’ve all seen sort of the media coverage of Nike. Investors want margin recovery. Athletes and creators want Nike to feel like Nike again. So how do those things sort of collide? How do you navigate this tension?

HILL: Well, it doesn’t have to be a tension, right? It goes back to, in a perfect world, that innovation, that and you know, taking risk, if you will, in design, aesthetic, and look, does drive pricing, you know, price-value relationship, and you can start to drive price and margin, and hopefully better consumer connectivity. So in a perfect world, those two go, hand in hand, and we’ve got some great examples. If you take our running business, which is where I focused first, the entire team did, and we’ve said this publicly, now we’re on our third quarter back to growth and running, and it was just because we led with a very consumer construct in how we designed the line, price points, the innovation, the look, the feel, the design. Those are all revenue margin accretive. And oh, by the way, it’s resonating with the consumer. So in a perfect world, you get them both to line up. So it doesn’t have to be an either/or, and I think that’s the challenge for you as you go out in the business world is forcing yourself to find a way to get them to both line up so you’re not having to make trade-offs. Taking a lower margin to appeal to a consumer. I think you gotta take the consumer somewhere new and different so that you can drive that revenue and margin accretion.

CHATMAN: Awesome. So I conduct research on organizational culture, and you’ve talked about sport as the foundation of Nike’s culture, not just its marketing. What does that actually mean in operational terms? What does it mean to be grounded in sport? How does it influence how decisions are made, and how do you spread it across, you know, what, 79,000 employees, 190 countries?

HILL: Yeah. Well, you know, it was interesting when I returned, and again, the company had shifted. I even was talking with folks, and they were, ‘Hey, we’re a tech company.’ And I understand why. We were making huge investments in technology to drive all this revenue and growth and this connectivity to consumers, direct-to-consumer, all incredibly important. My first day on the job was Oct. 14, so it was 18 months ago. Had a slide, my first slide: ‘We’re a sport company, and we’re a growth company.’ And it was a reminder. No, no, it’s not. Tech’s an enabler of the strategy and the culture, and that we have to get back. And I—the next slide, we exist to serve athletes. And you have to, and this is for you. I don’t care what organization: What’s your why? Why does the organization exist? What’s its reason for being? So I stood up and said, ‘Hey, we exist to serve athletes, and we’re going to get back to sport, and we’re going to put the consumer or the athlete with an asterisk: if you have a body, you’re an athlete.’ I’ll come back to that, all 8 billion consumers. That’s our job. That’s our responsibility. And so, I’ve rallied the team around sport. I rallied the team around our mission statement, our sense of purpose.

It’s about inspiration and innovation for every athlete in the world. And again, that asterisk

on the word athlete. We have this quote from our co-founder, Bill Bowerman: ‘If you have a body, you’re an athlete.’ And so this, our job and our responsibility is to try to inspire and invite 8 billion consumers into the world of sport. That’s a much bigger purpose than trying to sell you something on a website. It’s how do we inspire and invite 8 billion consumers into the world of sport because we believe it makes the world, them better, stronger, fitter? Oh, and by the way, it’s good for business. And so, we’ve got everybody rallied around our mission statement, and then I have a series of maxims that we live by. It’s what do we believe in, and what are the actions, and how do we treat one another? And so that’s helped to shape the culture that we all want to see and feel and be a part of. So, well, I actually know it sounds pretty textbook, but I’m telling you right now, I mean, it works. If you can get a reason why you exist, if you can get a mission statement that really is purposeful and meaningful, you can move people.

CHATMAN: I mean, speaking of the textbook, this is actually the book I just wrote, which is all about culture. You could have written it. Oh, but I’m going to give you a copy anyway.

HILL: Thank you. 

CHATMAN: So I hope that that helps you with your culture.

HILL: And personalized. Thank you so much.

CHATMAN: Oh geez, you’re so welcome. 

HILL: I feel like I need to hold it up for the camera so we can sell it. You know, I did start in sales, right? So…

CHATMAN: Um, yeah.

HILL: Actually, I tell, I tell our designers all the time, without sales, it’s just one big giant art project, alright?

CHATMAN: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

HILL: Thank you. 

CHATMAN: Anyway, I hope you find that of some use at some moment.

HILL: Hey, trust me, I’m always … I think all of us have to continue to, no matter where you sit in an organization, you have to remain curious, you have to keep learning. And so, again, I appreciate it.

CHATMAN: Yeah.

HILL: I’ll certainly crack it open.

CHATMAN: Have you told your uncle about our Defining Leadership Principles? 

HILL: He used one of them.

CHATMAN: Yeah, yeah. So, Students Always is one of our Defining Leadership Principles. We have four. Sing along with me. Question the Status Quo, Students Always, Confidence Without Attitude—sometimes known as my favorite—and Beyond Yourself. That’s who these leaders are.

HILL: But it’s again, I think there’s a simplicity to it. It’s not 10, it’s four, you know, they’re memorable, and I think the key is repetition, repetition, repetition, and getting not only the leaders to talk about it, but to get the students talking about it and embracing it and using it in an opening or whatever. And that’s how these things come to life. Yeah, ultimately, because it takes the entire organization to bring a series of maxims or a mission to, and bring it to life.

CHATMAN: Yeah. Well, and showing how they’re so relevant. Yeah. So another thing that we really focus on here at Haas is sustainability and impact. We have a huge portfolio of assets in the space, and many students work in the sustainability and impact space. Nike has made ambitious sustainability commitments. But those are often tested when, kind of pressure builds. And so, how do you make sustainability kind of non-negotiable rather than a value-dependent initiative?

HILL: So first of all, beyond sustainability, we try to keep it simple. I like twos and threes or, uh, sometimes fours—

CHATMAN: Well, I have to tell you, so do you know who Scott Galloway is?

HILL: Of course.

CHATMAN: So Scott is an alum from Haas. I met with him in London. He really held up my book, and we got more hits than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. But I told him our four strategic, I told him the four defining principles, he knew them, and the four strategic initiatives. He said, ‘You can’t have four, you have to have three, because by the time you get to four, everybody forgot what one, one is.’ So we might have to work on that. 

HILL: Yeah. No, it’s— yeah. But hey, four, if you need four, you gotta go with four. I’m not— there’s no rule about anything in life, and that’s one thing. 

When we talk about ourselves as a company, we talk about three things, broad strokes: people, planet, play. It’s easy to remember: three Ps. People is around, you know, our teammates, not just in our offices, but all the way out to our factories feel valued and respected. Play is about getting kids active and moving, and we have a target that we’ve set for ourselves around getting 20 million girls moving. We’re activating a million different coaches. And then planet. And again, I’m high-level in all this, but in terms of planet, if you think about the … you can’t play sport in a world that is increasingly getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Yeah. It’s going to get more and more challenging. You can’t play sport without water. And so we’re focusing. It’s critically important to our success, and we have had some goals, and we’ve set those out for 2030. I think it doesn’t, again, have to be an either/or, especially in sustainability. We’ve designed sustainability into how we actually design the product, how and where we make the product, and then how we move it or ship it around. And so, we have our teams integrating that all the way through, and I think the best example right now, I don’t know how many people are World Cup fans in here. We got a few in here. So if you look at the jerseys, the kits we just launched, those were designed upfront knowing that first—by the way, you can’t create for sustainability.

People aren’t going to buy it if it looks ugly. It’s got to look good. It’s got to perform. And then, it’s got to be sustainable. And so, we learned that lesson. And so the jerseys, we know it’s going to be super hot here in the United States. If you look at the jersey, it’s called Aero-FIT. We launched it through the game of football or soccer. We’ll launch it against, across other sports, running, et cetera. It becomes a concept, a platform, and it’s 20% more breathable than our Dri-FIT. So you’ll watch. You watch the—look at the Nike kits when it’s hot in Texas or wherever when they’re playing football. So proud of that, and it’s made from recycled textile to textile. It’s the first time we’ve ever done it. We’ve used recycled yarn, but we’ve never used recycled textiles. So it’s a new move for us, and I think incredibly important. So the message of all that is, if sustainability’s important to you, make sure it’s still beautiful, still performs, it’s sustainable, and then it’s just built into how you design, how you make, and how you move it. So we’re not backing off because of where we are from a—yeah, you know, an operating margin pressure. That’s not the place you go. Yeah. There are other places to go for that. This isn’t one of them. 

CHATMAN: Yeah. Can I throw in a question that we didn’t practice? So—

HILL: I don’t need practice. Go. Yeah.

CHATMAN: It seems like…

HILL: Fire away. 

CHATMAN: And this is not a hard one. This is a fangirl question. Which athletes have you learned the most from?

HILL: Oh. Well, broadly speaking, this is going to be too simplistic. The first, ’cause I’m not sure everybody in this room would think of him as an athlete, but Phil Knight, he was a runner Yeah. Without question, he’s the, my mentor, the person that I look up to in terms of his vision, his wisdom, his knowledge. I still talk to him. Probably once a week. I was on the phone with him this weekend. He’s 88, but he’s just a phenomenal human being, visionary, and business person. In terms of an athlete that we would all define as an athlete is, without question, Michael Jordan. We have a brand now called Jordan Brand, which is, you know, it’s north of a $7 billion business. 

CHATMAN: Wow. Yeah.

HILL: And I ran it. It reported up to me for the last seven years of my career before I left, and I created a board meeting, so we meet with him quarterly and his team. He has a two-person team, so we’ve created a board, an advisory board, and we meet. And he’s very involved in strategy. He’s very involved in structure, like how are we setting ourselves up to win? Talent: ‘Wait, why are you moving that person over here?’ and ‘Why I’m not getting this?’ And then product and positioning of the brand. And so he’d be the answer. And it’s because he’s so intimately involved in his brand because he’s incredibly proud of it. It has his name on it, right? And so he’s, it’s not just about money, it’s about his legacy. 

CHATMAN: Yeah. Very cool. So I have a closing question, and then we’re going to start our audience questions, and this is our standard question that we like to ask all of our visiting leaders. And the question is, if you had an extra week in your life right now with absolutely no responsibilities, no obligations, what would you do with that time? I’m looking over at your wife here, too. 

HILL: Yeah. By the way, I know all of you, like, I don’t know how many of you think you want to be a CEO. I, a quick side story, and then I’ll answer the question. I, before I left, I went through the, ‘Hey, will you be the CEO?’ process at Nike, And eventually I took my name out of the hat for a bunch of different reasons. But I still remember I met with a CEO at Coca-Cola,

and he said to me, ‘Your life will be 24/7.’ Yes. Especially in a global company. Think about it. There’s something going on in the world always, whether it’s geopolitical, external, or internal, there’s always something going on. And that was not the only reason, but one of the several reasons why I ended up leaving. And so, fast-forward to today, my life is 24/7. We had a couple of issues this weekend that you’re dealing with. And so when I kind of buried my head when you asked the question is ’cause I hadn’t really thought about it, but I’ll tell you, I can’t imagine it. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I’m getting photos from Joe skiing in Kitzbühel, or—

CHATMAN: Right. For a class, actually, he told me.

HILL: Yeah, he plays it off.

CHATMAN: For a class.

HILL: ‘I got to go to Copenhagen for a class.’ I’m like—

CHATMAN: Right, right right.

HILL: So if I had one week, for sure it would be first, family and friends. I’d probably let Joe in on it. It would be in the mountains. It would probably be the Dolomites in Italy. Oh, it’s my favorite place on earth.

CHATMAN: I’m going there in June. 

HILL: Are you? You’re going to love it.

CHATMAN: Yeah. Second time. 

HILL: Isn’t it spectacular?

CHATMAN: It’s spectacular. 

HILL: So I would probably pick wintertime. We love to ski. But I could go in the summer as well if it didn’t work out that one week. I could do either summer or fall, Or winter. So that’s what I would do.

CHATMAN: Nice. Nice. Great. All right. Well, let’s thank Elliot for this part, and then we got some great questions. Fantastic. 

WILSON: This might be the hard part, actually. That might have been the easy one. you mentioned that you played baseball, and you’re first baseman, number 41. So Biggie, let’s see how well you field these, all right? Um, first one, you know, it was interesting last year in 2024, or not two years ago, we were talking a lot about Nike in marketing class, and now I’ve heard from the first years and even second years that Nike continues to be a company in a lot of case studies. So when people are trying to read your mind and look at old case studies and maybe think about what’s coming next, for you, you know, as a leader of Nike, plus also as a person, how do you think about making that next move and handle the decision-making process when you know the whole world’s watching and everyone’s trying to guess what’s happening next?

HILL: Well, first of all, you, you can’t worry about the external world and what everybody’s—you know, everybody, quote, “watching,” and what everybody’s saying. And, you know, I’m sure you’ve heard this before: don’t read the newspaper clippings. And that’s real. Like, I didn’t buy into the hype when I came. I’m not buying into the hype right now. It’s, you know, because where business is. I think what you have to do to answer your question is, I think it keeps coming back to why are you here and what do you exist to do? And put the—literally, and I mean this—put your athlete or your consumer, this is for you to think about, at the center of every decision you make. Think about some of your small group meetings that you have. How many people walk in with their own personal agenda? How many people walk in with their own egos? How many people walk in that are competitive, so it’s a me versus a you thing, versus, ‘No, wait, hold on. What are we trying to solve?’ And in our case, we’re a consumer products company. I keep coming back to we’re here to serve the runner, the basketballer, the footballer, the golfer, the tennis athlete. Put them at the center of the decision and make the decision for them because the moment we take them for granted is the moment they leave us. And so No. 1, that’s one of the methods that I keep challenging my team on. No. 2, I am an inclusive leader. I like to hear voices, but you have to have the clarity about who gets to decide and who’s advising. And so I’m trying to be a better leader at saying, ‘Hey, I need the four of you to discuss.’ I need you to be the D. I need you three to be the advisor. Come to me with a recommendation. But I think there’s a level of clarity there. So I’m pretty inclusive. And again, I think ultimately you have to make a decision for the consumer, the athlete, take in all of the different perspectives, and then ultimately you have to make the decision for that consumer. And I believe if you’re making the right decisions time and time again for the consumer, the shareholders are ultimately going to get taken care of. It’s taking longer than they want, but we will get there, and that’s where you just have to stay confident, and you have to stay convicted, and you have to keep moving forward.

WILSON: So this is another one about business strategy as well. Nike operates in a global context. You’ve also had experience working internationally in Europe and out of Amsterdam, plus also in the U.S. for some time. This question comes from a Spieker undergrad student. They asked, ‘Can you share an example of where international trends and strategies have worked in the U.S. but maybe failed abroad or vice versa, and what did you learn from that?’ And then there would be a follow-on question too of, ‘How do you decide where to standardize the brand globally versus localizing and being specific and being in specific markets?’ Yeah. 

HILL: That is a great—especially the second part of the question, I think a lot of companies,

and especially, especially consumer products companies are. … There was a moment when globalization allowed companies, I’m going to talk now broad strokes here, to centralize for efficiency and effectiveness. And it wasn’t just globalization from a geopolitical perspective, but there was a belief that because of social media, we were all going to want to be more alike. And I think that worked for a period of time. And I, because I’ve lived through when we were decentralized, when I was living in Europe in the late ’90s, early 2000s, I lived through the centralization. I missed the hypercentralization when I was gone. But I do think, to answer the question specifically, great brands in the future will have a core of what they want their product to stand for globally with a percent, and I’m not going to throw a number out that is created locally, whether it is color, material, fit, you know, that is going to drive it. Same thing with stories. There’s going to be an overarching marketing campaign that’s going to be executed globally, and then ultimately, I think from a supply chain, great brands in the future are going to be able to respond in a more regional way because that’ll drive revenue and margin as well. And so, this idea of global to local, I think, is real. It’s here to stay. And it’s something that we’re certainly spending a lot of time on. In terms of trends, we have trends every single week that sort of start in other parts of the world, and you try to hop on and drive. It’s not a trend, it’s a sport. But I think the biggest move we ever made, you know, we were an American company that didn’t get behind the game of football or soccer. And is that a trend? No, that’s a culture. But certainly it happened outside of the United States. It wasn’t core to who we were, but us forcing ourselves at one time to go, ‘OK, we’re going all in on the game of football or soccer,’ I think has helped shape this company long term. And so, I try not to get too caught up on the trends that come and go, and I try to get caught up on what are the long-term strategic bets that we need to be making that are going to help drive shareholder value, and certainly that would be one that I would point to that says that without question was a huge strategic move for us to help globalize our brand around the world.

WILSON: Yeah. I mean, tricky times where you have to navigate a lot of different consumer preferences and expectations. So, you know, I think that thought of long-term strategy versus short-term strategy, especially being a publicly traded company, is real. And that kind of plays into this next question. So you’re doing well, 41. So this comes from Rory, an evening & weekend graduating here in a couple of months. Over the years, what experiences have shaped your judgment as a leader, especially in managing or balancing the short-term performance and long-term brand and strategy as a CEO?

HILL: Well, I’ll start, I’ll start first with my own sort of personal values. I think, you know, part of why I ended up at Nike and stayed so long is because I think what Nike believed in lined up with what I believed in as a human being around human performance and potential, around commitment to the athlete, being honest and direct, a sense of integrity, a sense of irreverence and fun and playfulness. You know, all those things are things that I value. And so even to this day, those things have helped sort of without question, shape how I approach my leadership style, making decisions. And again, I think the message is probably less about me, it’s more about you. And I think your chances of success in life, I was fortunate. I picked sport, and it was a place I loved. I found a company called Nike that was about to go on a growth trajectory. I got to grow with it. It was a place that I fell in love with. What they believed in, I believed in, so it became more than a job. It became personal for me. And so, all of that sort of helped shape who I am as a leader and how I make decisions. And you try not to, you don’t venture off course if you’re that committed. So anyway.

WILSON: I love that. I mean, you definitely have a North Star that you’re always working toward.

HILL: And integrity, I’m going to tell you right now, it seems so simplistic. Your integrity, what do you do when no one’s looking? What decisions will you make when no one is looking? I think that integrity will define you as an individual. It defines an organization. What does an organization do when the watchdog’s not on you? Are you making the right decisions? And if we can say yes to those, then I think you can hold your head up high and every single day when you walk out of the door at the office.

WILSON: I love that. And I think I also want to kind of get into your own psyche a little bit,

because I think we’re all looking for inspiration and understanding. How do we work through the world? What are going to be our priorities? Yeah. What are our values? I think one of the things that’s always stuck with me, has been your focus and also Gina’s focus on what your priorities are, how you prioritize your life. Can you walk us through those early days where you were thinking about, ‘Hey, work’s getting crazy.’ You have my cousins. They were young kids at the time. I was probably around, you know. How did you think about where to prioritize life and how to focus it, and what did you create, and what was the exercise you went through to make that happen? 

HILL: I distinctly remember, I was at a crossroads, and roughly age, late 30s. Wife, kids, job, increasing responsibility, pressure. How do I keep it all going? And … I read a book by chance. The guy I was working with in HR handed me a book. It was a book called Halftime. I mean, it’s pretty … a warning. It’s a little religious, but I didn’t know that when he—but the point of the book is, if you think about sport, everybody, there’s usually a first half and a second half, and the first half of your life, and you’re in halftime, and then you’re about to come out and you’re going to play the second half, and how do you want to play the second half of your life? And first half’s about acquisition, job, title, wife, kids, career, blah, blah, blah, a house. And then the second half is, OK, you had all these experiences, and how do you use those to drive your life forward? And so out of that book, I sat down, and I created a mission statement for myself. We do it for our jobs or, or excuse me, our our businesses and our functions or our businesses that we are running. Why not do it for ourselves? So I wrote a mission statement for myself. I prioritized, and I have made four quadrants, and one of them was family, one of them was friends, and I’m just going to use this as an example. Think about your list of family. If I asked you to put your list of family, your list could be that long. You don’t have that much time. So I literally made the list, and it was hard to do. No, I’m going to draw the line here. Friends, think about how many friends you have. The list went to here. I drew a line. My own personal self-growth, I had a list, et cetera. And then I went back and I made commitments to those, which included, you know, I’m going to be home for dinner every night or whatever. And so then I went so far then I built it into my calendar. I sat with my admin, and she helped me build it into the calendar, and I’ll give you a couple of examples. The beginning of the school year, Gina would come and say, ‘Here’s when PTA is.’ My dad wasn’t around growing up, so I was going to be at PTA, or parent-teacher conferences or what. We built it in the calendar. So the point of all that for you, what’s your North Star as a person? As a person, as a human being? Mine, I want to lead a relevant and impactful life, and then I got to define what is relevance and impact and how do I create that, and I did it in four quadrants, and then what’s my commitment to those individuals, and then I built it into my calendar. And I literally still live by that to this day, and it’s helped me kind of keep things in balance and prioritize my life.

WILSON: I hope that was helpful. Did you guys take notes? Yeah. 

CHATMAN: I still need to follow that advice, but you’re lucky you made that list.

WILSON: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No kidding. Yeah.

HILL: He did. 

WILSON: Yeah. None of my own doing. 

CHATMAN: We’re lucky you made that list, also.

WILSON: With that being said, there is more than we’ve gone through. A few questions, so we’re playing an inning that has a lot of outs, you know. With that being said, we’re on our last question here. Looking back over your career, what has been or what was your one ‘Just Do It’ moment? Air quotes. What was the risky or riskiest decision that you made and you just went for it? What did that look like? Maybe walk us through that. And that came from Suvir, so you can find him afterward and, you know, say thanks.

HILL: You know, it’s funny. There are going to be moments in your career when the stakes are the highest that you’ve ever felt it. And I look back on some of those, and I was stressed, and I’m making a decision. I won’t bore you with those specifics, but I have a bunch of examples going through my head, and you’re like, ‘What? Wow, it’ll never get harder than this.’ And it always does. So I guess the point for you is don’t stress out on those moments. Accept them for what they are. Level head, be thoughtful, think about your values, think about the company’s mission, their vision. What do they stand for when you’re making those decisions? Saying yes to being the CEO was without question that moment. You know, I still remember I hung up the phone and I said to Gina, ‘You won’t believe this, but I’m going back to be the CEO.’ And it was and has been an incredibly fast-paced 18 months. I’m incredibly honored to be able to do this role. It is full of pressure and time commitment. But I’d say—I know that seems so simplistic, but that would be the biggest decision I ever made, where I just, just do it. Didn’t spend a lot of time diving in. trying to understand where the business was before I said yes. I had a feeling and a gut feel, and I knew the place, and I cared about the place. And sometimes you get asked, and you have a choice to make, and I said yes, so here we are.

CHATMAN: Amazing. 

WILSON: I love that.

HILL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

WILSON: Well, you know, honestly, I think you’re going to close it up, right? So I have no more questions from my end, but I just want to say thank you.

HILL: Yeah. Yeah.

CHATMAN: And it doesn’t get better than that. So thank you so much for coming and sharing with our amazing future leaders your insights and your career path. You are an inspiration to all of us, and we really appreciate you taking the time out of your incredibly busy schedule to share some insights with us. Yeah. Thank you again. 

HILL: No, I appreciate it. I, you know, to go back to relevance and impact very quickly, one of the things that is incredibly important to not only me, but to Gina, my wife, is it is education. It’s giving back to either institutions or moments like this. And when Joe asked me to do this, you have to say yes, right? There’s the filter at work, right? And so, it’s something that we had committed to in that list, and so we’re, here we are. It is certainly a privilege and an honor to be here. Hopefully, all of you are walking out with at least one or two things to think about. But I will say this: Sitting here, I’m incredibly, incredibly envious of all of you. To think about the journey that you’re about to go on and the potential that sits in this room. The potential to change your life, your family’s life, your friend’s life, to change the world. So again, I think to all of you, I’ll just end with the question: Just do it. Alright?