Hire18 Speaker Preview: Steve Fogarty

From humble sports shoe to world-dominating apparel brand, Adidas didn’t get to where it is by sailing close to shore, and manning the roster of who gets onboard and who doesn’t, is this guy right here.

When Adolf “Adi” Dassler cobbled a portmanteau of his name and founded his little German shoe company in 1949, he may have had quiet dreams of cleating the German national soccer team, but there’d have been no way for the fledgeling founder to imagine Adidas’ sports-straddling fashion reach in the 21st century, or how lending design reins to Pharrell Williams for a bit would be a good idea. (Oh to have a time machine and enlighten Herr Dassler on Run DMC and what they’d do for his marketing department in the Eighties.)

For all the creativity and risk needed to launch fresh designs for nearly 60 years of shifting culture, Adidas’ internal compass is just as tuned, and Steve Fogarty is not content coasting now that he’s helming things, as head of the talent acquisition futures team, at one of the world’s coolest companies.

Steve has said his department is “driven by a constant desire for innovation and its belief that anybody can and should be ‘a creator’”… From marketing to design, merchandising to logistics, Adidas empowers its employees to approach tasks and business goals without preconceived ideas on how they should be executed.”

For insight into how the world’s second-biggest sports manufacturer makes the most innovative hires, as well as dissection of past campaigns great and small, register early to join Steve and dozens of other speakers in San Francisco, March 12-14, at Hiring Success 18, where everyone knows the value of recruitment because, after all, you are who you hire.