Born in Detroit, Culture Shift Team founding partner, Robert Lawrence Wilson is a Nashvlle-based entrepreneur leading CST’s Diversity, Inclusion and Equity division. With more than 15 years of experience in diversity management, multicultural marketing, customer experience strategy, and leadership development, Robert develops comprehensive strategy and training for corporations, non-profit organizations, higher education, and government agencies. In addition to overall inclusion strategy, Robert also provides racial equity strategy and deployment expertise.
Robert served in executive roles at Nissan North America, including Nissan’s director of Customer Experience and Nissan’s first director of Diversity and Inclusion where he developed and led Nissan’s diversity practice, spanning Nissan’s operations in North and South America, as well as a multicultural marketing strategy. As director of diversity and inclusion, Robert developed and led Nissan’s diversity practice, spanning Nissan’s operations in North and South America. He also held responsibility for Nissan’s multicultural marketing strategy resulting in significant market share gains in key ethnic markets.
Under his leadership Nissan received Diversity Inc.’s recognition as one of their top 25 noteworthy companies for diversity and inclusion in 2014 and 2015. In his customer experience leadership role, Robert led the development and execution of Nissan’s customer experience business plan and held responsibility for customer experience at all of Nissan’s nearly 1200 US dealerships. In addition to his executive roles, Robert has held leadership positions in manufacturing, quality, and engineering at three fortune 100 corporations.
Highly regarded for his leadership, strategic thinking, and change management expertise, he is also known for his high level of community engagement serving on the leadership boards of three non-profit organizations promoting greater access to quality education for our nation’s most at-risk student population.
As a co-founder and executive director of the Tennessee Diversity Consortium, Robert leads a peer cohort group for DEI practitioners.
Robert holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a master’s degree in business administration from Duke University.
