Philip Hampson “Phil” Knight (born February 24, 1938) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. A native of Oregon, he is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc., and previously served as chairman and CEO of the company. In November 2015, Forbes named Knight the 15th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$28.1 billion. He is also the owner of the stop motion film production company Laika.
A graduate of the University of Oregon and Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB), he has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to both schools; Knight gave the largest donation in history at the time to Stanford’s business school in 2006. In 2016, he again matched the record for the largest individual donation ever to a university with a $400 million gift to Stanford’s new Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program. He ran track under coach Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon, with whom he would co-found Nike.
Early life
Knight was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of lawyer turned newspaper publisher Bill Knight, and his wife Lota (Hatfield) Knight. Knight grew up in the Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland, and attended Cleveland High School. According to one source, “When his father refused to give him a summer job at his newspaper, the Oregon Journal, believing that his son should find work on his own, Phil went to the rival, The Oregonian, where he worked the night shift tabulating sports scores every morning and running home the full seven miles.”
Knight continued his education at the University of Oregon (UO) in Eugene, where he is a graduate brother of Phi Gamma Delta (“FIJI”) fraternity, was a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald[8] and earned a journalism degree in 1959.
As a middle-distance runner at UO, his personal best was 1 mile (1.6 km) in 4 minutes, 10 seconds,[9] and he won varsity letters for his track performances in 1957, 1958 and 1959. In 1977, together with Bowerman and Geoff Hollister, Knight founded an American running team called Athletics West.
Source:wikipedia