• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Whoop, the health-tracking wearable brand that recently surpassed 3 million members globally, has hired longtime Nike top marketer Dirk-Jan van Hameren as CMO.

Van Hameren joins the leadership team following a 30-year career at Nike where he helped shape some of the company's most recognizable global marketing initiatives.

He left Nike in September 2024 after nine months as executive vice president, Olympics. Prior to that, he spent 6 years as CMO. 

“The marketer and former Olympic track cyclist is best known for rising through the ranks at Nike, starting as a mailroom assistant in 1992 and taking on the CMO role in 2018,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “Nike, in a press release announcing his departure in 2023, said he was retiring. In reality, van Hameren— known as DJ —continued working as an adviser. He agreed to take a permanent role at Whoop after the 14-year-old company announced a $575 million funding round at a $10.1 billion valuation in March.”

At Whoop, van Hameren will focus on making proactive health as aspirational as sports, leveraging the company's roots in elite performance to reach a broader mainstream audience, according to the company.

His “mandate covers brand partnerships, athlete relationships, and product storytelling rooted in driving awareness and subscriptions,” according to Adweek. “He succeeds John Sullivan, and will have a team of 65 people spread across the U.S., France, Central Asia, and Australia reporting to him.” 

Sullivan is no longer with Whoop, according to a spokesperson. He still lists Whoop CMO as his current position on LinkedIn. Sullivan was with the company for nine years and seven months.

Van Hameren starts at Whoop July 20 and will report to the founder and CEO Will Ahmed. 

"Van Hameren announced the move in a social media post, describing it as a rare opportunity and citing Whoop's growing role in helping people better understand their health through data-driven insights around strain, sleep and recovery," according to Storyboard18. "A longtime Whoop user since 2020, van Hameren said his personal experience with the platform played a role in his decision to join the company. Drawing on his background as a competitive cyclist, he noted that access to the kind of performance and recovery insights offered by Whoop would have been valuable during his Olympic career."

Before becoming Nike’s CMO, van Hameren served as global vice president and general manager of Nike Sportswear, where he led $7 billion of Nike Sportswear revenue growth and helped drive the success of iconic franchises including Air Max, Air Force 1, and Tech Fleece. 

During his tenure at Nike, he also led the ideation and execution of the Livestrong initiative, the award-winning "Dream Crazy" campaign, and the company's global marketing for the 2004, 2012, and 2024 Olympic Games.

Prior to his business career, van Hameren represented the Netherlands as a track cyclist at the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.