Brian Fenn

Product leader. Builder. Operator across consumer, commerce, and craft.

Lake Oswego, Oregonbrian@illogicalproject.comillogicalproject.comlinkedin.com/in/bfenngithub.com/illogicalprojectDetent (App Store)

Open to rolesSenior Director / VP Product

Senior product leader, 25 years across Nike, Dick's Sporting Goods, Amazon, Microsoft, Zillow, and Porch. One of the few at this level who still ships: iOS apps and open-source AI tooling, in public, today. Takes the work everyone calls impossible, the failing platforms, the fragmented orgs, the hard market entries, and turns it into what ships at scale. Built teams from two people to twenty and led a 120-person cross-functional studio. Rescued a checkout from half-broken to 90%+ on day one. Protected a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream through China's localization migration. Co-authored the PM career ladder for a 300-person org. Open to Senior Director / VP Product roles.

Selected achievements

Now

illogicalproject · Founder
2025 – PresentLake Oswego, OR
  • Personal studio building consumer products end-to-end: iOS, web, design, content, and the operating model behind them.
  • Detent: native iOS coffee app with a Next.js web companion at detent.illogicalproject.com. A calmer surface for a category drowning in noise: opinionated defaults, no engagement traps.
  • kuno: macOS app that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings entirely on-device. Privacy-first from the first commit; no upload, no per-call cost. In TestFlight beta.
  • Open-source AI toolchain: Gauntlet, a multi-model red-team MCP that runs adversarial prompts across Claude, Gemini, GPT, and Grok, and a Google Workspace MCP connector spanning Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Sheets. Both on GitHub.
  • Publishing essays on product leadership, scale, and craft on LinkedIn.

Selected experience

Dick's Sporting Goods · Senior Director, Product Management & Design, Store Technology
2024 – 2025Remote
  • Set the multi-year Connected Store strategy for 800+ stores and 40,000+ teammates: hardware modernization, applications, AI-based labor scheduling, inventory optimization.
  • Led the 100% rollout of the new POS across the fleet; piloted mobile checkout; shipped RFID platform upgrades and landed an exclusive multipurpose-device partnership that unlocked AI-driven teammate workflows.
  • Restructured the design org, promoted four people inside a year, and earned a Design Advocacy Council seat at the executive level.
Nike · Senior Director, Product Management, Search, Browse & Discover + Central PM
2022 – 2024Portland, OR
  • Ran two teams (5 + 30+) across the surfaces serving 100M+ active users on Nike's direct-to-consumer properties.
  • Protected the enterprise generative AI investment for search and ranking through a company-wide restructure. The program shipped to production with double-digit engagement lift and nine-figure incremental demand.
  • Ran the first-ever Nike Digital Summit: got business, product, design, engineering, and insights working from a single roadmap, persona model, and OKR set.
  • Rebuilt the global navigation as a componentized platform: 3x engineering efficiency across consumer surfaces.
  • Co-authored the new PM career ladder for the 300-person Nike Direct Product organization during a company-wide restructure. Promoted two PMs to Director.
Nike · Senior Director, Product Management & Head of Studio, Greater China
2018 – 2022Shanghai, China
  • Relocated to Shanghai to lead the Greater China digital product organization, supporting mainland China.
  • Scaled the product team from 2 to 20+ and managed a 120+ cross-functional studio across product, design, and engineering, promoting leaders into seats they grew into.
  • Led the migration of all consumer experiences into mainland China to meet compliance requirements, protecting a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream and unlocking nine-figure incremental demand. Maxim Award finalist.
  • Built the WeChat Retail Platform during the COVID lockdown, the first consumer shopping experience designed and built entirely in China, and the Tmall 3D Avatar Membership, the first brand experience Alibaba invited a partner to co-innovate on their platform. WeChat program won the Maxim Award; Tmall delivered a record Double Eleven.
Nike · Senior Product Manager, Common Components
2016 – 2018Portland, OR
  • Shipped v1 of Nike App and re-launched Nike Run Club + Nike Training Club for the Rio 2016 Olympics marketing campaign: opened Nike's direct-to-consumer strategy.
  • Owned the shared mobile platform (Feed, sharing, cart, checkout) across Nike App, SNKRS, Nike Run Club, and Nike Training Club.
  • Rescued the failing wrapped-webview checkout: from ~50% success to 90%+ on the day-one A/B. New-market integration time dropped from ~6 months to ~2.
  • Extended the same tray-based platform to power Nike App Self-Checkout, the pinnacle feature of the House of Innovation NYC flagship launch. Maxim Award.

Earlier experience

Work & writing

Education

  • Whitman College · B.A., Psychology
    Varsity Swimming, Club Water Polo

Recognition

  • Nike Maxim Award: House of Innovation NYC Self-Checkout · 2018
  • Nike Maxim Award: WeChat Retail Platform (mini-program), Greater China · 2018
  • Nike Maxim Award Finalist: China-for-China consumer experience migration
  • Microsoft Gold Star: leadership of core Bing UX during brand release · 2009

Skills & tools

Leadership

  • Product strategy
  • Org design and scaling (PM team 2 → 20+; cross-functional studio 120+)
  • Executive partnership and air cover
  • Hiring, promotion, and PM career ladder design
  • Cross-functional leadership across product, design, engineering, research
  • Servant leadership and coaching
  • Operating in matrixed multinationals

Design

  • Consumer experience design
  • Design leadership and team restructure
  • User research (qualitative + quantitative)
  • Design systems and componentization
  • Editorial and brand systems for product surfaces

Technical

  • iOS (Swift, SwiftUI)
  • Next.js, React, TypeScript
  • REST and GraphQL
  • AI / LLM product integration
  • MCP servers and agent tooling
  • Search, ranking, and recommendations
  • A/B testing and experimentation
  • Native and web platform architecture

Domains

  • Commerce and marketplaces
  • Mobile checkout and payments
  • Search, browse, and discovery
  • Retail technology and store operations
  • International expansion (China, Europe)
  • Consumer health and wellness adjacent
  • 0 → 1 product
  • Platform → innovation → scale playbook