Elon honors Sleep Number CEO Linda Findley with entrepreneurial medal

Elon University used its entrepreneurial medal to spotlight a 1995 alumna whose career has moved through Hong Kong, Silicon Valley and New York boardrooms, but whose return to campus carried a clear local message for Alamance County: the road to top business leadership runs through adaptability, operations and people management.

Linda Findley ’95 received Elon’s Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership on April 22 in LaRose Digital Theatre inside the Ernest A. Koury Sr. Business Center, in a ceremony open to the campus community. The honor placed the Sleep Number president, chief executive officer and director in a line of business leaders the university says reflect the values it wants to push into the next generation of founders.

Findley joined Sleep Number on April 7, 2025. Before that, she led global marketing, business development and customer service for Alibaba.com Ltd. in Hong Kong from 2009 to 2012, held senior leadership roles at Evernote Corp. from 2012 to 2015, served as chief operating officer at Etsy from 2016 to 2018, and then was president, chief executive officer and director of Blue Apron from 2019 to 2024. She also has served on Ralph Lauren’s board of directors since August 2018 and became board chair of HeliosX in February 2025.

That résumé is exactly why Elon has kept the medal in place since 2009. The award is meant to recognize entrepreneurs who show integrity, innovation and creativity, a passion for lifelong learning and a commitment to building a dynamic community. Elon says the medal’s design reinforces that idea, with a flame symbolizing creativity and an open space symbolizing opportunity.

For Elon, the annual recognition is more than a ceremonial nod to an accomplished alumna. It is a public lesson for Martha and Spencer Love School of Business students and anyone in the county watching the university’s business pipeline. Findley’s path shows that entrepreneurship can mean scaling a company, turning around operations, managing customer experience and guiding organizations through change, not just launching a startup.

Her connection to North Carolina also runs through education: Findley earned a master’s degree in journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill and her undergraduate degree in corporate communications from Elon. For Alamance County, that gives the medal a local edge. Elon’s business school and the Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship used the moment to reinforce a simple message to future founders, managers and investors in the region: the university sees leadership as a craft built over time, and it is still using its alumni network to show students what that looks like in practice.