Meet the team
OPN MND Project was founded by the husband and wife team of Michael Petry and Laurie Spiro.
About Michael
Frequently referred to as a polymath who possesses one of the world’s most unique toolboxes, Michael makes commercially and critically successful products, campaigns, and strategies for consumer goods worldwide in many different categories. Petry has achieved critical success with global powerhouse companies Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Frye, Prada, and Tumi and founded and successfully exited his luxury startup, Courser. Petry has been lauded worldwide for his visionary abilities by WWD, Surface Magazine, Departures, and Wallpaper. Forbes called his brand Courser “The future of footwear,” Glossy nominated him for Breakthrough Start-Up Brand Of The Year. Previous to his success as an entrepreneur, Petry had achieved Brand Of The Year, Shoes Of The Year, Product Of The Year, had a shoe in the Guggenheim in Bilbao for modern design, had a global marketing campaign and film series accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival, received a nomination for a Cannes Lion award, along with multiple awards for store designs for both Frye and Tumi.
About Laurie
Spiro worked for Ralph Lauren for over 13 years, holding various executive positions in Merchandising, Design, and Development. While at Ralph Lauren, she was an integral member of the RL Steering Committee, an internal group of executives dedicated to overseeing licensee transition and integration into RL corporate. Spiro exited for the Nike-owned brand Cole-Haan to fulfill a similar role and to assist in the global growth of the brand, spending much of her time in Italy and raising the profile of the brand and products.
Spiro left the corporate world to become a full-time mother. She later co-founded the luxury brand Courser with her husband, Michael Petry, successfully exiting and embarking on her next journey. Laurie is a board member of the non-profit Epidemic Answers/Documenting Hope, whose goal is to heal chronic childhood illnesses with a holistic, personalized approach while documenting their Flight and Chirp studies to evaluate “total load” and create a roadmap of treatment plans.