Phil Knight Net Worth: American businessman Philip Hampson Knight is worth a cool billion. After serving as the company’s CEO and chairman, he is now the chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc. Forbes magazine listed Knight as the 27th wealthiest individual in the world as of October 3, 2022, with an estimated net worth of US$35.2 billion.
Further, he owns the film studio Laika, which specializes in making stop-motion animation films. In addition to receiving an MBA from Stanford University, Knight also earned a BA in history from Oregon. At the University of Oregon, he ran for the track and field club coached by Bill Bowerman, with whom he later co-founded Nike.
Early Life Of Phil Knight
The newspaper publisher Bill Knight and his wife Lota Cloy (Hatfield) Knight had their first child, Phil Hampson Knight, in Portland, Oregon. Bill was a lawyer before switching careers. While growing up in the Eastmoreland neighborhood of Portland, Knight attended Cleveland High School.
After his father declined to give him a summer job at his newspaper because he thought his son should find employment on his own, legend has it that Knight “went to the rival Oregonian, where he did the morning shift tabulating sports scores and every morning ran home the whole seven miles.”

After high school, Knight attended the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he worked as a sports journalist for the Oregon Daily Emerald, pledged Phi Gamma Delta, and earned his B.B.A. in business in only three years.
Knight was named “Distinguished Military Graduate” as a senior, and he received an Army Reserve Commission later that year. He earned three consecutive varsity letters as a middle-distance runner at Oregon in 1957, 1958, and 1959 after running the mile in 4 minutes, 13 seconds.
Together with Bowerman and Geoff Hollister, Knight founded the American running group Athletics West in 1977.
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Career Of Phil Knight
Beginning his career as a CPA with Coopers & Lybrand and later Price Waterhouse. He eventually settled into a career as a professor of accounting at Portland State.
After finishing his undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon, Knight volunteered in the Army and served for a year. One year later, he attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business after serving in the military.
The wait for the first Tiger samples would last over a year, so Knight got a job as a bookkeeper in Portland.
After waiting patiently for the samples to arrive, Knight sent two pairs to Bowerman at the University of Oregon in the hopes of making a sale and earning Bowerman’s prestigious endorsement. Later, the company’s moniker would be changed to Nike.
At track meets all over the Pacific Northwest, he made his first sales from a now-famous green Plymouth Valiant car. In 1969, he was able to quit his job as an accountant because Blue Ribbon Sports was doing so well.
People now think that the “swoosh” logo for Nike is one of the most powerful logos in the world.
Awards Received By Knight
Knight got into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 2000 for his “Special Contribution to Oregon Sports.” As soon as he got there, he gave UO US$230 million, most of which went to athletics.
On February 24, 2012, Knight was added to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor. According to The Hall, he was in charge of Nike’s huge financial support of U.S. basketball and its players. Knight started his new job on September 7, 2012.
He got the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 1989.
Knight was chosen for the 2015 American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his “contributions to business, corporate, and philanthropic leadership.”
In 2020, the university asked alumni and fans on social media to pick four UO graduates for a Mount Rushmore. The last four were Knight, Steve Prefontaine, Marcus Mariota, and Sabrina Ionescu.
Phil’s Personal Life
Knight met his future wife, Penelope “Penny” Parks, while working at Portland State University. They wed on September 13, 1968. They own a home in La Quinta, California. Knight contributed $3.5 million to Republican Knute Buehler’s 2018 campaign for governor of Oregon.
Matthew Knight, Knight’s son, died in a scuba diving accident in El Salvador in 2004. The studio’s director of animation is Travis Knight, another son of Knight. Its chairman is Phil Knight.
Net Worth Of Knight
Phil Knight, an American businessman often regarded as the best in the world, is worth an estimated $50 billion. Wikipedia, Forbes, and IMDB all put Phil Knight, one of the most well-known American businessmen, at having a net worth of around $50 billion.
Phil Knight is worth $50 billion, as we’ve established. He’s a very wealthy man, up there with the very best of them. At one point in time, he was one of the world’s top 10 wealthiest individuals. He has a stake in the largest sports company in the world.
He’s done philanthropy because he genuinely wants to help people and not because he cares whether or not people recognize him as such. Nike is notorious for employing slave labor in Bangladesh. As a result, many human rights groups have taken a stand against his business. Only last year did he have to pay a $1 billion settlement to end a lawsuit.
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