The Nike leadership shuffle continues.
In a note sent to employees on Tuesday, Nike president and chief executive officer Elliott Hill announced three new moves.
In the EMEA region, Hill noted that Carl Grebert has decided to retire after nearly 30 years of service and leadership across global, country and geography roles across the company.
“Carl shared his thinking with me some time ago, and I’m deeply grateful he helped guide us through my first year and thoughtfully worked with us to identify his successor,” Hill wrote. “To say Carl is beloved is an understatement. But more than that, his career and leadership are deeply inspiring.”
With Grebert’s retirement, César Garcia will become Nike’s new vice president and general manager of EMEA, effective Feb. 2.
Hill noted that Garcia started at Nike nearly 25 years ago and has since built a “critical ability” to connect product, sport, and marketplace into one integrated system. Most recently, the CEO wrote that Garcia helped integrate merchandising, sport priorities, and analytics to sharpen how we serve athletes and scale innovation.
Amy Montagne, president of the Nike brand, will share more soon on the leader who will assume Garcia’s current responsibilities and role.
In Greater China, Angela Dong will be stepping down from her role at the company on March 31.
Dong joined Nike in 2005 and has held a range of increasingly senior roles across Greater China for more than 20 years. Her tenure and leadership have spanned pivotal moments for sport, culture, and our business in this geo, including the Beijing Olympics, the rapid rise of the Chinese consumer and digital ecosystem and the unprecedented disruption and recovery connected to the global pandemic, among many others, Hill noted.
In her place, Cathy Sparks will step into the role of vice president and general manager of Greater China.
Sparks is a 25-year Nike veteran who began her journey as a store associate at what was then Niketown Portland and went on to lead teams across every geography. Most recently, she served as vice president and general manager of APLA.
And as Sparks leaves the APLA region, Cristin “Crissy” Campbell, currently vice president of Nike brand for APLA, will serve as interim vice president and general manager of APLA and join the senior leadership team. Campbell has spent more than 15 years at Nike – eight of those in APLA across a range of business leadership roles, including leading Jordan and women’s.
“I’m confident these changes will further accelerate our ‘Sport Offense,’ advance our ‘Win Now’ actions, and position Nike, Inc. to continue having impact in the way only we can,” Hill wrote in Tuesday’s letter.
This announcement comes amid Nike’s return to wholesale as the Swoosh looks to turnaround its business. Last month, Hill told analysts that the company is “in the middle innings” of its comeback, adding that various areas of the business are in different phases of turnaround – China being a sore point for the Swoosh.
“In recent months, the senior leadership team has benefited from having our geography vice presidents and general managers at the table helping us move faster and bringing us closer to athletes in both countries and marketplaces around the world,” the CEO wrote.
Net sales in the second quarter at the Beaverton, Ore.-based company tallied $12.43 billion, up 1 percent from $12.35 billion on a reported basis and flat on a currency-neutral basis. But net income fell 32 percent in the period to $792 million from $1.16 billion in the year-ago period.
