What Alice Hartley is up against as Nike’s new circularity director

Alice Hartley is joining Nike as its new director of waste and circularity, after a dozen years of similar leadership roles at Gap Inc. and Under Armour. The hire reflects a strategic focus by the sneaker colossus to embed circularity across the organization. Hartley will serve with a relatively new CEO and chief sustainability officer as Nike moves forward from drastic cuts to its sustainability staff by previous leadership in December 2023.

“This clears a space for Hartley to review the situation afresh and build on the extensive work that preceded her arrival,” said Andy Sloop, who last year left Nike after eight years as global director of zero waste and circularity.

When Hartley departed as circularity director at Under Armour in 2024, peers called her “one of the true class acts of the industry” and “a real thought leader and an inspiring champion.”

In between corporate roles, Hartley continued serving as a board member of the nonprofit Accelerating Circularity. She has also used social media to laud policies, including California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act, which requires apparel companies to manage products after consumers are done using them.

Upcoming challenges

Last year, Hartley shared with Trellis her view of circular economy leadership: “Because of the complexity inherent in circularity work, it helps to create shared, high-level roadmaps so that the overall strategy and pace of goal progress is understood across teams,” she said. “This also helps create continuity as new people join or roles change over time.”

That very much applies to Nike, which has undergone significant shakeups over the past two years. Two months after axing about 30 percent of its sustainability professionals, the company promoted former global footwear vice president Jaycee Pribulsky to chief sustainability officer, replacing Noel Kinder (now at Lululemon). Later, Nike replaced embattled CEO John Donahoe with Elliott Hill. And this spring, Nike promoted Noah Murphy-Reinhertz to senior director of sustainable product design, shortly before Chief Innovation Officer John Hoke retired after 33 years.

But staff turmoil is far from the only challenge Hartley faces. The Beaverton, Oregon, giant is a study in contrasts when it comes to scaling circular economy work.

To begin with, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has validated the company’s 2030 net zero goals, but not its long-term ones. Similarly, Nike shares its circular design guide, but has not integrated circular innovations into its main product lines. The Nike Refurbished takeback and resale program appears to be a successful circular segment, but it’s not central to corporate revenue strategy. Nike also features recycled content in mainstream products while revealing little about traceability of materials or rates of recycling.

And although Nike is known for savvy innovations — glue-free recyclable ISPA Link trainers, Space Hippie running shoes of made from scrap material and recycled-polyester Flyknit sneakers — it has failed to phase out virgin synthetic materials. The Stand.earth Fossil Free Fashion Scorecard recently awarded Nike an overall C grade, and a C-minus for materials and circularity. To its credit, however, the brand, which holds nearly one-quarter of market share in athletic wear and shoes, stood with or above its peers, including Puma (C), Adidas (C-minus), New Balance (D) and On Running (D).

In her 2024 interview with Trellis, Hartley noted that that circularity agendas inevitably involve multiple departments, requiring the need to set goals and check accountability across functions. Sloop notes that this is a steep hill to climb at Nike, which is “large, complex, matrixed, constantly changing and has very distributed and unclear decision rights.”

Fortunately, Hartley comes to her new post with more than a decade of experience in complex organizations.

Previous accomplishments

As the first circularity expert at Under Armour, Hartley oversaw the creation of a tool to help the company and other businesses assess and prevent microfibers from shedding from their garments. She also spearheaded the establishment of circular design principles for half of Under Armour’s products, leading training for 200 workers. And she collaborated on efforts to adopt alternatives to spandex. 

No reason was given for Hartley’s departure one year ago, which came amid broader leadership reshuffling. The company didn’t name a direct successor.

Before her busy year at Under Armour, Hartley spent 11 years at Gap Inc.. She joined the San Francisco retailer in 2012 as a senior analyst in strategic sourcing, just after earning an MBA at MIT, and quickly worked her way up the ladder, spending her last three years there as director of product sustainability and circularity.

While at the clothier, Harley established numerous foundational sustainability efforts, including launching its product sustainability team and partnering to create the Gap for Good strategy for sustainability products. She also forged a product resale trial and an experimental textile-to-textile recycling pilot. Under Hartley’s lead, Gap became the first brand to join the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol and a founding brand member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Jeans Redesign project.

“What I love about fashion is that it’s so relatable,” Hartley told the podcast “Fashion is Your Business” in 2021. “No matter who you are, whether you consider yourself fashionable or not, we all play a role. And I think if we can harness that fact that it’s such a common ground then it can be a real force for change.”

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