Blog
Retrospective reflections written in 2026 on operating roles from 2000 onward.
What I Misunderstood About Scale
By 2004, Nike's digital commerce platform was live. We had built it from nothing — the company's first consumer commerce application — and it worked. Orders came in. Revenue climbed. The natural next question was: how do we scale this?
When Alignment Is the Real Bottleneck
We blame speed, resources, and competition. But most companies stall because the people in the room cannot agree on what they are building.
Architecture Decisions That Outlive Teams
The code you write today will be maintained by people you will never meet. The org chart you draw will outlast everyone in the room. Choose accordingly.
Channel Conflict and the Politics of Direct-to-Consumer
In 2003, selling direct was an act of rebellion inside a wholesale company. The lesson: economics always wins arguments.
9/11 and Leading Through Uncertainty
Twenty-five years ago, the world changed overnight. I was at Nike, building something unproven, when uncertainty became the only constant.
Building Commerce in a Post–Dot-Com World
In 2000, the internet had just been humbled. The dot-com crash reset expectations across every boardroom. Capital retreated. Public markets corrected sharply. Digital initiatives that had been treated as inevitable were suddenly treated as speculative.