Senior Director, Athlete Future Lab

The Athlete Future Lab explores the future edges of sport through radical imagination and rigorous investigation, combining strategic foresight, ethnographic research, creative and product leadership, and business intelligence. The role leads the Lab as a player-coach, reporting to the VP, Space Kitchen and directing a team of foresight, research, strategy, and creative practitioners. It partners with senior leaders across Innovation, Design, Product, and adjacent enterprise functions to align future opportunities with strategic priorities, portfolios, and decision-making.

• Set the vision, priorities, and multi-year roadmap for the Athlete Future Lab, connecting the 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 clear 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 behaviours, 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; create executive narratives that enable timely decisions.
• Build alignment across Innovation, Design, Product, and business teams, establishing clear 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 organisational 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 that expands the Lab's access to emerging signals and expertise.
• Represent the Athlete Future Lab in senior forums and enterprise moments, strengthening the organisation's 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 the quality of strategic and creative thinking across the organisation.

• Bachelor's degree in Design, Strategy, Research, Foresight, Business, or a related field; a suitable combination of education, experience, and training will be accepted.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in strategic foresight, design strategy, human-centred research, product innovation, or a related discipline, including significant experience leading teams and enterprise-scale work.
• Accomplished creative foresight and innovation leadership at Senior Director level, with enterprise thinking and inclusive people leadership.
• Ability to navigate uncertainty, establish a compelling point of view, mobilise others around what could be versus what is, and run the business of the team.
• Strategic range combined with hands-on craft: setting the agenda and operating model for the team while directly shaping research, synthesis, opportunity definition, and executive narratives when the work demands it.
• Judgment to balance inspiration with business reality and influence to align senior stakeholders without relying on formal authority.
• Leadership maturity to build a high-performing team through clarity, coaching, accountability, and trust.
• Experience translating future-oriented opportunities into portfolio choices, capability investments, and action across a complex global organisation.
• 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.
• Proven player-coach leadership: able to direct and develop 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 prioritisation, 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 for Nike.
• Executive presence and exceptional verbal, written, and visual communication skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders and defend recommendations through evidence and clear judgment.

At Nike, Inc., the Athlete Future Lab's work spans Nike, Jordan, and Converse brands and nested sub-brands, with a focus on tangible opportunities for the Innovation, Design, and Product organisation.