Engineering was once foreign to Logan Hickox but is now integral to his daily work at Nike.
During an interview with Fast Company, he shared that while sports had been a significant part of his upbringing, engineering was not. His interest in the field was sparked when he noticed flyers at his school promoting a meeting for students interested in robotics.
“You have the notion that engineers might be of the nerdier type, or maybe they’re not athletic, or they’re not into theater, or whatever it might be,” he said to the outlet. “And especially as a Black man myself, not having seen that representation before, that was something that I was definitely apprehensive about at first. Being able to really push outside of my comfort zone and being able to see it’s not just one mold that people fit, that was something that was super eye-opening to me.”
Hickox attended the University of Florida in 2016 and obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering five years later, his LinkedIn notes. In 2020, he further honed his skills through several internships, including a design internship with Nike.
By August 2021, he had been hired as a design engineer at the company and has since been promoted to design engineer II.
“If you’re looking at a shoe, there’s a whole world of science that goes behind it,” he explained to Fast Company. “In the Bowerman Footwear Lab at Nike, it’s an innovation space. It’s a thinker space… So for me, being able to design these different components, I use a variety of different CAD programs. At Nike, prototyping is the name of the game, and what people don’t see is that you might have one pair of shoes, but really, what went behind it was hundreds of designs.”
Hickox’s design contributions include collaborating on the Nike Air Max Dn USA, which was worn by the U.S. team at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Seeing LeBron James and Simone Biles, the GOATs of their respective sports, wearing some of the shoes that I designed, that was incredible,” he expressed.
Reflecting on his journey thus far, Hickox is both humbled and amazed by his accomplishments, yet steadfast in his mission to build a lasting legacy for the next generation.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would be working with Nike world headquarters. The biggest thing that I want to leave behind is just the legacy of, ‘Hey, you belong. Do you have opportunity here? Go chase it,'” he said.
