H B C U
T I M E S
PATHWAY TO NIKE: KIZMET MILLS
BY ERICKA BLOUNT DANOIS
K izmet Mills understands that there are circuitous routes to get to your passion. Mills, the Senior Director of Global University Relations and Recruiting Programs for NIKE, Inc., is something akin to a polymath, the kind of person that can succeed in many fields of study.
Kizmet is a proud HBCU graduate and an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
As an undergraduate student at Howard University, she was a Biology major and on her way to dental school. She’d applied to Meharry Medical School of Dentistry in Nashville, Tennessee and to the Howard University College of Dentistry in Washington, D.C. Her goal was to own her own dental practice. While she waited for decisions from both schools, she thought that it would be a smart idea to take some business courses. As she talked to friends in the business school at Howard, she found out about a business fellowship that would pay for an MBA and eagerly applied. Soon thereafter, she found herself in a quandary when she learned she had received the fellowship. By then, she had also received an acceptance from Meharry. Mills followed her true passion and made the decision to attend the Howard School of Business – MBA Program. “I started my MBA studies at Howard and discovered Human Resources through internships and I said, ‘The world of Human Resources is vast and exciting,’” Mills remembered.
She never looked back.
Now at Nike, she leads global talent strategies and talent pipelines for early career emerging leaders for Nike, Jordan and Converse brands. She’s the head of a global team comprised of North America, EMEA, Greater China, and Asia Pacific Latin America geographies.
“I focus on collegiate and university talent - undergraduates at the junior level is a sweet spot and graduate students in the first
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