Nike design leader John Hoke is leaving the company that was his ‘destiny’

John Hoke, a 33-year Nike veteran who served as the company’s chief innovation officer, is retiring.

The news comes during a difficult time for the company. While it’s still the largest sportswear manufacturer with $51 billion in revenue a year, it has lost street cred and running market share under former CEO John Donahoe. Wall Street believes it’s not growing fast enough. Beloved Nike veteran Elliott Hill replaced Donahoe as CEO last year, who rightly warned the turnaround would not happen overnight. Hill informed the Nike staff that Hoke was leaving in a memo sent around the company this week.

I’ve spoken to Hoke several times over the years, most recently in 2024 for our profile on the company’s Olympic strategy under John Donahoe. Hoke’s enthusiasm was that of a kid in a candy store, as he was eager to show off the company’s new partnership with Hyperice and its use of AI tools to make some of the wildest Nikes I’ve ever seen.

Hoke believed deeply in the technological innovations behind sport, which made him a good fit for shifting to the job of chief innovation officer in 2022 from his role as chief design officer for 15 years. And while some of the products launched in his time—like self-tying Adapt BB sneakers—were never articulated enough to scale, his long-view vision of Nike was always inspiring. He imagined our clothing becoming empathetic, symbiotic, and even biological—literally feeling our pain to be ever-changing to our needs moment to moment.

Hoke has long viewed his own time at Nike as “destiny.” At age 12, he imagined the performance benefits of sticking his inflatable pool raft to the bottom of a shoe. That led him to discover Phil Knight and write him a letter. Knight responded, inviting him to come work at the company when he was older.

After graduating from studies in industrial design and architecture and giving a presentation where he discussed Nike Town, Hoke was invited to Nike for a job interview.

“I brought that letter in the back of my portfolio. I pulled the letter out, and I said, ‘I’m here to redeem the coupon you sent me in the late ’70s,’” Hoke recalled. The person he said that to? Mark Parker, who ended up taking over the company as its most beloved designer-CEO. “I pinch myself, like I’ve been . . . loving this brand, and thinking about sneakers, and how to make sneakers perform better, and how to make sneakers more magnetic more powerful, for most of my life.”

Phil McCartney, EVP and chief innovation, design & product officer at Nike, will be handling some of Hoke’s duties while they search for a successor. Meanwhile, Hoke will be at Nike through October wrapping up projects. He did not immediately respond for comment.