Each year, the University of Oregon Alumni Association honors outstanding alumni who have attained extraordinary distinction in their chosen professional fields or personal endeavors. In 2020, the UOAA presented the Distinguished Alumni Award to Tinker Hatfield, BArch ’77, and the Outstanding Young Alumni Award to Dennis Worden, BA ’06 (geography).
Tinker Hatfield
Even if you don’t know his name, you know his designs: The Jumpman, the “O,” the Air Jordan. Tinker Hatfield is a design legend.
Hatfield received a full athletic scholarship to the University of Oregon, where he ran track for Bill Bowerman. Bowerman cofounded Nike with Phil Knight in 1964. While Knight ran the business from Beaverton, Bowerman designed running shoes and track spikes under the grandstands of Hayward Field, often using his athletes to test out his inventions.
“If you weren’t careful, he might just pop out of that cobbler shop and grab you by the scruff of the shirt and tell you to try on these shoes and run around the track,” Hatfield said in an interview for the Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design, which profiled him in 2017. Bowerman’s experiments had mixed results. “Sometimes they were great, and sometimes you’d come back bleeding.”
In addition to completing his homework at the School of Architecture, Hatfield began to critique and fine-tune Bowerman’s designs, finding that his course work easily translated to shoe design. After he graduated from the UO he joined the team at Nike, and in 1985 he graduated to sneaker design.
In the late 1980s, Nike began to fear that its relationship with six-time NBA champion Michael Jordan was crumbling. Jordan had expressed dissatisfaction with the Air Jordan I and II—basketball shoes designed specifically for him—and suggested he might defect to adidas. Hatfield was brought on board to design the Air Jordan III, and worked closely with Jordan on the design, using his personality as the inspiration. The new Jordan featured the now-iconic Jumpman logo, a visible air unit on the heel, and elephant print trim. Jordan wore the shoes during the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, which he won, and started a lifelong friendship with the designer.
In 1987, Hatfield designed a self-lacing shoe for Marty McFly to wear in Back to the Future II. After years of requests, Hatfield and his team began working on a version to sell to the public. On October 21, 2015 (the same day Marty and Doc arrived in the future) Nike gifted a pair of HyperAdapt 1.0s to Michael J. Fox, and the shoe was released to the public the following year. The shoe uses Hatfield’s Electro Adaptive Reactive Lacing (E.A.R.L) technology to automatically adapt the shoe to the contours of an individual’s foot.
Hatfield is currently Nike’s vice president for design and special projects. He lives in Portland with his wife. They have three daughters.
Dennis Worden
Dennis Worden grew up in Pendleton, Oregon. The Wordens are enrolled members of the Schitsu'umsh (Coeur d’Alene) tribe, whose traditional homelands stretch east-west from the Spokane River Valley to Montana, and north-south from the Canadian border to northern Idaho. The family lived off the reservation, which Worden credits with teaching him “how to navigate complex social dynamics.”
Worden studied political geography at the UO, and graduated in 2006. During his senior year, he received the Mark O. Hatfield Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Fellows work in an Oregon congressional office for a year. After graduation, Worden moved to Washington DC to work in the office of Representative David Wu (D-Ore.).
“In many ways, this opportunity shaped the next 10–15 years of my career on and off the hill,” Worden said.
After the fellowship ended, Worden was offered a permanent position in Representative Wu’s office. During that time, Worden worked on issues ranging from promoting research for woody biomass energy to funding for tsunami warning systems in Oregon. Native issues, however, remained the most important.
“I was motivated to serve my community, and through my political geography experience, I thought working on legislative issues related to tribes was a great way to do that,” Worden said.
In 2007, Worden worked on the passage of a resolution that recognized the 50th anniversary of the flooding of Celilo Falls and its subsequent impact on Native Americans. The oldest continuously inhabited site in North America, Celilo Falls was home to thousands of Native Americans. Its abundant supply of fish made it a thriving center of cultural exchange and trade. On March 10, 1957, The Dalles dam reservoir flooded Celilo Falls, ending an ancient tradition and destroying the local villages. The resolution was unanimously adopted by the House—an extremely rare occurrence.
After three years on Capitol Hill, Worden left to work for the National Indian Health Board, where he was part of an effort to include Indian Healthcare Improvement Act reauthorization in the Affordable Care Act. He also worked for the Native American Contractors Association, which promotes economic development programs for indigenous people.
While in DC, Worden met many impressive Native leaders and professionals. Frustrated their work went unrecognized, Worden started a podcast, NextGen Native, to share their stories.
Worden is currently a director in global ethics and compliance at Walmart. He is also a co-lead on a program that establishes a process for monitoring compliance-related regulatory changes in 26 countries where Walmart operates. He is also the chair of Tribal Voices, a mentoring program that connects Walmart employees with eighth graders for career guidance.
Worden was surprised to hear he had won the Outstanding Young Alumni Award.
“I felt humbled because I know many alumni are doing amazing things every day, so my work did not feel unique,” he said. “I also felt inspired to re-dedicate myself to representing my community and the University of Oregon.”
Worden and his family live in Arkansas. He hopes to be a positive role model for his children.
- Abby Keep, UOAA student worker