converse
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Scott Uzzell and the business of being chosen
From a teenage telephone venture to Converse, Nike and Helen of Troy, Scott Uzzell has built a career around the choices people make about everyday products. His latest assignment puts that experience to work across a houseful of brands.
Christine Su and the problem with being cool
Before she became a co-founder of The Lede Company, Christine Su worked inside the worlds of sneakers, streetwear and global brands. Her question for clients now is deceptively simple: what, exactly, do you want all that attention to do?
Rodney Rambo Made Listening the Loudest Move at Converse
For more than a decade, Rodney Rambo has helped a century-old sneaker stay in the present tense. His method is unusually quiet for marketing: protect the icon, listen to the people wearing it, and know when the comments have become a chorus.
Patricia Pino
Patricia Pino is a long-tenured brand marketing leader at Converse, the Nike-owned footwear icon behind the Chuck Taylor All Star. Based in Boston, she has spent more than 15 years inside the brand, rising through roles in brand planning, operations, and global brand marketing to become Head of Brand Planning, Global and Chief of Staff to the CMO. A University of New Hampshire marketing graduate, she is known as a consumer-led, process-driven strategist who connects the culture of sneakers with the discipline of running a global brand.
Nicole Graham
Nicole Hubbard Graham is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Nike, Inc., leading global brand storytelling across Nike, Jordan and Converse. A Nike veteran of roughly 18 years who rose from director of women's marketing to VP of global categories and consumer direct brand marketing, she left in 2021 to co-found the creative agency Adopt, then returned as CMO in January 2024. She is the architect of Nike's marketing reset, championing an 'athletes over algorithms' philosophy that produced the 2024 Paris Olympics comeback push and the 2025 Super Bowl 'So Win' brand anthem, Nike's first Super Bowl ad in 27 years.
Karl Strovink
Karl Strovink is the CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee, the Oakland-born specialty roaster now owned by Nestlé. A Berkeley native with an MBA from MIT Sloan, he arrived in 2019 from a twelve-year run at Converse and has spent his tenure pushing Blue Bottle toward oat milk by default, instant espresso, zero-waste cafés, and aggressive expansion across Asia, all while protecting the brand's small-batch identity inside a thirty-billion-dollar coffee parent.