nike
(22)
Cyntia Leo Knows Attention Must Be Earned
From a Broadway seat in childhood to the C-suite at Knix, Leo built a career by treating audiences as participants - and attention as something a brand has to deserve.
Caitlin Sargent Is Teaching a 40-Year-Old Icon New Moves
The Jordan Brand CMO has spent two decades learning how Nike moves. Her current brief is trickier: carry an icon's history forward without trapping it in amber.
Ian Bertrand has spent a career turning stores into stories
After nearly three decades building global brands, the longtime Nike marketer and youth coach has arrived at CCM Hockey with a practical idea: make heritage useful to the next player who steps onto the ice.
The Ad Agency That Sold Rebellion - Then Refused to Sell Itself
Wieden+Kennedy taught Nike to say three words and built a global business around protecting the conditions that made them possible. Four decades later, independence remains both its sales pitch and its hardest assignment.
The Sneaker Shop That Runs Its Own Radio Station
How a single Baltimore shoe store became a 250-location fixture of American sneaker culture - and why it plays its own soundtrack.
Dennis Seydel
Dennis Seydel is the Chief Marketing Officer of The North Face, appointed in January 2025 after joining the outdoor brand in 2023 to lead global brand management. A marketing executive who spent 17 years building brands at Nike, he went on to run marketing at YouTube Music and Uber Eats, serve as Chief Brand Officer at healthcare-apparel disruptor FIGS, and lead North America marketing and communications at Tommy Hilfiger. He is known for working at the intersection of culture, sport, and consumer storytelling.
Iris Yen
Iris Yen is the Chief Marketing Officer of Cupshe, the California-founded swimwear and beachwear brand that grew from a single-category bet into a global direct-to-consumer business with roughly $420 million in annual revenue. She joined in February 2025 after a run through some of the loudest brand-building rooms in the business: Head of Media, Content and Partnerships at Nike; VP and Head of Media, Strategy and Audiences at Red Bull; VP and Head of Communications at GUESS?, Inc.; VP of Communications at American Eagle Outfitters; and VP of Global Marketing and PR at Quiksilver. She started in music, running marketing and PR at Universal Records in the early 2000s, and has built campaigns around names including Britney Spears, Nelly, Kelly Slater, Tony Hawk and Torah Bright. A Washington University in St. Louis graduate who studied anthropology alongside marketing, Yen tends to treat brands as cultures rather than catalogs - a habit visible in Cupshe's 10th-anniversary work, its fourth Miami Swim Week runway show, and its 2026 Casa del Sol collaboration with Jessie James Decker.
Jenny Campbell
Jenny Campbell is a Los Angeles-based brand, performance and growth marketing executive who has spent more than two decades moving between advertising agencies and the brands they serve. She began at Wieden+Kennedy, spent over seven years at Nike working across Nike Women's, brand innovation and the Nike+ ecosystem as senior global brand director, then became managing director at 72andSunny, where clients included adidas, Google, Starbucks, Uber and eBay. In September 2018 she joined Tinder as chief marketing officer, and in November 2020 Kate Spade New York named her CMO with a brief spanning brand marketing, direct-to-consumer engagement and digital. She later served as interim head of creative at Athleta and is currently interim chief marketing officer at Frank & Eileen, the woman-owned, B Corp-certified apparel brand in downtown Los Angeles. A Morehead-Cain Scholar and 1995 journalism graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, she has served on the board of MAKERS and mentors young women entering the industry.
JD Finish Line
JD Finish Line is the North American athletic footwear and apparel arm of UK-based JD Sports Fashion plc. Founded in Indianapolis in 1976 and built into a national sneaker chain under the Finish Line name, the business was acquired by JD Sports in 2018 for about $558 million. It sells premium multi-branded athletic footwear, apparel and accessories through Finish Line stores, Finish Line shop-in-shops inside more than 450 Macy's department stores, a growing fleet of JD-branded stores, and the finishline.com e-commerce platform. As of 2025 JD Sports is retiring the standalone Finish Line mall banner in favor of the JD nameplate while keeping the Finish Line brand alive inside Macy's.
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is the world's largest athletic footwear and apparel company, headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon. Founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and his former runner Phil Knight, it was renamed Nike in 1971 after the Greek goddess of victory. Nike designs, markets and sells footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories under the Nike, Jordan and Converse brands, reaching consumers through wholesale partners and a growing direct-to-consumer business of retail stores, apps and Nike.com. With roughly $46.3 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue and about 80,000 employees, Nike sits at the center of global sport culture, backed by decades of athlete endorsements, the Swoosh logo and the 'Just Do It' slogan.
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.
Noriko Morimoto
Noriko Morimoto is the Chief Marketing Officer of Title Nine, the Emeryville-based women's activewear brand founded in 1989. A Bay Area native who cut her teeth building brands at Burton Snowboards, Gap, Zipcar, NatureBox and Boosted Boards, she has spent a career pointing well-known consumer names in the direction of growth and turnaround. She pairs a UC Berkeley undergraduate degree with an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and specializes in brand platform development, consumer acquisition and digital-plus-offline engagement.
Rob Kent
Rob Kent is Head of Marketing (CMO) at Vuori, the Carlsbad, California performance-apparel brand valued at around $5.5 billion. A Cannes Grand Prix-winning brand and creative leader with roughly two decades in the business, he spent a decade running Nike's global brand marketing work at the agency R/GA before crossing over to lead marketing for one of the fastest-growing names in activewear. His career runs from British editorial publishing through blue-chip tech clients to some of Nike's most talked-about brand work.
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.
Vanessa Wallace
Vanessa Wallace is the Chief Marketing Officer of GLD, the Miami-based lifestyle jewelry brand known for its ties to sport, music and street culture. A former CMO of Savage X Fenty and a 19-year Nike veteran who led Jordan Brand marketing in North America, Wallace built a career on storytelling, cultural relevance and championing overlooked communities. She joined GLD's board in August 2025 and stepped into the CMO seat in early 2026.
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.
Novelship
Novelship is a Singapore-based online marketplace for buying and selling authentic sneakers, streetwear, apparel and collectibles across Asia-Pacific. Founded in 2018, it connects buyers and sellers through a bid-and-ask model, verifies every item in-house before it ships, and has grown into one of the region's largest platforms for limited-edition drops from brands like Nike, Jordan, Adidas, New Balance and ASICS.
Aaron Heiser
Aaron Heiser is the first-ever Chief Executive Officer of Malbon Golf, the Santa Monica streetwear-meets-golf brand founded by Stephen and Erica Malbon. Appointed in October 2024, he runs day-to-day operations while the founders steer creative as co-Chief Creative Officers. Heiser arrived after roughly 18 years at Nike, where he ran retail across Western Europe and Greater China before serving as Global VP of Apparel, Accessories and Licensing. A Cornell graduate and former varsity wrestler, he has built a career relocating across Amsterdam, Shanghai and Oregon, and now leads Malbon as it pushes toward roughly $100 million in revenue and deeper international expansion.
Deven Hurt
Deven Hurt is the co-founder and CEO of PredictionStrike, a New York based platform he calls a stock market for sports fans, where users buy and sell virtual shares of NBA and NFL players whose prices move on real on-field performance. A Harvard College bioengineer turned Harvard Law graduate, he ran cybersecurity work touching Nike and the NBA before building the company with best friend Brad Chabra in 2018. He raised a $10M Series A led by Bullpen Capital, grew the platform past 200,000 users and $100M in transactions, and reached per-user profitability in late 2024.
Adrienne Lofton
Adrienne Lofton is the Global Vice President of Product & Integrated Consumer Marketing for Google's Platforms & Devices Division, where she leads end-to-end marketing for the Pixel ecosystem and drives activation across Android, Chromebook, Chrome Browser, Google Play, and Google Health & Home. A Howard University graduate and Kellogg MBA, she built her career on brand authenticity — from multicultural marketing at Target, to CMO of Dockers at Levi's, to Senior VP of Global Brand Marketing at Under Armour, to VP Head of North America Marketing at Nike. An Ad Age Brand Genius award winner, Adweek Most Powerful Women in Sports honoree, and board director at Alaska Air Group, Lofton is one of the most recognized voices at the intersection of sports, culture, and consumer marketing.
Jonathan Johnsongriffin
Jonathan Johnsongriffin is VP of Global Brand & Creative at Google, where he leads the Global Brand Studio's creative strategy. A veteran of Nike's most iconic campaigns - including 'You Can't Stop Us' and 'Just Do It Crazy Dreams' - he spent nearly five years shaping Nike's global brand narrative before joining Google in January 2023. Co-founder of the Serena Williams Design Crew program, jury member at Cannes Lions 2023 and 2024, and board trustee at Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Johnsongriffin blends industrial design roots with cultural storytelling at the intersection of sport, technology, and purpose.
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.