Phil+Knight,+Kevin+Plank,+Mark+Zuckerber

//**__Phil Knight:__**// Born February 24th, 1938 and is the Founder and former CEO of Nike inc. Currently the 47th richest man in the world and is worth $14.4 billion. He went to the University or Oregon and went to Stanford business school. He wasn't a very good student, but was very athletic and was very involved with sports. In 1964, he started working when he started to sell shoes for the Japanease businness Asics. Seven years later, in 1971, he created the name Nike, based on the name of the Greek Goddess. Nike symbolizes victory. Knight purchased the patent of the Nike Swoosh for only $35 from Carolyn Davidson in 1971. After the purchase he said "I don't love it, but it will grow on me." Davidson was given an undislcosed amount of shares from Nike in 1983 for her contribution. In 2004, Knight resigned as CEO but kept his postion as Chairman of the board. In February of 2012, Knight was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

__//**Our Visit With Phil Knight :**//__ We would ask questions such as "How did the idea of Nike come to you at a time where athletic clothes and shoes weren't very popular?" We would also ask "What was your originial plan for Nike and how has it chaged since?" We have no idea what his answers would be so that's why we would ask them. I think it would be interesting to see what he would say because athletics and clothes were so different when he invented it so it would be interesting to hear what the general reaction of the company was.



**//__Michael Jordan:__//** Born February 17, 1963 in Brooklyn, New York and is a former NBA player. He played basketball at the university of North Carolina. He was the number one draft pick and was drafted by the Chicago Bulls from 1984- 2003. Michael won many awards and championships in the NBA and is said to be the greatest basketball player of all time. He is also said to be the athlete of the generation. Jordan was also part of the team "The Dream Team," a team known to be the best of all time that participated in the 1992 Olympics. The team featured other NBA greats such as Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. His net worth is approximately $500 million. Most of this money is from his profits from his brand, Jordan. The brand is ownded/controled by Nike. His brand is now one of the most popular basketball brands in selling shoes and apparel. Athletes represented by the Jordan Brand include Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony. Both of them say they joined the brand because Michael Jordan was their idol growing up. Michael Jordan also owns the Charlotte Bobcats, an NBA team. The Bobcats have became a more popular team to be on because of his prescence. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, like Phil Knight. __//**Our Visit With Michael Jordan**//__ //**:**// Our first question to MJ would be along the lines of "How did you translate your success as a basketball player to creating one of the top basketball brands today?" Another question would be "What are the challenges of owning an NBA team, while at the same time, you have players from other NBA teams who are represented by your brand?" We feel these two questions would really make him think since it really was not his intention to start a huge brand after his playing career, especially the fact that he partnered with Nike (since he really preferred to be partnered with Converse or Adiddas). We also feel the question about the team he owns playing against other clients of his is a good one because sometimes he may be in a position where his team, the Bobcats, are playing the Knicks, who's star is Carmelo Anthony, a Jordan athlete. We would expect him to answer something along the lines of saying that he would try to find a way to root for the Bobcats while also rooting for Carmelo himself.

//**__Mark Zuckerberg:__**// Born May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York and is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg founded Facebook while at Harvard University. There was lots of controversy around him founding this which is documented in the award-winning movie, __//The Social// Network__. Facebook was officially launched on February 4th, 2004 and has since gained over one billion users. He now resides in Palo Alto, California where the Facebook offices are. He is worth $9 billion making him the second youngest self-made billionaire in the world. A big award of his is that he was the Time Person Of The Year in 2010. Zuckerberg also values philanthropy largly, giving $100 million to the Newark public schools in 2010. He married Priscilla Chan earlier in 2012, a girl he met in 2003 at a party put on by his fraternaty at Harvard. __//**Our Visit With Mark Zuckerberg**//__ //**:**// We think that he would be the most interesting person to meet with because of the fact that while in college, he had arguably the best idea that anyone has ever come up with. If somebody thought about a social network for a billion of people before him they would have done it, but he was the first to come up with the idea. He would also be an interesting interview because of the way he was portrayed in the movie about him. The general reaction was that he looked like a bad guy from it so we would see what he thought about it. We would also be interested to know his story, since he grew up right here in Westchester and went to Ardslay High School. It's always cool hearing that a guy with the success that he has growing up in the area that we live in.

__//**Our Route:**//__ We plan to fly to Portland, Oregon to meet with Phil Knight at the Nike headquarters. From there we would rent a car and drive down to Palo Alto, California to meet with Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook headquarters. Then, we would fly to Charlotte, North Carolina to meet with Michael Jordan at his house. We would then fly back up to Rye, NY, where we started.

__//**References:**//__ []

[]

[]

[]

[]

[]

[]

[]