Heidi O’Neill (United States, 61 years old) learned before she was 13 how a business falls apart. His parents ran a sporting goods store. When the oil crisis of the 1970s plunged consumption, the family went bankrupt and lost the store. O’Neill went through eight schools in eight years. But they managed to get ahead. “What I love about my family is that they dared to come back after a setback. A comeback requires heart, will and courage, and that’s what I take with me the most.”
That belief in comebacks is going to be missing. The American executive will assume the position of CEO of Lululemon Athletica, the Canadian brand that practically invented the athleisure –sportswear designed to be worn outside the gym– and which today has a turnover of more than 10 billion dollars annually with its premium yoga pants and its more than 760 stores around the world.
He replaces Calvin McDonald and inherits a business in crisis: sales are collapsing in the United States, its largest market; loses share to younger rivals like Alo Yoga or Vuori; The stock has fallen by nearly half in five years, and is waging a public war with its own founder, Chip Wilson, who accuses the board of having killed the creative soul of the brand and has questioned his appointment: “I sincerely hope that Heidi is the right person for Lululemon, but a nearly 30-year veteran of Nike is not the symbol of transformative and creative leadership capable of instilling confidence in shareholders in today’s world.”
O’Neill has not waited to respond. Three weeks after the announcement, he addressed Lululemon employees for the first time in an internal message: “Since the announcement, some people have underestimated me. Some have underestimated Lululemon. That’s okay. We’ll let work respond.” Within the company, the council has closed ranks. Marti Morfitt, CEO of the council, describes her as their “ideal candidate” and highlights her creativity, her brand instinct and her global experience at scale.
She is married and is the mother of two children. He likes fashion and design, but also the outdoors and, above all, fly fishing. He travels whenever he can. Until now he has lived in Beaverton, Oregon, Nike’s world headquarters, and in September he will move to Vancouver, where Lululemon is headquartered. Beyond the office, he maintains a sustained commitment to several non-profit organizations.
That bankrupt store from his childhood was called Port Side Sports and was in Charlevoix, a tourist town of less than 3,000 inhabitants on the shores of Lake Michigan. There, O’Neill grew up on skis and raincoats. Her father, an entrepreneur obsessed with bringing the sport to the community, introduced cross-country skiing to the neighbors and organized local courses that Heidi herself would end up teaching as a teenager. After the bankruptcy and years of moving, he studied Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he graduated in 1986.
Her first professional stop was Foote, Cone & Belding, the legendary San Francisco advertising agency, where she became vice president and account supervisor. From there she moved to Levi Strauss & Co. as director of marketing from Dockers. In 1998 – the same year Chip Wilson opened a design studio in Vancouver with evening yoga classes – O’Neill joined Nike. He would spend the next 26 years there.
In Beaverton she rose to become one of Nike’s most powerful executives. For seven years she ran the women’s business and transformed it into a multimillion-dollar division. He then went on to supervise the company’s large global consumer gear: stores, digital commerce, product and brand strategy in the main international markets.
When he left the company in 2025, in the midst of restructuring after the departure of John Donahoe, Nike had a turnover of more than 45 billion dollars, compared to 9 billion when it debuted. In parallel, she was building a career as an external advisor in companies such as Spotify, Hyatt Hotels Corporation or Lithia & Driveway (car dealerships).
The markets received the news coldly. Lululemon Athletica stock fell on the day of the announcement, April 23. William Blair called the election “unexpected”; BNP Paribas spoke of disappointment. The doubts have less to do with O’Neill’s resume than with the context from which he comes. His name was linked to Donahoe’s time at Nike, marked by the firm’s radical commitment to direct sales to the consumer. The idea was to dispense with a good part of the intermediaries, from department stores to sports chains, to sell from the website and their own stores. The strategy weakened the wholesale network and left room for rivals such as Hoka or On to gain ground. It ended up taking its toll on sales. Since the arrival of Elliott Hill, the historic company has tried to correct course.
There is some irony in his trajectory. When O’Neill arrived at Nike in 1998, the Oregon brand was beginning to lose share compared to the athleisure that Lululemon was inventing those same years in Vancouver. 28 years later, the roles have been reversed: it is Lululemon that loses to more agile competitors, and it is a Nike veteran who has to reinvent it.
Both brands today share the same diagnosis: cultural disconnection, exhausted digital strategy, loss of story. It’s O’Neill’s turn to stage his own comeback. As journalist Manuel Jabois recently said, what interests us about boom and bust stories is not seeing people fail, but rather the resurgence.
An executive with a rod and fly
Heidi O’Neill practices fly fishing: a modality that dispenses with natural bait and uses artificial lures, flies, that imitate insects or small fish, made by hand with feathers, hair and thread.
