Joe Ammon

Founder and CEO Clove

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Joe Ammon is Founder and CEO of Clove, a Philadelphia footwear brand built for people who work in healthcare. The company exists because of a specific problem he watched at close range: his wife Tamara went through nursing school and into practice spending hundreds of dollars and countless hours looking for a shoe that could survive twelve-hour shifts and whatever gets spilled on it. Clove’s answer was a waterproof, easy-to-clean sneaker developed with a network of clinicians and designers, and the brand has since grown from that single shoe into a full line of footwear and workwear accessories, with licensed collaborations including a Toy Story 5 collection with Disney and Pixar.

Career Highlights

• Founded Clove after his wife Tamara, a nurse, could not find footwear that kept up with the physical and mental demands of the job.
• Collaborated with a network of healthcare professionals and designers to develop a waterproof, easy-to-clean sneaker built for long clinical shifts.
• Expanded the range from a single model into a full line – Classic, Forte 2, Strada, Prima, Ona, SuperBoot, Alto and the SuperCush recovery slide – alongside compression socks, underscrubs and insoles.
• Took Clove into licensed collaborations, including a Toy Story 5 collection with The Walt Disney Company and Pixar released in 2026 and covered by WWD.
• Clove’s Land O’Lakes collaboration was singled out by Forbes in December 2025 as a standout of that year’s butter-yellow trend.
• Profiled by Forbes in December 2019 and interviewed by American Nurse in February 2020 as the company’s founder and CEO.

Professional Journey

Ammon trained as an accountant, taking a BS in Accounting and a Master of Accountancy at Case Western Reserve University, and began his career as a Postgraduate Technical Assistant at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board from 2012 to 2013. He then spent several years at Deloitte as a Senior Consultant and Manager in Mergers, Acquisitions & Divestitures, before pursuing an MBA at the Wharton School.

Clove came out of his wife’s career rather than his own. He was at Tamara’s side through nursing school, through the nerves before her first clinical, through her first job and through the loss of her first patient, and saw directly how physically and mentally taxing the work is. The specific irritation was footwear: nothing on the market was built to be stood in for twelve hours and then wiped clean of blood or fluid. He and the Clove team worked with clinicians and designers to build a sneaker that was, as the company puts it, designed so wearers “don’t have to be afraid of a little fluid. Or a lot.” The brand’s name carries a bar above the c, the medical shorthand for “with”, to read as “with love”.

The company timed almost exactly into the pandemic, which put unprecedented attention on what healthcare workers wear, and Clove has since built out well beyond the original shoe: waterproof and breathable styles for different shift patterns, a wide fit, a boot, a recovery slide, and apparel including compression socks, underscrubs and insoles. More recently it has moved into licensed collaborations, partnering with Land O’Lakes in 2025 and with The Walt Disney Company and Pixar on a Toy Story 5 collection in 2026. Ammon remains founder and CEO, operating from Philadelphia under the legal entity Clove Brand, Inc.

Education

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

MBA

Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University

Master of Accountancy

Case Western Reserve University

BS, Accounting