cj foeckler
If Uber had been around when Jessie Giordano was in college in the early 2000s, she might have had an altogether different career path. She volunteered to drive Sportsmark CEO Jan Katzoff, who was visiting Mercyhurst College’s Erie, Pa., campus, to the Buffalo airport nearly 100 miles away. Those 90 minutes turned out to be Giordano’s interview for a job with the agency where she has worked ever since.
Senior Vice President, Client Consulting and Services, and Head of GMR, San Francisco, GMR Marketing
Age: 36
Born: Cleveland
Education: Mercyhurst College, B.A., business, concentration in sport marketing; Ohio University, Master in Sports Administration
Family: Husband, Steve; children, stepdaughter Karley (18), Emma (5), Jack (2)
Guilty pleasure: I have homemade oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies and a glass of milk every night before bed.
Could not go a day without: Laughter.
Persons in the industry I’d most like to meet: Two: Megan Rapinoe and Arthur Blank.
Most unusual question asked while networking: I was asked “If you were an alcoholic beverage what would you be?” I said that I would be a bloody mary: It’s very adaptable, you can dial up or down the potency and drink at pretty much any time of day.
Sports industry needs to do a better job of … : Finding a path to true measurement and ROI. There’s so much data flowing now across the business, you hope that will lead us there.
You would be surprised to know that I … : Am a theater geek, so occasionally I will perform poems and raps during staff meetings.
“Even then, Jessie had whatever the ‘it factor’ is,” recalled Katzoff, now a senior consultant to Engine Shop. “She’s always prepared and always in the right place.”
Giordano started on the events and operations side of the business, learning on a grand scale on big stages, such as the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany and on Final Four executions for The Hartford.
“Jessie had all the intangibles from the beginning,” said Dave Lafrennie, LPGA vice president of corporate partnerships and administration, who worked with Giordano when he was a sponsorship executive at The Hartford. “She had great attention to detail, and if something went sideways, she already had a Plan B.”
After earning her master’s, Giordano returned to the agency in 2010, in a business development role. As Sportsmark grew, and was later acquired by Omnicom’s GMR, she helped expand its consulting practice.
“We showed the market that along with our hospitality expertise, we were also an experiential strategy agency,” Giordano said. Nonetheless, she cited hospitality efforts with the NFL (NFL House) and the 2013 America’s Cup on San Francisco Bay as two of GMR’s proudest accomplishments in her time.
Giordano still loves “never having the same day twice. … The degree to which our clients trust us is unusually high,’’ she said. “The competitor in me really enjoys that.”
