
She learned brand storytelling at Patagonia, performance discipline at DoorDash and public-company theater at Klaviyo. Now Superside's Chief Customer Officer is trying to make creative work faster without sanding away the human judgment that makes it worth seeing.

Across Patagonia, Spindrift, Merrell, Simms and now M72, Walker has kept returning to one useful question: does the brand's story match what the organization actually does?
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.