With Super Bowl XLVIII just under three months away, sponsors such as PepsiCo and its Senior VP/Global Sports Marketing JENNIFER STORMS have been working overtime on event preparations. Storms along with other PepsiCo brand execs have spent the week in N.Y. doing site visits and hashing out other Super Bowl activation plans with the N.Y./N.J. Host Committee. While the sports marketing business tends to require a seven-day-a-week commitment, Storms this weekend is looking forward to breaking a sweat and getting some fresh air with her six-year-old yellow lab Bo near her Greenwich, Conn., home.
GYM RATS: This Friday night I’ll probably get home hopefully by 6:00pm (ET), and Friday night typically is gym night, which I know sounds a little bit different, but myself and my boyfriend like to go on Friday nights because typically we’re the only ones in the gym and we kind of have the space to ourselves. So we get a nice workout in and it’s a good way to finish up the week. We are all strength and conditioning and spend all of our time lifting weights. We’ve got a four-set rotation that we do, and we work out at least four days a week doing that rotation. It’s really helped get me a lot stronger and helped with some old ski racing injuries that don’t bother me as much anymore given some better muscle strengths.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: We usually follow up the gym with some carryout from one of our favorite places in Greenwich and downtime at the house. We absolutely love -- and half the time go to -- the good old Pizza Post in Greenwich, which is an oldie and a goodie for some great pizza and Italian. And then we do love Thai Basil, which is just off (Greenwich) Avenue. One of our favorite places to eat in, we’ve never really done takeout there but we would if we could, would be Mediterraneo on the Avenue. They all are awesome places. We’re blessed with really good food in and around the Greenwich area.
IT’S A DOG’S LIFE: I am an early riser. A lot of times Saturday it’s because of my priority being my “yellow son,” my yellow lab. He and I get up really early on Saturday mornings -- it’s kind of our little thing together -- we wake up and he’s already downstairs waiting by his leash because he knows that we’re going for a hike. So Saturday mornings I love to just get up and out early to the hiking trails and to the park and Bo gets to run off-leash so he just has a ball. We hike the trails for I’d say about an hour and then he gets his favorite tennis ball to finish up our time and he gets to play fetch in the river so that he kind of cools off from the hike and just gets a little bit of swimming in which is better for his muscles. We go to Mianus Park -- it’s about 10 minutes away -- and it’s really fun when you go consistently and really early on Saturday mornings because you get to know some of the same dog owners and people that are there.
DINNER & A MOVIE: Saturday nights if I’m not traveling that’s usually when it’s date night and dinner out. We go to one of our favorite restaurants in the area, like Mediterraneo, or something up in Stamford or we try something new. Then we go out afterwards and try to catch something that we haven’t done before, a movie or something like that. I absolutely love movies that are very deep and thoughtful, but at the end of the day a lot of times when I’m going to movies it’s just to unwind, so comedies and mysteries and thrillers and action movies are typically the ones that I gravitate towards. Every once in a while we’ll try to go down and do something fun in New York City and go for dinner and a show or something to just get into the city and enjoy all that it has to offer.
CHILI WEATHER: I love fall Sundays in particular because it means football and cooking comfort food. Right now my claim to fame is I’m perfecting a turkey chili and cornbread recipe that’s awesome for cold fall days and watching football. But uniquely, this Sunday I’m actually going to be traveling. I’m going to head out to Northwestern Univ. and I’m really excited to be part of their Wildcat Professional Excellence Program. I wasn’t able to attend last year’s, so I wanted to make sure that this year I definitely was able to get out there. So I’ll go out there for the day and basically what it is is Northwestern brings together alums from many different areas of business and they give their junior student-athletes the opportunity to build relationships with us and sort of network with us. Hopefully what it does is open doors for those student-athletes post college. I enjoy doing that. I’m so blessed to be in the sports industry and have a job that I love, so anytime that I can give back, especially when it is my alma mater, I want to do so.
PURPLE PRIDE: I know that it’s a quick turnaround, but I really hope to be able to spend some quality time (at Northwestern) and see (VP/Athletics & Recreation) JIM PHILLIPS and folks from the athletics department as well as some of my Gatorade peeps that are going to be there and WALLY HAYWARD from the Cubs who is a good friend also is going to be there. So hopefully I will be able to catch up as well with some business counterparts. It’s on campus so I am going to hopefully take on a very quick trip to the student book store to pick up some holiday gifts because my folks are both Northwestern alums as well. I just figured I could grab a couple fun items and wrap them up for mom and dad for Christmas.
