LEADERSHIP Conversations with the Captains of Industry
Betting on Robots Over Hype: ‘Viral Videos Don’t Pack Boxes’
Initially, I went to school for fashion design. But I’ve always loved building businesses—and I didn’t have famous parents or a giant trust fund—so I thought I’d better get a business degree. Although I shifted course, my design background helped make my journey possible. Like many creative fields, fashion design is cutthroat and requires long hours, persistence, and the ability to handle criticism. My background also honed my ability to identify patterns in data that aren’t immediately obvious but can inform new directions. It also taught me how to tackle problems. In my role, I rally a group of smart people to innovate and solve those problems. I’ve been at Rapid Robotics for three years, starting as chief marketing officer before taking on responsibility for the sales organization. About a year ago, I became CEO. I love the sales side of my job, where I get to interact with heads of supply chains at various companies. They’re creative problem solvers, and it’s energizing. IL: What has been at the top of your agenda as CEO? From our start in 2019, Rapid Robotics has had a vision of building a robotic workforce to complement the human workforce and eliminate labor shortages. We’re pursuing this goal a bit differently from many other companies. I try to approach everything from a customer-first mindset: What does the customer actually need? How can we offer a solution in a way that helps the customer quickly adopt it? As we were figuring this out, I visited warehouse after warehouse, where I’d see a line of people doing monotonous, repetitive work. Sometimes, the lines were down simply because there weren’t enough people to do the work. These observations helped lead to the latest evolution in the Rapid Robotics story. In our experience, units per hour is the metric that matters in much of the warehouse industry. Our robot is designed to stand at a line and pick, pack, and palletize with the speed of a human. IL: What was behind the decision to create a stationary robot? Given today’s technology, we needed to eliminate some of the variables to create a robot that could quickly pick and pack, as ours does. In this first phase, we chose to restrict mobility— though our robot is repositionable. It has the footprint of a human and can pack with speed comparable to a human.
Kimberley Losey, CEO, Rapid Robotics
From fashion design to robotics CEO, Kimberley Losey’s journey defies convention. But it’s her relentless focus on solving real problems that’s redefining automation and reshaping warehouse robotics, one human- footprint robot at a time.
by Karen Kroll
10 Inbound Logistics • June 2025
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