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Degree and Year: MA '76 Company: NIKE Inc. Company Web Site: http://www.nike.com/ Title: Vice President for Corporate Responsibility/Compliance City and State: Beaverton, Ore.
I am Vice President for Corporate Responsibility/Compliance at Nike Inc. My job is to develop and execute the vision and strategies Nike brings to its oversight of factories in our supply chain and their performance against Nike's labor, environment, safety and health standards. Nike has a global Compliance Department which I manage that numbers 75 people based in 21 countries around the world. Our supply chain is a virtual one, in that the factories are not owned or operated by Nike. On a regular basis I suppose my work is split in four basic sectors: (a) managing the people (b) working with Nike's various divisions, especially the manufacturing arm, to ensure our CR goals and plans are in sync with theirs (c) representing Nike in various stakeholder forums where global organizations and other brands, NGOs, trade unions and other institutions are working toward the same goals and (d) ensuring our CR Compliance process and standards are best-of-class. How did you get started in your career? I was hired by Nike after 15 years as a journalist, to become the PR director for USA. That was 15 years ago. All of my journalism career had been with Fairchild Publications of New York, a business newspaper group, and much of it overseas as a foreign correspondent and news director in Asia. As a result, I was very familiar with manufacturing and labor issues, and even had considerable experience as an observer of Nike's manufacturing supply chain. One of my first tasks as PR director was to draft a Code of Conduct for our manufacturing partners. As public interest in brands and their supply chain labor practices escalated in the 1990s, I was Nike's designated person not only to speak to the issue but to develop a system of compliance. That was formalized into a Compliance Department in 1996, and I was selected as its director. I agreed to do the job for two years. That was 10 years ago. Obviously, I also did not advance my math skills at Mizzou. How do you use your journalism skills in your job? Communicating is fundamental to management, both inside and outside the company. I had a lot of hands-on experience as a writer at Mizzou, almost always under deadline pressure. I am known around here as a bit of a last-minute guy who juggles 1,000 things, which is precisely what the slot editor at the Missourian has to do. I like to think that experience, which I did for two semesters as a graduate teaching assistant, helped enormously throughout my 30 years in journalism and business. The larger learning from the Missouri experience was the value of an active curiosity. This is reflected in my reading and speaking habits. I read The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Foreign Affairs and many other periodicals to keep current, and in the evening I try to get in at least an hour with history -- books like Churchill's History of the Second World War and Thomas Friedman's From Beruit to Jerusalem. Those things provide me with historic perspective. I am told when I talk to people I am almost always the one asking the questions. Being a voracious reader, and a constant information-seeker are both habits that were reinforced by my experience at the J-School. What is the international work-related experience that you think that shaped your approach? I have spent much of my adult life outside of the United States. In the military, as a correspondent and as a business manager, I have been stationed in Vietnam, the Philippines, Micronesia, Hong Kong (three times) and Japan. And my work as a correspondent and then my work with Nike in the current job have both allowed constant travel to every continent except Antarctica. In every place I travel I see new things, even when revisiting old places. I have seen enormous change, reflected in individual stories as well as the national ones. Often I am surprised with what I find. There is a Korean man, for example, who has a fifth-grade education, but founded and runs a multi-national manufacturing company. Or an English-language interpreter in the Ukraine who, during an international celebration at Yalta of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, told me, "All of this was wonderful, but I would rather have the old (communist) system. Under the old system we had no freedom of expression but we did have free education for my daughter and free health care for my husband." In effect, every day I have worked has been a day at school. What are five adjectives that describe you? Someone else ought to answer that question! How about I start with, "someone who values..."
Guiding the very public process of an international brand addressing social issues while under attack. The challenge was to establish and manage a new process of supply chain accountability while balancing the need for continuing internal management support and external critical community expectations. The former is driven by a business perspective. The latter by a social justice perspective. Not always does the twain meet. But trying to guide that process was an enormous challenge, especially while also trying to establish and manage the work on the ground. What is the best professional lesson you learned at the J-School? Triage. Put your energy and resources into the critical things that need attention. Forget the things you messed up yesterday. Set aside the things that can wait for later. That, and the challenge and reward of doing your work in public. Are you a good basketball player? Read a season's worth of statistics and an informed fan can make a pretty accurate judgment of that question. Are you a good writer, reporter or editor? Read a semester's worth of reporting or front pages and the informed reader can make a pretty accurate judgment as well. Most of the rest of us do work that is less open to public scrutiny, where the individual's specific value or contribution is harder to measure. It's both a little frightening but also tremendously rewarding to have your work judged in public. What is your favorite J-School memory? Probably the work in the slot with Brian Brooks and Daryl Moen shaking their heads watching us trying to put the paper together as the printing deadline neared. It was fun, exciting, scary and a real team effort -- and especially enjoyable when one of the folks in the make-up room would pass along a veteran's compliment for a layout or a headline. I can't think of anything more satisfying than doing a specific project (in this case a newspaper) with a team of great people, and driving home at midnight or 1 a.m. knowing the work is done and will be available for everyone to see in the morning. A close second is my work in Jefferson City, with two other grad students, John Doussard and Bill ("Buff") Tarrant. We commuted back and forth together, covered the state government, and even tried to launch our own state news service together. (We got as a far as designing a logo...and then accepted other, paying jobs.) Buff at last glance was a Reuters bureau chief in Asia. (He and I got together in Kuala Lumpur one night a while back.) John is communications director for, of all people, the mayor of Portland, Ore. John was co-editor on a series of investigations that won a Pulitzer during his reporting career in California. Other old friends from those days have gone on to interesting careers, including Teri Agins at the Wall Street Journal and Elizabeth Krupnik as a senior executive in public relations. What advice would you have for current students? The J-School at Missouri gives you a tremendous edge on other schools because it immerses you in the nuts and bolts of the profession. Take advantage of that edge. Seek out every practical learning opportunity that the daily paper, the radio and television stations have to offer. That includes getting some experience on all sides of the profession. I would have been a much better reporter, editor and publisher had I taken some J-School work in advertising and production, to understand that side of publishing better. The practical, hands-on stuff is invaluable, and really sets Missouri apart. When I left Mizzou to take my first assignment at Fairchild, it was with the Fairchild News Service as a correspondent covering business issues in the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. Pretty intimidating stuff for a new graduate. But I didn't miss a beat because I had just come from the Jefferson City bureau, and the two experiences were absolutely connected and comparable. What is something about you that would surprise people? I have had very public jobs for 30 years, but my greatest enjoyment is the time I can devote to the quiet time that I spend working on old machines. We have an old diesel-powered boat in Alaska that my brother and I spend time on -- far more hours fixing things than actually cruising or fishing. And my current project in Oregon is a 1970 Jaguar XKE. Pieces of it are scattered in three different neighborhood garages. If you spend most of your working hours in front of a computer, camped out on a United flight, or sitting in meetings, there is incredible therapy to be found in the mindless, simple, physical things. 
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| Revised: 20 April 2007. Copyright © 2008 The Curators of the University of Missouri | Contact the J-School | |
Dusty Kidd, MA '76