footwear
(15)
Dave Schneider
Dave Schneider is Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Red Wing Shoe Company, the family-owned, Minnesota-based maker of iconic American work boots founded in 1905. He leads the company's global marketing practice, spanning brand management, digital and traditional communications, ecommerce, retail experience, brand protection, and corporate communications, reporting directly to the CEO. After years in senior roles at leading agencies including Digitas, Tribal DDB, and BBDO, he brought an agency creative sensibility to an operator's job, championing a marketing model that balances long-term brand equity with performance-driven revenue while putting the skilled-trades workers who wear the boots at the center of the brand's story.
Dimitrios Lessen
Dimitrios "Jimmy" Lessen is the Chief Merchandising Officer of SNIPES USA, appointed in February 2024. A 30-year veteran of the sneaker business, he built his career at Foot Locker in Europe and North America, running product strategy, buying, assortment planning and e-commerce before joining the German-founded, community-first streetwear retailer to lead its merchandising in the United States.
Erin Daley
Erin Daley is the Chief Marketing Officer of Ariat International, the Union City, California maker of performance footwear and apparel for riders, ranchers, and outdoor athletes. A brand builder who started on Crest Whitestrips at Procter & Gamble and later ran marketing as SVP & CMO at e.l.f. Cosmetics during its high-growth years, she now leads brand and growth for a company doing roughly $420M in revenue with about 1,600 employees. She holds an MBA from Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, where she has taught and coached marketing students since 2015.
Greg White
Greg White is a brand and marketing strategist at On, the Swiss performance running company, where he leads brand strategy for the Americas out of Portland, Oregon. A former journalist turned ad strategist, he built his craft across Wieden + Kennedy offices in Portland, Tokyo, and Amsterdam and then at 72andSunny, working on brands including Nike, Instagram, and Corona before joining one of the fastest-growing names in sportswear.
Jack J. Gindi
Jack J. Gindi is EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Gina Group, the privately held New York fashion, lifestyle and branding company founded in 1985 that designs, licenses, manufactures and distributes products across hosiery, footwear, handbags, small leather goods, fashion accessories, athletic and wellness, gourmet foods and, since 2025, pet. He joined the company while still an undergraduate at Baruch College and has spent more than thirty years there, where he now runs brand and business acquisitions, strategic planning and general marketing. He is the executive whose name appears on Gina's licensing announcements, from K-Swiss legwear and Laundry by Shelli Segal to the launch of the company's pet division, and he works from Gina's showrooms at 10 West 33rd Street in Manhattan. Outside the office he is a father of five, an avid athlete, and an active supporter of public affairs and charitable causes.
Rodney Rambo
Rodney Rambo is the Chief Marketing Officer of Converse Global, where he steers worldwide marketing for one of the most recognizable footwear brands on the planet. A graduate of Northern Arizona University with a background in speech communication, he built his career across action-sports and lifestyle labels including Volcom and Vans before joining Converse in 2012. Over more than a decade at Converse he has moved from Global Marketing Director to VP of North America Brand Marketing to CMO, championing a marketing philosophy built on listening to fans and treating consumers as co-creators. His teams have kept the century-old Chuck Taylor relevant to new generations, most visibly by reviving the knee-high XXHi sneaker in 2024 after tracking years of fan demand on social media.
Paul Nugent
Paul Nugent is Chief Marketing Officer at Peter Millar, the Raleigh-based luxury sportswear and golf apparel brand owned by Richemont. A British-trained brand marketer, he has spent more than two decades building sports and lifestyle brands, most recently as CMO of Crocs-owned HEYDUDE, where he steered high-profile campaigns with Sydney Sweeney and Travis Hunter. Before that he led global brand marketing at Under Armour and reshaped the football heritage of Umbro, with earlier stops at ellesse and Codemasters. He joined Richemont's Peter Millar in 2025.
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.
Nicks Ericsson
Nicks Ericsson is the Chief Marketing Officer of KEEN Footwear, the Portland-based outdoor shoe company, a role he took on in 2024. A Swedish-trained brand marketer with more than 20 years across fashion, sport, and footwear, he spent over a decade at UGG, where he built the brand's first circular-economy program and pushed its regenerative-agriculture pledge across a million acres of farmland. Earlier he helped scale premium labels including J.Lindeberg and Justin Timberlake's William Rast, and he co-founded The AND Agency to advise companies on responsible brand and sustainability strategy. His stated aim at KEEN is to make it 'the most trusted brand in the world' through consistency and transparency rather than moonshot promises.
Vicki O'Donnell
Vicki O'Donnell is the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Construction Officer of Shoe Show, Inc., the family-owned footwear chain based in Concord, North Carolina. In more than three decades with the company she has helped grow the private, low-key retailer into one of the largest shoe store chains in the United States, and led its long-overdue debut on social media and modern digital marketing.
Wendy Kula
Wendy Kula is a sports and consumer-brand marketing executive who was named Chief Marketing Officer of Saucony in May 2026. A former Stanford lacrosse player with more than two decades in the industry, she most recently served as vice president of women's brand marketing for North America at Nike, where she led the brand's Super Bowl return with the 'So Win' campaign and the launch of A'ja Wilson's signature shoe. Before Nike she built relevance for American Eagle's Aerie and scaled MISSION, the cooling-technology company co-founded by Serena Williams and Dwyane Wade. At Saucony she oversees global brand marketing, digital, creative, and go-to-market strategy across performance and lifestyle running.
Dan Leahy
Dan Leahy is the co-founder and CEO of MakerSights, a San Francisco consumer-insights platform that helps apparel, footwear, and accessories brands decide what to make before they make it. His pitch is blunt: the fashion industry still builds product the way it did in the 1980s, guessing at what shoppers want and burning through unsold inventory in the process. MakerSights collects consumer feedback at scale and ties it to real sales data so brands like Ralph Lauren, New Balance, Everlane, and Madewell can produce less waste and more of what people actually buy. Before MakerSights, Leahy founded Savored, a restaurant yield-management startup acquired by Groupon, and cut his teeth in finance at Silver Lake and Brown Brothers Harriman. A Maine kid who once mailed handwritten letters to NBA stars begging for autographs, he built a career on the same stubborn premise: ask enough people for what you want, and enough of them say yes.
Alexa Buckley
Alexa Buckley is the co-founder and co-CEO of Margaux, the New York footwear label she started at 22 with her Harvard roommate Sarah Pierson. Margaux fixes a problem most brands ignore - fit - by offering made-to-order shoes in three widths and an extended size run, handmade in Spain and sold direct to consumers. The pitch grew out of the 'shoe shuffle' the two women watched office workers perform: pretty heels in a bag, ugly commuter flats on their feet. Buckley has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and has built Margaux into a brand that has raised millions across Seed through Series B rounds.
Joe Vernachio
Joe Vernachio is the CEO of Allbirds, the once high-flying wool-shoe brand he is now trying to put back on its feet. A 30-plus year outdoor and athletic industry veteran who started as a product manager at Chouinard Equipment and has since steered product at Patagonia, Nike, Roots, Spyder, The North Face and Mountain Hardwear, he took the top job at Allbirds in March 2024 after three years as COO. He is part product geek, part operator, and an Everest aspirant who once spent a month getting through the Khumbu Icefall.
Mandy Cabot
Mandy Cabot co-founded Dansko in 1990 from the back of a station wagon and built it into a $140M comfort footwear empire - then gave the whole company to her employees. Now she's running Silk Grass Farms in Belize, a vertically integrated agribusiness sitting atop 24,500 acres of protected rainforest. Chapter three of an already remarkable life.