O’Neill resigned from Spotify’s board days before taking over as Lululemon CEO, ending a nearly nine-year run as an independent director.
Heidi O’Neill has stepped off Spotify’s board just days before taking the top job at Lululemon.
Her resignation took effect on September 3, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released the same day. Spotify said the move was not tied to any disagreement with the company.
A board seat that predated Spotify’s public life
O’Neill had served on Spotify’s board since December 5, 2017, months before the company went public through its direct listing in 2018. She was an independent director and sat on the board’s People Experience & Compensation Committee alongside Lead Independent Director Christopher Marshall, Martin Lorentzon and Shishir Mehrotra.
Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder and executive chairman, said O’Neill had been part of the company’s story “since before we were a public company.” He credited her with bringing “a rare instinct for consumers and brands” and said her perspective shaped how Spotify thinks. “We’ll miss her,” he said, adding that he expects she will do “remarkable things” at Lululemon.
Shareholders re-elected O’Neill and the other 11 members of Spotify’s board at the company’s annual general meeting on April 15. The September 3 filing leaves the board with 11 directors and does not name a replacement.
From Nike to Lululemon
O’Neill becomes chief executive officer of Lululemon on September 8 and will also join that company’s board. Lululemon announced her appointment on April 22.
In April, a Lululemon spokesperson told Bloomberg that the four-and-a-half-month gap between the announcement and her start date was tied to an agreement O’Neill had signed with Nike that barred her from working for a competitor for a set period.
She succeeds Calvin McDonald, who stepped down as Lululemon’s CEO and as a director on January 31, 2026. Meghan Frank and André Maestrini have been serving as interim co-CEOs since then.
At the time of her appointment, O’Neill called Lululemon “an iconic brand” with “genuine guest love,” a product ethos rooted in innovation and a global platform “still in the early stages of its potential.” She said her job would be to build on that foundation, accelerate product breakthroughs, deepen the brand’s cultural relevance and unlock growth in markets around the world.
Spotify loses a long-tenured independent director
O’Neill’s departure comes after nearly nine years on the board and after a broader refresh at Spotify earlier this year. On January 1, 2026, co-CEOs Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström joined the board when Daniel Ek moved into the executive chairman role.
Before Lululemon, O’Neill spent 26 years at Nike, leaving in September 2025 as president of consumer, product and brand. Nike later split that division into three areas reporting to CEO Elliott Hill and said O’Neill decided to retire as a result. Earlier, as president of consumer and marketplace at Nike, she oversaw operations across more than 170 countries, according to Lululemon.
She also sits on the boards of Hyatt Hotels and Lithia Motors. For Spotify, her exit closes out one of the company’s longer-running independent board relationships just as she moves into a CEO role that will put her back in the center of a consumer brand turnaround.
