Nicole Jeter West
Age: 38
Organization: U.S. Tennis Association
Title: Managing director, ticketing and digital strategy
Where born: Jersey City, N.J.
Education: University of Delaware (B.S., business administration, marketing)
Family: Husband, Rodney; children, Xavier (10), Tyler (7) and Sydney (3)
Favorite way to unwind: Good friends, good food, good times.
Causes supported: North Stelton AME Church, women’s ministry; I Can Foundation, youth empowerment.
Most thrilling/adventurous thing I’ve ever done: I ate fire on my honeymoon.
Person in the industry I’d most like to meet: Sheila Johnson.
If I could change jobs with anyone for a day, it would be: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The department’s mission is to serve America’s students. As an African-American, Latina, the first to graduate college in my immediate family, and now mother of three, I would like to experience firsthand how the secretary of education can directly impact the future of our country.
2015 will be a good year if: My family is healthy and happy, and we sell out every session of the U.S. Open.
My fellow Forty Under 40 class members would be surprised to know that I: Left sports to be the CMO of Evelyn’s Kitchen, a baked goods and catering company in East Harlem.
JENNIFER POTTHEISER
icole Jeter West had to be persuaded three years ago to give up her marketing job at the U.S. Tennis Association to take a new position heading the group’s digital media division.
USTA Chief Revenue Officer Lew Sherr finally convinced her it was a good career move — and it was.
“Sports marketing was my comfort zone,” said West, who came to the USTA in 2011 after having worked nine years previously with Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks. “I wasn’t into technology.”
She quickly got over the hesitation and jumped into a job in which she drives digital across the USTA’s professional tennis events, most notably
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SBJ Podcast:
Forty Under 40 editor Mark Mensheha and Executive Editor Abraham Madkour discuss this year's class, some of the more interesting stories in it and how the selection process works.
the U.S. Open.
By all metrics, she said, from Web traffic and fan engagement to digital ads, growth is double-digit percentages annually in her time running the group. Previously, she said, the trends were single-digit or flat. It helps that the USTA’s digital team works alongside traditional advertising, she added. That way, the USTA pitches companies on multilayered proposals.
This coming fall will mark the first time ESPN will cover the entire U.S. Open, a move that has both pros and cons possibly for digital. More matches will be streamed, but they will no longer be available via a click on USOpen.org. Fans will need to authenticate through ESPN. In addition, for the first time, the U.S. Open website this year will have a 30-minute to one-hour, twice-daily desk-type show (produced by the USTA) during the tournament. The host has not been chosen, but attraction to millennials will be a key factor in the hire, she said.
From that initial reluctance till now, all in all, West calls the last three years the most fun she has ever had in sports.
— Daniel Kaplan
