Surf Breaks to Space Suits: Jes Stockhausen on Storytelling at Oakley

Oakley’s Global Content Manager Jes Stockhausen has lived the story he now tells. After backpacking across Asia and then spending five years driving the Pan-American Highway in a self-built van, Jes learned to create anywhere. Hot-spotting edits from a remote Mexican point break, fixing breakdowns in Spanish, and eventually returning stateside with Pacha, a Patagonian herding dog he and his (now) wife rescued en route.

Back at Oakley, Jes applies that same resourceful mindset to brand storytelling and sustainability. He’s helping lead a cross-functional push toward the circular economy, prioritizing credible impact over buzzwords and using lifecycle thinking to unlock real innovation. We get into the projects that carry his thumbprint: reframing Oakley Standard Issue around service, launching an innovative surf helmet athletes actually want to wear, celebrating the brand’s 50th anniversary, and—yes—the wild one: a partnership with Axiom Space in which the next person on the moon could wear an Oakley visor.

It’s a conversation about creativity as problem-solving, why “sustainability” is the brief of our generation, and how living simply can sharpen what really matters in work and life. Pack a bag, this one covers a lot of miles.