While a student at the College of Liberal Arts, Gauger learned independence, resilience, grit, accountability, as well as statistics, to help navigate the apparel design world
Maggie Gauger
By Taylor Pedersen, CLA Student Writer - January 12, 2026
When Maggie Gauger, ‘97, answered a video call from her office high above San Francisco’s financial district, the late-afternoon sun bounced off the glass towers behind her. “I know, it looks fake,” she joked, shifting out of the glare. These days, this skyline is her backdrop as she shapes the future of women’s performance apparel as Global Brand President and CEO of Athleta.
It’s a long way from Hillsboro, Oregon, where she grew up.
When she applied to Oregon State as a first-generation student in the early ’90s, she filled out a paper form—“I swear you ripped it off a pad,” she laughed—and mailed it in. No search engines, no cell phones, no comparison charts. But OSU, just 73 miles from home, felt big enough to hold possibility.
“It felt like independence,” Gauger said.
Once on campus, she threw herself into everything. She joined ASOSU and the Panhellenic Council and made friends across majors and backgrounds. At the same time, she held down three jobs: flipping burgers at Jamie’s Hamburgers (formerly in the Kings-Circle Shopping Center), nannying, and even selling typed-up class notes she took for other students.
“I’ve been a hustler from the get-go,” she said. “I approached college with open arms. My natural curiosity shaped my whole OSU experience: asking questions, getting involved, wanting to understand how things worked. It’s honestly what built my career.”
She majored in communications with a minor in Spanish, but the lessons she values most weren’t confined to any syllabus. “Do I think the curriculum alone set me up to be a CEO? We can debate that. But the experience absolutely did.”
She still leans on what OSU taught her: independence, resilience, grit, accountability, collaboration, and the discipline to start something and finish it.
One class, though, remains vivid: economics and statistics; “my professor brought emotion to numbers,” she said. “He showed us numbers were patterns, ways to diagnose problems, ways to see the future. That unlocked something for me. It was the first time I truly loved business.”
Still, when she graduated, she didn’t picture a corporate path. She imagined becoming a lawyer, thanks, in part, to the late-’90s television dramedy Ally McBeal. “They looked like they were having fun,” she laughed. But her academic advisor at the time encouraged her to wait and get some life experience first. She listened.
A recruiter from Meier & Frank department store (then owned by The May Department Stores Company) hired her as a merchandise buyer for the Portland flagship store straight out of OSU. She stayed five years before moving to Nike, where she spent the next 23 years in merchandising, sales, and leadership roles overseeing entire apparel lines and hundreds of employees.
At Nike, Gauger was surrounded by colleagues with M.B.A.s and Ivy League degrees. She noticed.
“I had a chip on my shoulder,” she admitted. “I kept thinking, should I go back to school?”
Then everything shifted.
“That feeling faded when those same people started working for me,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where you went. It matters what you do with your four years. And I think I got the best deal with Oregon State.”
Her leadership style also became part of her identity: direct, honest, unafraid of conflict. Qualities that, she noted, aren’t always welcomed when they come from women.
People have called her “intimidating,” “too much,” “too direct.”
“You may be intimidated by me, but I’m not intimidating,” she said firmly. “I won’t compromise who I am.”
When she stepped into Athleta’s top job, she entered an industry where consumer habits, digital trends, supply chains, and fashion cycles shift faster than ever.
“Being a CEO is planning, patience, and ambition,” she said. “I ask my team: how do we become the company to beat?”
For her, the answer starts with culture.
“We have to be resilient. We have to be adaptable. The rate of change is immense.”
Athleta also has a distinctive mission. Unlike many performance and athleisure brands, it is unapologetically built by women, for women. Every product starts with a question: what problem are we solving for real women?
As Gauger’s own daughters enter adulthood, one in college, one in high school, she thinks often about the beginning of her own career.
“Students who don’t take advantage of the full ecosystem at Oregon State are crazy,” she said. “It’s not just classes. It’s the community, the clubs, the different cultures, the people you meet, the ways you learn to collaborate.”
And beneath all of that: curiosity. The thing she credits most.
“I was curious about everything at OSU. That’s what got me into rooms that changed the trajectory of my career. That’s what built friendships and led to my first job and my second job and every job after that.”
She glanced back at the skyline behind her.
“You never know where four years will take you. For me, Oregon State was the first place that opened a world I didn’t know existed.”