Behind every great company is a team of dedicated and talented people working together to achieve success. However, only one person is ultimately responsible for steering the ship, and at TaylorMade-adidas Golf, his name is Mark King.

King is the rare individual in today’s working world who has spent virtually his entire career with the same organization, starting as a salesman in 1980 when TaylorMade was a three-employee start-up and its lone product, the metalwood, was considered an oddity at worst and a fad at best. As the years passed and he was elevated into sales and marketing management, then to president, and then CEO, TaylorMade-adidas Golf evolved from its base in an abandoned TV assembly plant in McHenry, Illinois to a tri-branded global powerhouse with leading products in every category-drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, irons, putters, balls, footwear, apparel and outerwear.

The 30 years King has spent passionately immersed in his industry have given him an incomparable understanding of his customers and his consumers. He has experienced prosperous times, challenging times and every kind of time in between, and learned from them all. He’s toiled in the trenches as a salesman, balanced budgets and motivated the masses as a member of middle-management. Yet his most powerful contribution has been as CEO during the past decade, when he oversaw a steady surge in sales from $300 million to $1.4 billion despite a frequently challenging economy and a slow-growing industry.

King admits to owing a portion of his success to his passion for the game. Currently a two-handicap, he took up golf in grammar school, and his understanding of all facets of the sport have been instrumental to his ability to influence and gain the respect of key industry members, including the myriad professional golfers who have chosen to play and wear products by TaylorMade, adidas Golf and Ashworth.

King has earned numerous professional accolades and rubbed elbows with captains of industry and celebrities of all types. He’s been honored as the golf industry’s Executive of the Year, has been consistently named one of the ten most powerful people in golf, has served as chairman of the National Golf Foundation, appeared on the television show The Apprentice as a business role model, and serves on the Board of Directors of his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and on the board of the V Foundation and the board of Solutions for Change, a San Diego-based non-profit organization dedicated to helping solve family homelessness. His gregarious nature, boundless energy, vast business experience and wealth of golf-related anecdotes make him a tremendously entertaining, educational and motivational speaker. He’s never failed to captivate his audience (especially the golfers in the crowd) because he’s just as comfortable delivering a compelling speech as he is running his company or striping a tee shot down the heart of the first fairway at Augusta National.