CEO John Donahoe is departing Nike after a tumultuous four years on the firm. He’s being changed by Elliott Hill, who will step in as president and chief govt on October 14.
Hill is a comparatively unknown title to the general public, and it’s troublesome to discover a photograph of him on-line. (As of Donahoe’s firing, Hill didn’t even seem on the favored media database Getty Photos.) However to some Nike workers, he’s not solely acknowledged; he’s honored. In conversations with three former Nike workers, every with over a decade of expertise on the firm, the reward of Hill was unanimous.
Revered as each succesful and courteous, with an unparalleled understanding of world markets, he’s often called the man who was presupposed to get the job when Donahoe was employed in 2020.
“Elliot may be very revered,” says a former senior-level worker. “Every time anybody questions, who might fill Donahoe’s house? His is [still] at all times the primary title.”
With the announcement of Hill’s appointment, I hear Nike workers are “jubilant.” Many left work early on Thursday to rejoice and decompress.
The origins of Elliott Hill
A graduate of Texas Christian College and a former athletic coach for the Dallas Cowboys, Hill arrived at Nike out of the NFL as an intern in attire gross sales in 1988. Over the subsequent three a long time, he climbed to develop into president of shopper and market, the place he oversaw Nike’s $39 billion finances. Round 2020, sources inform me that Hill appeared like the apparent option to succeed Mark Parker as the corporate’s CEO.
However when Donahoe—a finances-first govt hailing from eBay after expertise at Bain—was appointed as an alternative, it was seen as an insult by some not simply to Hill but additionally to Nike’s custom of selling from inside and counting on the expertise of senior group members to steer the ship by way of robust instances. Insiders noticed this oversight, and the selection of the outsider Donahoe, as a private slight to a coworker, and a key motive they need to depart Nike. Following Donahoe’s appointment, the corporate let go of 700 folks in a reorganization, and lots of C-suite members who weren’t let go left on their very own—together with Hill.
“[Hill] was the appropriate man. He was seasoned all the best way for it. It was an enormous letdown,” says a former worker who spent 20-plus years at Nike. “His C-suite cohorts leaving in July 2020 made it okay for the remainder of us to go, too.”
As I reported in our Summer cover story, Donahoe reorganized virtually each facet of Nike’s retail and innovation technique, slicing down its retail companions, and organizing product innovation beneath buckets of gender moderately than sport. Donahoe’s most profitable transfer was releasing new colorways of retro silhouettes, which got here at a price of the corporate’s popularity with sneakerheads.
Nike additionally misplaced the hard-core athlete shopper: specifically, the operating market that launched the model within the first place. Brooks overtook it because the top-selling operating shoe model in 2022. These industrial failures—mixed with a number of waves of layoffs—noticed Donahoe’s tenure decimate Nike’s deep bench of skilled workers. That tenure ended with a failed Hail Mary comeback at the 2024 Olympics—for which Nike reportedly spent an unprecedented advertising sum, in accordance to Bloomberg.
“Elliott Hill is without doubt one of the most excellent C-suite executives I’ve ever labored with,” says Scott Touidjine-Williams, the previous senior world inventive director of the Olympics at Nike who left in 2022, in an electronic mail. Touidjine-Williams says that Hill was a educated chief who listened to a group that revered him, with an inspiring strategy to each DEI and innovation (regardless of being grounded in gross sales). “When it got here to the Olympics work I used to be driving, he was at all times curious and engaged about what was coming down the pipeline. I have no idea anybody who doesn’t converse extremely of Elliott.”
Bringing Hill again from Texas
Hill’s compensation package deal features a wage of $1.5 million per yr, with a goal annual bonus of 200% of that, together with inventory and a pair of money grants totaling $7 million.
Sources inform me that Hill, after leaving Portland to return to his hometown of Austin, appeared to have curiosity in returning to Oregon or to Nike. A constitution member of the Austin Moontowers—a leisure baseball membership, he was dwelling “the last word sabbatical,” based on a supply. However each present and former Nike workers, who nonetheless meet and gossip concerning the firm usually, have been floating his title as a possible substitute for Donahoe—as far-fetched as which will have appeared till this second.
As just lately as three weeks in the past, one other supply heard that Hill had “butt dialed” an outdated colleague, and when the 2 received to speaking, Hill denied he had any curiosity in going again.
“I used to be like, that put a nail in that rumor now,” the supply says with fun.
Among the many challenges for Hill is that he takes over Nike simply months after its single-worst trading day in history, with out as a lot of the skilled help construction that had been in place when he left in 2020—and that he’ll now want to assist flip issues round.
“It’s going to be a brutal, uphill battle for a few years,” the supply says. “And understanding that Elliott comes from the old-school world (he was there 30 years!) and never having a few of these folks that he relied on, his levers are form of gone.”
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