Phil Knight

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Philip Knight

Philip Knight was born on February 24th, 1938. He is a co-founder of Nike, Inc and served as its president from 1968 to 1990, excluding the period from June 1983 through September 1984. He was also president between June 2000 and December 2004. Prior to taking up the director's post in 1968, Mr. Knight was a certified public accountant with Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand and was an assistant professor of business administration at Portland State University. [1]

At number 46 on the Forbes World Rich List 2005 [www.Forbes.com], he has made $8.2 Billion since setting up the company 42 years ago.

Knight was named a "Corporate Crook" in Michael Moore's novel Downsize This!. The novel cited the harsh conditions in Indonesian sweatshops, where pregnant women and girls as young as fourteen years old sewed shoes for the company. Moore went to Knight in the hopes of convincing him to fix this problem. That interview can be seen in Moore's film The Big One.