Vetri Dhagumudi leaves Nike

As Vetri leaves Nike, we would like to thank him for his support and contributions to the Corporate Water Leaders initiative over the years, first as part of the Beauty and Personal Care group and then as a member of the Textiles and Leather Taskforce. Vetri has shared with us his plans going forward:

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After nearly four years at Nike and almost two decades in water engineering, treatment, operations, and stewardship, I am starting a new chapter. It is bittersweet, and I could not be more excited about it.

Over my career, I have watched water stewardship come a long way. Companies have far better visibility into water risk, stronger commitments, and more technology to choose from than ever before. Yet one problem has barely moved. The knowledge needed to act on all of it remains fragmented. It lives with operators, engineers, consultants, technology providers, and across facilities that rarely compare notes. So good practice stays hard to find, hard to copy, and hard to scale. The sector’s biggest constraint is not a shortage of technology. It is the difficulty of scaling what we already know.

This is where I believe AI can fundamentally change how water expertise is captured, shared, and applied. Not as another dashboard or a tool that simply generates answers, but as the operational intelligence layer that connects stewardship ambitions to operational decisions. Some of the most valuable knowledge in water is trapped across reports, spreadsheets, operating logs, and individual experience built over years of solving problems on the ground. When that knowledge is made accessible at the moment decisions are made, organizations execute more effectively, prioritize more intelligently, and scale proven solutions across facilities and supply chains.

My focus is industrial water and wastewater, where the opportunity for impact is still huge. Less water consumed, cleaner water out, better resource recovery, lower operating cost. The challenge is rarely the technology itself. Many of the solutions already exist. What limits adoption is fragmented knowledge, thin operational capacity, uncertainty around outcomes, and too few bankable projects capable of attracting investment and scaling.

I believe the missing piece is operational intelligence. When expertise becomes accessible, measurable, and scalable, organizations can identify opportunities faster, quantify value more confidently, and reduce implementation risk. That is also what turns good intentions into bankable projects, the kind capable of attracting investment and pulling proven technologies into wider deployment. The result is better plant performance and stewardship outcomes at a scale that has historically been out of reach.

I also believe this opens the next phase of water stewardship. Much of the progress over the past decade has focused on water quantity. Looking ahead, I see real potential to bring the same rigor to water quality, with improvements that are measurable, auditable, and verifiable. Doing so creates stronger business cases, enables more effective allocation of capital, and accelerates the adoption of technologies that improve environmental performance while delivering operational value. In many cases, the challenge is not a lack of solutions, but a lack of visibility into where investments will generate the greatest impact.

This is where operational intelligence and water stewardship begin to converge. Better intelligence helps organizations improve performance inside the fence line while directing resources toward the actions that create the greatest collective impact outside it. When companies, manufacturers, technology providers, and investors work from a shared understanding of opportunities and outcomes, we create more investable projects and accelerate progress across entire watersheds and supply chains.

Technology alone does not create impact. Trust, partnerships, and shared purpose remain the foundation for meaningful progress. But when expertise becomes accessible and actionable, AI can transform how stewardship is implemented, turning fragmented knowledge into scalable action and measurable outcomes. When knowledge becomes scalable, stewardship itself becomes scalable.

Water has always been personal for me. Growing up where scarcity was a constant reality shaped how I see the world and ultimately the work I chose to pursue. This next chapter is the most direct way I have found to act on that purpose.