The Adidas Group has appointed English-born Karen Parkin as Chief HR Officer, effective Nov. 1, 2014.
She will report directly to Herbert Hainer, CEO of the Adidas Group. Parkin succeeds Matthias Malessa, who left the company at the end of July 2014. Currently, Parkin is responsible for the global supply chain function within the Adidas Group. Jan Brecht, Chief Information Officer of the Adidas Group, will take on this function from November 1, 2014, in addition to his responsibilities as CIO. In the future, Jan Brecht will report to Glenn Bennett, member of the executive board of the Adidas Group responsible for global operations.
Karen Parkin (49) looks back on a long and successful career within the Adidas Group. She joined Adidas in 1997 as Sales Director for Adidas UK, where she was Head of Customer Service from 2000 to 2001 and Business Development Director from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, she moved to Adidas America as Vice President Business Development, subsequently taking on responsibility for the supply chain function at Adidas America in 2007 in the position of Vice President Supply Chain North America. This period also included the construction and successful go-live of the new Distribution Centre in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Since 2013, Karen Parkin has acted as Senior Vice President Global Supply Chain, based at the Group’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach and at the Adidas America headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
Karen Parkin is married, has a daughter and keeps herself fit with fitness training and walking. Prior to joining the Adidas Group, she had worked as a teacher before entering the world of business in 1989, working in the sales sector for Lego and later Hasbro.
I am delighted that with Karen Parkin an internal senior manager has been chosen in our intensive recruitment process involving numerous internal and external candidates.
Herbert Hainer, Adidas Group CEO, said, “Karen knows our company inside out. She has worked for us successfully in some of our key markets, and she has held global responsibility at our Group headquarters since 2013. I am convinced that with her international experience, her business expertise and her excellent leadership qualities Karen will further strengthen the Group’s position as one of the world’s most attractive employers.
CIO JAN BRECHT TO ASSUME ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ADIDAS GROUPS GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN
The sporting goods and lifestyle market is in permanent flux. Speed will be a significant advantage which ensures that the Groups products reach consumers faster. In this context, IT is an essential enabler for simplifying and accelerating processes across the Groups supply chain. Therefore the IT and Supply Chain functions are now being consolidated in one area of responsibility under the leadership of Jan Brecht.
Jan Brecht (42) joined the Adidas Group as CIO from Daimler AG in 2009. At Daimler, he had most recently held the position of CIO Americas, based in Detroit. Over the past few years, Jan Brecht has successfully ensured that the Adidas Groups IT is consumer-focused, state of the art and globally oriented. In his new function, he will now link up the Group’s supply chain processes even more closely with future-oriented IT solutions. Jan Brecht is married, he has two children and is an enthusiastic runner and skier.
