Atlantic City, N.J. – Bryan Poerner ’00 was an entrepreneur before it was trendy. He followed his passions and had stints running his own record label, as a radio DJ, professional runner, shoe salesman and small business owner before landing the role of CEO of Diadora US.

“Success is everything I tried and didn’t get paid for. Success is not my title — it’s the stuff I remember, the stuff I love,” said Poerner, the School of Business Dean’s Distinguished Speaker, on March 26.

“Bryan lets you know that whatever you want to do from Stockton you can do. Learning never stops,” Interim Dean William Minnis told a crowd of School of Business faculty, staff and students.

Poerner said he fell in love with runn ing and music as a youth, which led to creating his own bands and later operating Track Star Records. He recalled pressing records and selling them out of his Stockton dorm room while setting records on Stockton’s track and field and cross-country teams.

“I put out 15 records, and I never made a dime. But I loved it all,” he said.

Eventually, Poerner landed at PUMA for more than 15 years in roles spanning specialty sales and national accounts leadership.

“I dedicated many years of my life to things I was passionate about,” he said, including the creation of his brand TRKFLD. Poerner used his Business Studies education and life skills to set out to make a line of upscale bags, moving through the steps of product innovation, design, production and advertising.

Throughout his varied career, Poerner built a reputation and 10 years ago Diadora came calling.  

A small Italian performance footwear and sportswear company, Diadora tapped Poerner to relaunch the brand in the United States.

“We’ve grown and are bigger now than we’ve ever been. The tough part of the business is the tough decisions — how to deal with tariffs, gas prices, COVID,” he said. “But I also get to work on design and making it a righteous place that I am proud of.”

Read more about Poerner’s journey to Diadora and what he learned at Stockton.

--Story by Stacey Clapp; photo by Abbi Erbacher