Making her mark at Nike

By Alina Dizik

Long before Jen Lukingbeal (Cardinale) ’21 MBA worked at Nike, she was a young girl lacing up her first pair of Cortez shoes. She recalls the iconic Swoosh as she opened the box. Years later, when Lukingbeal interviewed for a role at the company, she put on a pair again. “They’re my good luck charm,” she says.

Having held five distinct roles at Nike as she establishes her career as a retail leader, Lukingbeal is currently a member of the global leadership team helping revitalize the company’s women’s apparel segment.

Her career journey has brought Lukingbeal around the world as she navigates Nike’s approachable work culture, one that encourages employees to move across functions and geographies. After interning at Nike’s Portland headquarters while attending Kellogg, Lukingbeal’s first official role was as a strategy manager where she was the chief of staff to the head of Nike’s North America Women’s division. She was then named a director, leading a strategy team across Nike’s Men’s, Women’s, Kids & Jordan businesses in Asia Pacific & Latin America. The position meant she worked on everything from quarterly business reviews to the company’s three-year strategic plan. 

She later moved into a role overseeing Nike’s Energy division (fashion collaborations) across Asia Pacific and Latin America. The work took her on market-research trips to Korea and Japan and gave her firsthand exposure to Nike’s global markets.

Today, she’s using years of marketplace experience as direct to consumer director for NikeSKIMS, a collaborative activewear and lifestyle partnership with Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS brand. 

“One amazing thing we get to do at Nike is move around laterally to get different experiences,” she says. “I’ve now worked across two different geographies and three functions.” 

Lukingbeal credits Kellogg for giving her the tools to make those pivots.

Before business school, she studied political science and built a career in merchandising, primarily at Abercrombie & Fitch. At Kellogg, she deliberately used her coursework to fill in the business fundamentals she had missed as an undergraduate and explored a move into strategy. A course taught by Meghan Busse, associate professor of strategy, became a favorite and helped validate her interest in tackling longer-term business questions. A Personal Leadership Insights course taught by Ellen Taaffe pushed her to think more deeply about her career and how it integrates into the rest of her life. 

“One amazing thing we get to do at Nike is move around laterally to get different experiences. I’ve now worked across two different geographies and three functions.”

“It stuck with me, in terms of defining my leadership style and my values — both professionally and personally — and connecting those to short- and long-term goals,” she says. “Kellogg positioned me to make the functional transition from merchandising to strategy.” 
 
While at Kellogg, Lukingbeal also looked for ways to get involved beyond the classroom, serving as president of the Retail Club, as a Golub Capital Board Fellow on the YMCA Board of Directors and as a career mentor conducting resume reviews and interview prep for first-year students. That engagement has continued in the years since graduation. She’s returned to campus for Nike info sessions and organized Kellogg alumni panels through the Career Management Center, providing current students with a glimpse of what it looks like to navigate a career at Nike. 

A group text with six other Kellogg alums — all new moms with demanding careers — has turned into a lifeline of sorts, she says. Recently she’s sought guidance on everything from returning to work after maternity leave to navigating long-distance business travel with her young son at home. “It’s a way to get support from like-minded people, but it can even be just empathizing or sharing advice and recommendations,” she says. 

The Kellogg network she established in Evanston has followed her west, too. 

Several classmates and fellow Nike interns also landed in Portland, where they’ve built a tight knit community. Recently they gathered for a baby shower. Lukingbeal’s son, Jack, was a ring bearer at a Kellogg friend’s wedding in Napa, Calif., this summer. A recent weekend trip included two Kellogg moms who live in nearby Seattle. “A lot of us met during the Nike internship and have become a little family out here,” she says.

That kind of lasting network was one reason Lukingbeal chose Kellogg in the first place. After years spent in merchandising, she wanted both the fundamentals and a new approach to what it means to work in the consumer sector. “I was seeking knowledge on the nuts and bolts of business,” she recalls.

But she has also always been forward thinking and has wanted a network she could lean on as her career evolved. “I didn’t know where life was going to take me,” she says. “The Kellogg network was something I could fall back on regardless.”

Five years later, she’s combined an ambitious career with the demands of motherhood. And she’s thankful for the flexibility to balance both sets of responsibilities. That support, including from her current manager who is also a Kellogg alum, is critical. “If I have to jump out of a work dinner to Facetime my son, no one bats an eye. I’m grateful and don’t take that piece of the Nike culture for granted.”


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