Heidi O’Neill, 61, learned before she turned 13 how a business can fall apart. Her parents ran a sporting goods store. When the oil crisis of the 1970s crushed consumer spending, the family went bankrupt and lost the shop. O’Neill attended eight schools in eight years. But they managed to move forward.
“What I love about my family is they dared for a comeback after a setback. A comeback requires heart and will and courage, and that’s what I take with me the most,” she told Women’s Wear Daily.
That belief in comebacks will come in handy. On September 8, the U.S. executive will take over as chief executive officer of Lululemon Athletica, the Canadian brand that practically invented athleisure — sportswear designed to be worn beyond the gym — and that today generates more than $10 billion in annual revenue with its premium yoga pants and more than 760 stores worldwide.
She is replacing Calvin McDonald and inheriting a business in crisis: sales are slumping in the United States, its largest market; it is losing share to younger rivals such as Alo Yoga and Vuori; the stock has fallen by nearly half over five years; and it is engaged in a public feud with its own founder, Chip Wilson, who accuses the board of having killed the brand’s creative soul.
Wilson has also questioned O’Neil’s appointment: “I genuinely hope that Heidi is the right person for Lululemon, but a near 30-year veteran of NIKE, Inc., is not the symbol of transformative, creative-first leadership that can instill shareholder confidence in today’s world.”
O’Neill has not waited to respond. Three weeks after the announcement, she addressed Lululemon employees for the first time in a video. “Since the announcement, some people have been underestimating me. Some have been underestimating Lululemon,” she said. “That’s fine. We’ll let the work answer.”
Within the company, the board has closed ranks. Its chair, Marti Morfitt, describes her as the “best, perfect, right next leader for this company,” highlighting her creativity, brand instinct and global experience.
O’Neil is married and has two children. She enjoys fashion and design, but also the outdoors and, above all, fly-fishing. She travels whenever she can. Until now, she has lived in Beaverton, Oregon, Nike’s global headquarters, and in September, she will move to Vancouver, where Lululemon is based. Beyond the office, she maintains a steady commitment to several nonprofit organizations.
The failed shop of her childhood was called Port Side Sports and was located in Charlevoix, a tourist town of fewer than 3,000 people on the shores of Lake Michigan. There, O’Neill grew up surrounded by skis and rain jackets. Her father, an entrepreneur obsessed with bringing sport to the community, introduced cross-country skiing to local residents and organized courses that Heidi herself would later teach as a teenager. After the bankruptcy and years of moves, she studied journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, graduating in 1986.
Her first professional stop was at Foote, Cone & Belding, the storied San Francisco advertising agency, where she rose to vice president and account supervisor. From there, she moved to Levi Strauss & Co. as marketing director for Dockers. In 1998 — the same year Chip Wilson opened a design studio in Vancouver with yoga classes at night — O’Neill joined Nike. She would remain there for the next 26 years.
In Beaverton, she rose through the ranks to become one of Nike’s most powerful executives. For seven years, she led the women’s business and turned it into a multibillion-dollar division. She later oversaw the company’s vast global consumer engine: stores, digital commerce, product and brand strategy across its main international markets.
When she left the company in 2025, amid a restructuring following the departure of John Donahoe, Nike’s annual revenue had grown to more than $45 billion, up from $9 billion when she joined. At the same time, she built a parallel career as an outside director at companies such as Spotify, Hyatt Hotels Corporation and Lithia & Driveway.
Markets reacted coolly to the news of her appointment. Lululemon Athletica’s stock fell on the day of the announcement, April 23. Williams-Blair analysts called the choice “out-of-left-field”; BNP Paribas spoke of disappointment. The doubts have less to do with O’Neill’s résumé than with the context she comes from. Her name is tied to the Donahoe era at Nike, marked by the company’s aggressive shift toward direct-to-consumer sales. The idea was to cut out much of the middlemen — from department stores to sports chains — and sell through its own website and stores. The strategy weakened the wholesale network and left room for rivals such as Hoka and On to gain ground. It ultimately took a toll on sales. Since Elliott Hill’s arrival, the historic company has been trying to correct course.
There is a touch of irony in her career. When O’Neill joined Nike in 1998, the Oregon brand was beginning to lose share to the athleisure trend that Lululemon was creating at the same time in Vancouver. Twenty-eight years later, the roles have reversed: it is Lululemon that is losing ground to more agile competitors, and a Nike veteran who must reinvent it.
Both brands now share the same diagnosis: cultural disconnect, a worn-out digital strategy and a fading narrative. O’Neill now has to lead her own comeback. As journalist Manuel Jabois recently put it, what interests us in stories of rise and fall is not watching people fail, but watching them rise again.
An executive with rod and fly
Heidi O’Neill practices fly-fishing, a technique that does away with natural bait and uses artificial lures — flies — that imitate insects or small fish, hand-tied from feathers, hair and thread.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
Competiciones4 weeks ago
Foreign demand3 weeks ago
New Developments3 weeks ago
New Developments3 weeks ago
New Developments4 weeks ago
America4 weeks ago
Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at news@thelocal.es.
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.
Please log in here to leave a comment.