Name: Gabrielle Valdez Dow
Title: Packers VP/Marketing & Fan Engagement
Age: 44
Where I’m from: S.F.
Where I call home: Green Bay
Focusing on right now: Improving gameday presentation.
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Dow said there are a lot of "unique and eclectic"
restaurants in the Green Bay area |
Best advice: Always stay true to who you are. Being true to myself helps me be the person I am in terms of how I treat my team, how I lead my team. The other piece of advice that always resonates with me is listen, keep listening, listen some more.
A must for a new hire: Passion for the business of sports. Do you understand and do you want to be part of the business of sports? I think every hire really depends on what position you’re hiring for, so I would just ask that they come with the qualifications and experience that obviously marries with that job. Also, new hires need to do their homework on jobs in sports and who they’re talking to.
Exec I admire most: My new boss, Packers President & CEO MARK MURPHY. We were in Miami on Sunday walking together around the entire Dolphins stadium in 100-degree weather in suits. We’re both sweating profusely, and he greeted and took pictures with every single Packer fan that came across him, that said hello. His ability to connect with every single person we ran into is one of his many skills, and I just admire that. I admire that nothing is too big or too small for him to be himself.
Best book I’ve read this year: I just started "Lean In" by SHERYL SANDBERG. It's definitely inspiring to read about a successful female executive.
First thing in the morning: I just moved to Green Bay, so the local news I turn on religiously every morning because I’m looking at the weather. Then I hit national news, and then it’s ESPN for the rest of the morning until I get to my phone for e-mail.
Talking tech: An app I use frequently is OneNote, because it makes it easy for me to review and pull up notes, and I don’t have to use paper. Everything is in my notebook and it’s fantastic. You can connect it to word, you can e-mail, you can sync up, you can do so many things. You can drop in Excel, Word anything else. It’s basically a file that kind of holds everything together for me.
Must have music: One of the fun parts of my job is I that I’ve helped change all of our gameday music. So we’ve added 500 new songs. So I listen to everything because I have to. Everything from NINE INCH NAILS to CALVIN HARRIS to EMINEM to DRAKE to WIZ KALIFA, you name it.
Food for thought: I’m a horrible cook, that’s a fact. But my husband is a great cook and so that’s a nice balance. I was pleasantly surprised moving to Green Bay that there’s lots of unique and eclectic restaurants. For such a small community it has a great selection of restaurants. There’s one called a’Bravo, and that’s my favorite so far.
How I unwind: A glass of wine. I’m not picky, I love all kinds. But, I do love a good Cabernet, or any Oregon or Washington Pinot noir.
Day in the Life: We’re looking at Wi-Fi for next year, and I think that will be a game changer for us in terms of engagement with our fans in-game and on-site. I can connect to all of those people, whether you pulled into our parking lot, stopped in our pro shop, whether you’re having lunch in our restaurant or standing in front of a picture. It depends on what we do with push notifications and engagement. We don’t want to bombard them, but how do we make their experience unique and fun without, again, feeling like big brother?
