Get to know Logan Hickox, a mechanical engineer who currently works as a Nike design engineer. A University of Florida graduate, Hickox has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.
In an interview with Fast Company, he noted that he grew up loving sports and not engineering. He only got interested in engineering after seeing flyers at his school promoting a meeting for students interested in robotics. He joined the robotics team through the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST Robotics) program and went on to earn the prestigious FIRST Dean’s List Award in 2015, inspiring him to pursue mechanical engineering at the University of Florida.
“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.”
In 2021, he was hired as a design engineer at Nike and subsequently got promoted to design engineer II. Before that, he had honed his skills through internships, including a design internship with the sports company.
“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…,” he noted.
“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,” he added.
At Nike, Hickox collaborated on the design of 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.
For the engineer, working with Nike was his wildest dream.
“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.
