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Sports are the core of Nike’s iconic brand. For Chief Tax Officer Emily Whittenburg, that focal point influences everything from her team’s bonding activities to her mindset as a leader.
“I’m a player’s coach,” says Whittenburg of her leadership style. “I was a player for twenty-six years before I sat in this chair, and the leaders I connected with and respected most were those who got in and got to understand the work that we were doing and the challenges that we were facing.”
Whittenburg strives to be exactly that type of leader for her global tax team. In addition to channeling the best qualities of her own past leaders, she manages the team with a deep appreciation of what it takes for each member to execute their role, courtesy of her wide-ranging career leading up to Nike. Her current position is in many ways the culmination of her two-plus decades in tax, but far from resting on her laurels, she still has her head fully in the game.
“Emily brings a rare combination of deep expertise in tax law and a drive for innovation and forward-thinking to deliver excellent results,” says Kathleen Ruhland, global cochair of corporate at DLA Piper US. “Nike’s maxim to ‘win as a team’ is important to Emily and this ethos extends to her team of advisors, which we feel privileged to be a part of.”
As natural of a chief tax officer as she may seem, Whittenburg admits that the role wasn’t always on her radar. “The journey for me to get here was not one that I ever envisioned twenty-six years ago—or even ten years ago,” she says. “My career has been about staying open to opportunities when my phone rings or when I get in an elevator. I wasn’t as much a planner as I was a seizer of opportunities.”
Those opportunities started to materialize before Whittenburg had even graduated from law school. By that point, she was already at public accounting firm Arthur Andersen splitting her time between tax law and business consulting.
“My career has been about staying open to opportunities when my phone rings or when I get in an elevator. I wasn’t as much a planner as I was a seizer of opportunities.”
Emily Whittenburg
Following the sale of her tax practice to Deloitte, she opted to take her team and their clients instead to Big Four competitor Ernst & Young (EY), where a chance elevator encounter with a law school classmate inspired her to pivot to corporate law. She then changed trajectories again—and again—with an in-house tax role at her former client Waste Management and a policy role at oil and gas multinational Shell.
In the wake of a subsequent Shell reorganization, a friend of Whittenburg’s pushed her to look into head of tax jobs. She jumped to apply for an opening at Nike—only to receive no response from the company. The same friend encouraged her to reach out directly to then-chief tax officer, Patti Johnson, who was hiring a successor in anticipation of her 2024 retirement.
“I had to get comfortable with the idea of being that aggressive about going after something that I really wanted in my professional life,” Whittenburg says. “When I took that advice and wrote Patti a note, she called me within thirty minutes.”
In August 2020, Whittenburg accepted an offer to join Nike as head of policy and controversy. Her responsibilities broadened to encompass more and more of the tax department until she was officially named as Johnson’s successor in August 2023. That left her six months to learn the role with Johnson by her side—just enough time to get up to speed on the tax team’s ongoing transformation.
“Patti had the vision to move the team into a managed service arrangement with EY,” Whittenburg says. “By the time I joined, we were about two years into that relationship and that transformation. We’re now five years into it, and we’ve completely transformed the way we work, the tools we use, and the number of people on our team.”
To kick off a new phase of transformation, Whittenburg initiated what she calls a “reset” of both her leadership team—now expanded to include her geography leaders from around the globe—and the Nike-EY relationship back in January.
“We’re busy paring down our priorities. We’re going to do a few things and really excel in those things, then we’re going to take on the next challenge and the next—and never be satisfied with where we land,” she says. “At Nike, one of the things we talk about is that there is no finish line.”
Whittenburg aims to leave the tax team better than she found it, and she already has a good idea of what her mark will be. “If we truly have a culture of innovation and growth all the time, and we have a ton of fun doing it, then I’ve done what I came here to do,” she says. “My purpose is to create opportunities for people to experience contagious joy. I like to joke that we do tax; we don’t save babies. It’s serious work, but that doesn’t mean we have to be serious all the time.”
Whittenburg is big on celebrating with her team, whether it’s an everyday win or a festive occasion. “For me, it’s all about the relationships and the connections. If something goes off track, we have to talk about it,” she says. “This isn’t just my tax department. Everybody on this team has an opportunity to participate and share ideas.”
Amid an unpredictable and ever-shifting tax landscape, Whittenburg hopes to embed in the team a growth mindset that will allow each person to keep raising the bar and upscaling their capabilities, including in the technology space. She believes firmly in their ability to meet the moment all while continuing to exceed cross-functional expectations.
“Tax does have a seat at the table at Nike, and if we’re going to sit at this table, we’re going to drive the conversation and create and protect value across the enterprise,” Whittenburg says. “We’ve got to show up and show out every time we’re here. Otherwise, we’re just furniture—and with our energy and our excitement, we could never be furniture.”
DLA Piper advises some of the world’s most iconic brands on their most significant matters. As a global leader, we are committed to providing seamless, global solutions that develop, protect, and enforce Nike’s most competitive edge. Our relationship with Nike includes precedent-setting cases and work across multiple substantive disciplines, ranging from intellectual property, tax, labor and employment to regulatory and transactional matters.
Innovation is always top of mind for both our clients and the firm. DLA Piper has recently been named a law firm “best equipped to meet leading-edge expectations” in BTI Consulting Group’s inaugural report, Leading Edge Law Firms 2024.
Emily Whittenburg is a first-rate tax professional who brings strategic vision and applies commercial pragmatism to everything she does. She is highly respected internally and externally, and brings a collaborative and inclusive mindset to all her work. We are proud to work closely with Emily and her team to deliver solutions for Nike’s business in a dynamic global business and tax environment.
At EY, our purpose is building a better working world — one where economic growth is sustainable and inclusive. The insights we provide help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. Through our four integrated service lines and our deep sector knowledge, we help our clients capitalize on new opportunities to deliver responsible growth. From robust managed services capabilities to leading tech solutions and much more, we work continuously to improve the quality of all our services by investing in both people and innovation.
