Our Journey

Over beers and a basket of tater tots, Darcy Winslow and Ellen Schmidt-Devlin found themselves talking not about their own long Nike careers, but about the brilliant women whose stories had never been told. Darcy recalled the quiet pioneers who pushed sustainability and gender equity into Nike’s DNA, while Ellen remembered product creators and marketers across Asia who built the brand’s global reach without ever appearing in headlines. As they swapped names and moments—designers insisting “women are not small men,” managers holding teams together through cultural and market shifts—they began to picture an unwritten history of women whose ingenuity, courage, and persistence helped shape Nike’s legacy.

The Visionaries

The Stories

The Historian

The Genuis

We’re thrilled to add Janet Champ to the team because of her singular creative genius—so much so that Darcy and Ellen traveled to the Oregon coast to recruit her in person. Janet, the celebrated force behind Nike’s groundbreaking “If You Let Me Play” campaign and the first female copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy, co-concepted the Women’s Fitness and Sports Category for W+K and Nike, transforming how women were portrayed in sports advertising. Now, she has revised the Nike Maxims so they speak more directly and powerfully to women, bringing her trailblazing voice to the language that defines what Nike stands for.

Next, we invited Nike’s former historian, Scott Reames, to join the team—sealing the deal over beer and Mexican food. Scott served as Nike’s first official corporate historian for 17 years, a role he conceived and proposed to Phil Knight, and spent nearly three decades at the company expanding its historical archive, conducting hundreds of interviews with employees and athletes, and contributing research to Shoe Dog. As our historical advisor, he ensures accuracy, context, and access to primary materials. With Scott on board, this team combines insider knowledge and access, scholarly rigor, and proven narrative skill.

To deepen and widen the story—and to inspire the next generation of leaders—we conducted more than 55 interviews and group sessions, including focused conversations around pivotal moments like the 1996 Olympics. We spoke with former and current Nike employees such as Liz Dolan, Janett Nichols, Pam Greene, Sarah Severn, Maria Eitel, Gina Warren, Rosemary St. Clair, and Raye Pond—women whose work in marketing, product, sustainability, and global leadership shows what it looks like to dream big and refuse to give up. Their candid reflections on risk, resilience, failure, and courage turn this book into more than a historical record; it becomes a playbook of leadership lessons for those coming next. Some of these women will also be invited to write their own stories, so future leaders can hear directly from the voices who helped shape what’s possible.