Class Act

Engineering Like Old Times

About a year ago I started receiving phone calls from area codes I hadn’t heard from in years.

I left Oregon in 2011 and Nike, Inc in 2013. I couldn’t have hoped for a better 16 years with a single company so it was tough to leave the nest. My wife had a great opportunity in NYC and we wanted to grow, so off we went.

Like most alumni it took a little time to allow myself to wear ‘competitor’ product. The athletic footwear industry is extremely competitive so the brands you wear become the friends you keep.

Of course, a few paychecks here and there and your tunnel vision disappears. As the shoe wall of our apartment expanded beyond Nike, Inc, so did my growth as a creative, as a business mind and as a friend. Living on the ‘outside’ of Nike, Inc comes with the realization that almost every other brand on the planet has enough alumni to start an affinity group.

My personal and business social media feeds were a mix of Nike, Nike alumni and never-been-Nike so I tried to remain nondenominational as I floated from project to project. Whether I was working with startups in Soho or commuting to Calabasas, I tried to keep my naturally low-profile lower.

But folks knew.

So I was pleasantly surprised when the conversations started popping up about a little extra work with Converse. My last Inc boss at Cole Haan, Phil Russo, reached out with Andrea Correani, a powerful mentor from my Tokyo and NSW days.

While I shared an alumni status with Phil, the AC connection was a question mark. AC was influential in allowing me to succeed in NSW as a creative that drove the business agenda while wading through an evolving leadership paradigm. While the folks at the top — AC, Phil Dickinson and Andreas Harlow — sorted out the ugliness at the top, I focused on giving our design team the room to create Roshe Runs and 3-Year line plans. We transformed a $2B business in 9 months. Or as AC put it, “We changed the engines on a 747 midflight.”

Then I left.

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