Serena Williams Gets Her Name on a Building at Nike’s Campus

Tennis sensation Serena Williams has much to celebrate this week. The legendary player has accomplished a long-time goal of getting her name onto a building on Nike’s campus.

Williams, who has won more Grand Slam singles titles (23) than any other athlete during the open era, is set to open on the Nike World Headquarters campus in Beaverton, Oregon this week.

According to Nike, the geographic namesake covers the equivalent of 140 full-size tennis courts and is 1 million square feet, the largest building on the campus.

It has 140,000 square feet of showrooms, a color lab, materials library and a 140-seat Olympia Theater, named after Williams’ daughter.

The building is where Nike’s consumer creation team will bring new ideas to life and “create the future of sport.”

Williams, 40, says that this accomplishment has been a dream of hers since she was young.

“When I was just a kid, I visited the Nike campus and I saw that athletes get buildings,” she said on Instagram on Wednesday. “After that visit, I knew I wanted two things: to be a Nike athlete and to have a building.”

The tennis star says the achievement is “beyond an honor,” saying she had chill bumps from seeing the result of her “blood, sweat, and many tears.”

“Now, design teams at Nike can consider a product from its initial sketch through product development and into the way it retails in a store, all in a single building,” Jeff Kovel, principal design director at Skylab, the firm that designed the building, told Architectural Digest.

“King Richard,” the biographical drama film about Williams and her family, received six Academy Award nominations, and took home the Oscar for best actor.

“The whole building takes your breath away. Every element, everywhere you go, is an opportunity to be inspired. I hope this building encourages people to bring out the best of themselves and to dream bigger than they thought possible,” she told Nike.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.