Phil Knight

Philip Hampson Knight (born February 24, 1938) is an American billionaire businessman who is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc., a global sports footwear, equipment and apparel company. He was previously its chairman and CEO. As of October 2025, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$35.4 billion. He is also the owner of the stop motion film production company Laika. Knight is a graduate of the University of Oregon and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was part of the track and field club under coach Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon with whom he would later co-found Nike.

Knight has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to each of his alma maters, as well as Oregon Health & Science University.

Phil Hampson Knight was born on February 24, 1938, in Portland, Oregon, to Bill Knight, a lawyer turned newspaper publisher, and his wife, Lota Cloy (née Hatfield) Knight. He grew up in the Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland, and attended Cleveland High School. According to one source, "When his father refused to give him a summer job at his newspaper [the now defunct Oregon Journal], believing that his son should find work on his own," Knight "went to the rival Oregonian, where he worked the morning shift tabulating sports scores and every morning ran home the full 7 miles (11 km)."

Knight continued his education at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he ran for the famed Oregon track and field program, was a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald and was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Knight earned a business degree (B.B.A.) in 1959 in just three years. That same year, Knight also received his Army Reserve Commission and was a "Distinguished Military Graduate".

As a middle-distance runner at Oregon, his personal best was 1 mile (1.6 km) in 4 minutes, 13 seconds, and he won varsity letters for his track performances in 1957, 1958, and 1959. In 1977, together with Bowerman and Geoff Hollister, Knight founded an American running team called Athletics West.

Before Blue Ribbon Sports—later Nike—flourished, Knight worked as a Certified Public Accountant, first with Coopers & Lybrand, and then Price Waterhouse.

Immediately after graduating from the University of Oregon, Knight was commissioned a Second lieutenant in the Army and served one year on active duty and seven years in the Army Reserve. He next enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where, for his small business class, Knight produced a paper, "Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?", that essentially foretold his eventual foray into selling running shoes. His ambition was to import high-quality and low-cost running shoes from Japan into the American market. He graduated with a master's degree in business administration from Stanford in 1962.

Knight set out on a trip around the world after graduation, during which he made a stop in Kobe, Japan, in November 1962. It was there that he discovered Tiger brand running shoes, manufactured in Kobe by the Onitsuka Co., now known as Asics. Impressed by the quality and low cost of the shoes, Knight called Mr. Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him. By the end of the meeting, Knight had secured Tiger distribution rights for the western United States.

The first Tiger samples would take more than a year to be shipped to Knight; during that time he found a job as an accountant in Portland. When Knight finally received the shoe samples, he mailed two pairs to Bowerman at the University of Oregon, hoping to gain both a sale and an influential endorsement. To Knight's surprise, Bowerman not only ordered the Tiger shoes, but also offered to become a partner with Knight and provide product design ideas. The two men agreed to a partnership by handshake on January 25, 1964, the birth date of Blue Ribbon Sports, the company that would later become Nike.

Knight's first sales were made out of a now storied green Plymouth Valiant automobile at track meets across the Pacific Northwest. By 1969, these early sales allowed Knight to leave his accountant job and work full-time for Blue Ribbon Sports.

As of July 2021, Knight has a net worth of $60.8 billion. In 1990, Knight founded the Philip H. Knight Charitable Foundation Trust. As of 2016, according to Portland Business Journal, "Knight is the most generous philanthropist in Oregon history. His lifetime gifts now approach $2 billion." In 2023, Knight was America's second largest donor with $1.2 billion in giving.

In 2006, Knight donated US$105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which, at the time, was the largest ever individual donation to a U.S. business school. The campus was named "The Knight Management Center," in honor of Knight's philanthropic service to the school.

In 2016, it was announced that Knight contributed $400 million to start the Knight-Hennessy Scholars graduate-level education program inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship. Graduates are charged to tackle global challenges, such as climate change and poverty. The first class of 51 scholars from 21 countries was scheduled to arrive at Stanford in the fall of 2018.

In May 2022, it was announced that Phil and Penny Knight gifted Stanford $75 million to establish the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience. The initiative will be housed at Stanford's Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and is set to study the cognitive decline and degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

As of 2026, Knight has donated over two billion dollars to the University of Oregon. It is believed that Knight made his first major contribution in the late 1980s. By 2000 Knight had already contributed over $50 million to UO. He was UO's 2018–19 honorary degree recipient.

In 2000, Knight was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame for his Special Contribution to Sports in Oregon. At the time of his induction, he had contributed approximately US$230 million to UO, the majority of which was for athletics.

On February 24, 2012, Knight was announced as a 2012 inductee of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, as a contributor. The Hall recognized him as the driving force behind Nike's huge financial support of U.S. basketball and its players. Knight was formally inducted on September 7, 2012.

In 1989, Knight received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. For his "contributions to business, corporate and philanthropic leadership", Knight was elected to the 2015 American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership class.

In 2020, the university polled alumni and fans on social media, asking them which four UO alumni they would place on a notional Mount Rushmore for the university. Knight was one of the four final choices, along with Ducks track legend Steve Prefontaine; current NFL player Marcus Mariota, the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner; and Sabrina Ionescu, who had just completed an epic college basketball career for the Ducks.

In 2024, Knight received the President's award of the World Athletics Awards.

Knight met his wife, Penelope "Penny" Parks, while he was her professor at Portland State University. They were married on September 13, 1968. They own a home in La Quinta, California.

Knight's son, Matthew, died in a scuba diving accident in El Salvador in 2004. Another son of Knight's, Travis Knight, runs the Laika animation studio, where Phil Knight serves as chairman.

Knight is a registered Republican and a frequent contributor to Republican political candidates in Oregon. In 2010, he donated $400,000 to Chris Dudley, the then Republican nominee for Governor of Oregon.

Knight occasionally supports Democrats, however; in 1986 he financed Neil Goldschmidt's successful campaign, and in 2014, he donated $250,000 to the re-election campaign of Democrat John Kitzhaber.

He donated $3.5 million to Republican Knute Buehler during the 2018 Oregon gubernatorial election. Regarding this donation, Knight criticized the unfunded Oregon Public Employees Retirement System and the general fiscal state of Oregon, implying Democratic governor Kate Brown was at fault.

Knight was once again a major donor during the 2022 Oregon gubernatorial election. He gave $3.75 million to independent candidate Betsy Johnson until September 2022. After Johnson's support declined in the polls, he switched to backing Republican Christine Drazan, writing her a $1 million check on October 6 of that year. He made a second donation to the Drazan campaign later in October. Also in 2022, Knight donated $2 million to a political action committee seeking to elect Republican state legislators in Oregon.

While Knight is generally reluctant to give interviews, he spoke with the New York Times in October 2022 regarding his support for Republican candidates. He argued Oregon's government had drifted too far to the left and described himself as "more conservative than Nike," responding to criticism of him backing an anti-abortion candidate which apparently contrasted with the company's image of supporting progressive social justice causes. Nike itself donated $75,000 to Drazan and Johnson's Democratic opponent, Tina Kotek, the eventual winner of the election.