About
Rob Williams is a designer and creative executive whose work spans Nike running footwear, Rivian’s first electric vehicles and Lightship’s all-electric travel trailer. Over 22 years, he has shaped products, defined brands and built the creative organizations responsible for bringing them to market. His work connects the physical product with the identity, communications and experiences surrounding it, combining hands-on design with broad creative leadership across global businesses, early-stage companies and ventures of his own.
As Chief Creative Officer at Rivian, Rob led product and brand direction around a distinct idea: electric adventure. His responsibility encompassed the R1T pickup and R1S SUV alongside the company’s brand strategy, visual identity, agency partnerships and launch-experience development. Working with engineering, software and product leadership, his team developed both vehicle designs in ten months to support running-prototype builds. He set the strategy to introduce them together at the planned 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show debut, establishing the breadth of Rivian’s ambition through the products and their presentation.
Building Rivian meant creating the organization and environment to deliver that vision. Rob grew the design team from four junior designers to 45, established the brand team and recruited senior leadership. He led across exterior and interior design, color and materials, physical and digital modeling, and UI/UX, directing both internal teams and external creative partners. He established in-house milling and full-size clay-modeling capabilities and led the design of the company’s Plymouth, Michigan, headquarters, extending his creative responsibility into its workspaces and automotive design studios.
Before Rivian, Rob spent six years designing running footwear at Nike, creating successive generations of Free, LunarGlide and Zoom. His work included the 2014–2016 Free lines, LunarGlide 4–7 and the 2014–2015 Zoom line, developing recognizable product families over multiple seasons. He later became Senior Design Director for Men’s and Women’s Training, building the men’s design team from one person to 15 before taking responsibility for the 20-person women’s team. He brought the two organizations together for the first time, leading footwear, color, materials and graphics. Alongside seasonal creative direction, he worked with Nike Innovation to bring emerging concepts into future category products.
Today, as Chief Creative Officer at Lightship, Rob leads the design of the AE.1 all-electric travel trailer together with the company’s full brand strategy and identity. His direction extends across the vehicle’s exterior, interior and materials, as well as campaigns, content, launch experiences and workspace design. He leads senior product and brand designers, manages agency partners and works closely with engineering, manufacturing and commercial teams to carry the creative direction through development and production. That responsibility includes the practical decisions behind the finished product: adapting materials and functionality to meet cost constraints while preserving the intended look and feel, and directing how the company introduces its work to customers.
Through Willco Design, the independent consultancy he founded in 2018, Rob has also helped established brands rethink their products. For The North Face, he led a comprehensive renewal of its footwear offering across performance, lifestyle sneakers, boots, camp footwear and sandals. He combined creative direction of the wider line with direct product design, including first-generation VECTIV lifestyle footwear. The assignment brought his product and brand judgment together: creating a substantially new footwear offering that better reflected the company’s outdoor heritage and ambition.
With Terrascout, Rob took responsibility for the entire business. He founded and self-funded the profitable menswear, footwear and bags brand around a coordinated wardrobe for work, travel and the outdoors. In seven months, he developed a collection that included eight original cut-and-sew apparel designs alongside custom footwear and bags. He sourced cotton ripstop and wool from Japanese mills, worked with a Los Angeles apparel factory and led repeated fit development. He also created the identity, website, campaign and mobile retail experience, connecting the collection’s point of view to how it reached customers. From manufacturing costs and inventory to merchandising and presentation, the venture placed creative and commercial decisions in the same hands.
Rob began his career in Chrysler’s Jeep studio, contributing to production exterior design for the 2009 Dodge Ram and 2011 Dodge Durango. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Transportation Design from ArtCenter College of Design and lives in Bend, Oregon, with his family. Away from the studio, he spends time mountain biking, skiing and fly fishing.
