Chelsea Lake Roberts

Chelsea is the Director of Brand & Design at Truscott Rossman where she recently led the visual identity and voice development for one of the largest riverfront projects in the country. With a multidisciplinary background that includes 5 years of business development for local NPR stations, Chelsea is a valued agency leader who is always dreaming up new ways to wow clients and grow our pipeline of work.

As the firm’s creative director and a lead on select clients, Chelsea is a trusted thought partner to both external and internal teams on strategy, brand, and design. Although she is not a graphic designer, she brings years of agency copywriting, as well as two decades of visual art practice to her role as design lead. She conducts creative review with an eye for how designs deliver on the client’s business goals and are aligned to brand strategy, as well as the overall development of the designers. 

Chelsea is a strengths-based leader, who encourages her direct reports to lean into their natural talents and motivations while providing behind the scenes support by clearing obstacles. She prides herself on leading by example and fostering a good-natured yet direct communication style that appeals to high-performing and wildly talented individuals. Although she is a natural leader, Chelsea’s strengths are actually in strategy, including planning, researching, learning, deliberation, and, above all: writing. She has a budding interest in the intersection between brand strategy and market research. 

Outside of work Chelsea is a fine artist and creative writer whose practice explores the construction of meaning in a visually saturated world. She has exhibited abstract collage and found poetry throughout Michigan. She conducts collage workshops which are designed to break artists out of ruts and push their limits. 

Chelsea is also a local theatre reviewer and freelance writer for the Lansing City Pulse where she has contributed over fifty pieces of arts and culture journalism. After earning her Masters degree in 2015, her peer-reviewed research into political theatre of the 1960s was published by JSR: The Journal for the Study of Radicalism at Michigan State University Press in 2020. Her longform essay about Ohio death row inmate Keith Lamar was published by Belt Magazine in 2023.

Select Clients Served
Delta Airlines
Cincinnati Metro
MEDC
MiSTEM
Grand Riverfront
Michigan Voices
Everblue Lakes

Portfolio and samples are only available upon request.