As the Senior Director, Sports Marketing Strategy, you will serve as a strategic operator and chief-of-staff partner to the EVP, Sports Marketing—helping translate enterprise priorities into a clear Sports Marketing agenda, operating rhythm, decision calendar, and execution plan. This role sits at the center of how Sports Marketing plans, prioritizes, governs, and communicates its most important work across athletes, teams, leagues, sport offense, brand, product, marketplace, finance, HR, and operations.
In close partnership with the EVP, Sports Marketing and the Sports Marketing Leadership Team, this role will own the planning architecture for the function—including key strategic gates and dates, CSR inputs, leadership team agendas, enterprise planning moments, and the development of the 2030 Sports Marketing plan. The role will bring clarity, rigor, and accountability to ensure Sports Marketing is focused on the highest-value strategic initiatives and prepared to make timely, well-informed decisions.
What You’ll Do
Strategic Planning, Governance & Enterprise Gates
- Own the Sports Marketing strategic planning calendar, including key gates, dates, milestones, decision forums, and required inputs across annual, seasonal, and long-range planning.
- Lead coordination of Sports Marketing inputs into enterprise planning processes and key forums, including CSR, CODE gates, leadership reviews, financial planning moments, and strategic prioritization discussions.
- Build and manage the connective tissue between enterprise strategy and Sports Marketing execution, ensuring the function has a clear line of sight to priorities, trade-offs, investment choices, and expected outcomes.
Chief of Staff to the EVP, Sports Marketing
- Serve as a trusted strategic partner to the EVP, Sports Marketing, helping prepare for critical decisions, leadership meetings, enterprise forums, and executive communications.
- Shape and manage the EVP operating rhythm, including agenda development, meeting design, pre-reads, follow-ups, decision logs, and alignment across the Sports Marketing Leadership Team.
- Anticipate issues, identify decision points, surface trade-offs, and help the EVP and leadership team stay focused on the highest-priority work.
2030 Sports Marketing Plan & Strategic Agenda
- Lead development of the 2030 Sports Marketing plan, translating enterprise ambition into a clear functional strategy, priorities, workstreams, milestones, and measures of success.
- Own the Sports Marketing strategic agenda across priority initiatives, including sport-led offense, athlete and team portfolio choices, operating model evolution, investment prioritization, and functional transformation.
- Create executive-ready narratives, plans, and materials that clearly communicate Sports Marketing strategy, progress, risks, and decisions needed.
- Maintain visibility to initiative health, dependencies, risks, and opportunities, ensuring strategic work is sequenced, resourced, and governed effectively.
Cross-Functional Leadership & Influence
- Represent Sports Marketing in cross-functional planning and strategy forums, ensuring athlete, sport, brand, business, and operational priorities are integrated into enterprise plans and decision-making.
- Build trusted relationships across senior leaders and functional partners to drive alignment, resolve ambiguity, and accelerate execution of strategic priorities.
Who You'll Work With
This role will report to the VP of Planning and Operations and directly support the EVP, Sports Marketing, serving as a strategic planning lead and chief-of-staff partner for the function.
You will work closely with the Sports Marketing Leadership Team, sport and athlete portfolio leaders, finance, HR, strategy, brand, product, marketplace, operations, and enterprise planning partners to build and execute the Sports Marketing agenda.
The role will also partner across enterprise forums to ensure Sports Marketing is prepared for key planning moments, aligned to strategic priorities, and positioned to influence decisions that unlock athlete impact, brand distinction, business value, and long-term growth.
What You Bring
- 15+ years related & relevant industry experience highly preferred
- 7+ years people management highly preferred
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience, and training Established relationships & tenured experience in Running are highly preferred.
- Excellent portfolio of accomplishments for leading complex & highly visible projects.
- High level of understanding how to work alongside and manage high-profile relationships.
- Excellent communication and relationship management skills with the ability to present and communicate to senior leaders
- Innate ability to communicate and work across all geos, languages, and cultures while welcoming diversity of thought.
- Proven track record of managing against a budget, creating tracking tools, and providing leadership updates on status.
- Project development process knowledge (mainly Keynote, Excel, and Air Table)
- Proven ability to prioritize workloads, adapt in real time, engage and influence diverse x-functional teams to drive towards a common goal.
- Up to 25% international and domestic travel required.
We offer a number of accommodations to complete our interview process including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible and single location for in-person interviews, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications as needed. If you discover, as you navigate our application process, that you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please complete the Candidate Accommodation Request Form.
Skills Required
- 15+ years related and relevant industry experience
- 7+ years people management experience
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or related field (or suitable combination of education, experience, training)
- Established relationships and tenured experience in Running
- Proven track record leading complex, high-visibility projects
- Ability to manage high-profile relationships and communicate to senior leaders
- Proven budget management, tracking tools creation, and leadership status updates
- Project development process knowledge (Keynote, Excel, Air Table)
- Ability to work across geographies, languages, and cultures and influence cross-functional teams
- Up to 25% international and domestic travel availability
Nike Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Nike and has not been reviewed or approved by Nike.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with a company match is complemented by options such as a Mega Backdoor Roth and deferred compensation for eligible earners. Financial coaching and structured savings programs support long-term financial security.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — An Employee Stock Purchase Plan with a stock discount sits alongside broad-based equity vehicles like RSUs and non-qualified stock options. These avenues expand wealth-building opportunities beyond base pay.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave includes maternity and paternity time, recently expanded in the U.S. to 16 weeks and extended to part-time retail teammates. Additional supports include childcare assistance at select locations and family-building benefits such as fertility, surrogacy, and adoption.
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