Senior Director, Athlete Future Lab

Nike • Beaverton, OR

3d

About The Position

The Senior Director leads Nike’s Athlete Future Lab (AFL), which explores emerging possibilities in sport and translates foresight, research, creativity, and business intelligence into enterprise opportunities, strategic choices, investment pathways, and actionable next steps. The Lab’s work spans Nike, Jordan, and Converse brands and sub-brands, with a focus on tangible opportunities for the Innovation, Design, and Product organization.

Reporting to the VP, Space Kitchen, the Senior Director leads a multidisciplinary team of foresight, research, strategy, and creative practitioners. This is a player-coach role: the leader sets the Lab’s direction and operating model, develops the team, and remains personally involved in its highest-priority initiatives. The role partners with senior leaders across Innovation, Design, Product, and adjacent enterprise functions, and builds external relationships to broaden the Lab’s perspective and impact.

The Senior Director will set a multi-year vision and portfolio for foresight initiatives, guide work from emerging signals through opportunity definition and recommendations, and help translate future-oriented opportunities into portfolio decisions, capability investments, and action across a complex global organization. The role also manages resources, budgets, partnerships, team capacity, and impact measures while fostering an inclusive, curious, ambitious, and accountable culture.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Strategy, Research, Foresight, Business, or a related field; suitable combinations of education, experience, and training are also accepted.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in strategic foresight, design strategy, human-centered research, product innovation, or a related discipline, including significant experience leading teams and enterprise-scale work.
• Deep passion for athletes, sport, culture, and the forces reshaping how people move, compete, connect, and create.
• Demonstrated ability to set a multi-year vision, strategy, operating model, and portfolio for a foresight or innovation capability.
• Player-coach leadership experience, including directing and developing a multidisciplinary team while personally advancing critical research, synthesis, opportunity framing, and executive storytelling.
• Strong people leadership capabilities, including hiring, coaching, talent development, performance management, succession planning, workload prioritization, and building an inclusive team culture.
• Expert command of horizon scanning, drivers-of-change analysis, ethnographic and cultural research, scenario development, opportunity mapping, and applied backcasting.
• Ability to translate ambiguity and complex signals into differentiated opportunities, strategic choices, investment implications, and actionable roadmaps.
• Executive presence and exceptional verbal, written, and visual communication skills, including the ability to influence senior leaders and defend recommendations using evidence and clear judgment.
• Experience shaping decisions across complex, matrixed organizations and aligning partners across Innovation, Design, Product, Brand, and business functions.
• Ability to establish governance, define success measures, manage resources and budgets, and maintain accountability across a portfolio of concurrent initiatives.
• Entrepreneurial mindset and sound risk judgment, with the courage to challenge conventions, test new territories, and adjust course as evidence evolves.
• Expertise in synthesizing complexity into compelling, simple, human-centered narratives that move teams from insight to action.
• Ability to build and manage productive relationships with external experts, creative partners, research organizations, and vendors.
• High standards for creative and strategic quality, paired with the pace, focus, and resilience needed to deliver under pressure.
• Strong interpersonal resourcefulness and a record of creating clarity, healthy debate, collaboration, and shared ownership across teams.
• Leadership maturity to manage through change, make difficult tradeoffs, address performance directly, and support teams with clarity and empathy.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision, priorities, and multi-year roadmap for the Athlete Future Lab, connecting its portfolio to Nike’s enterprise and Innovation, Design, and Product priorities.
• Lead, coach, and develop a multidisciplinary team; establish roles, operating rhythms, quality standards, and accountability for outcomes.
• Operate as a player-coach by personally leading or contributing to the Lab’s most complex and high-impact foresight initiatives.
• Own a balanced portfolio of horizon scanning, cultural forensics, future hunting zones, topical deep dives, opportunity definition, and applied backcasting.
• Translate emerging behaviors, sports, and systems into differentiated product, experience, business, and capability opportunities with clear recommendations and pathways to action.
• Advise senior leadership on future shifts, strategic implications, portfolio choices, risks, and opportunities, and create executive narratives that enable timely decisions.
• Build alignment across Innovation, Design, Product, and business teams, establishing ownership and handoffs that move foresight from insight to application.
• Define measures of impact and communicate the value of foresight through adoption, decisions influenced, opportunities advanced, and organizational learning.
• Manage team capacity, budgets, external partnerships, and competing priorities to deliver a focused portfolio with excellence and pace.
• Build and steward an external network of athletes, cultural leaders, researchers, technologists, creators, and strategic partners.
• Represent the Athlete Future Lab in senior forums and enterprise moments, strengthening organizational fluency in foresight and its ability to act under uncertainty.
• Foster a curious, ambitious, inclusive, and accountable culture that develops talent, rewards constructive challenge, and raises strategic and creative quality.

Benefits

• Accommodations are available during the interview process, including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible and single-location in-person interviews, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications as needed.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior