THE AMBER WEITZER PODCAST SILHOUETTES OF SUCCESS
JENNIFER SEY | EPISODE 93 | SHOW NOTES
FEATURED GUEST
Introducing our V.I.P. Featured Guest Jennifer Sey: Jennifer spent close to 23 years at Levi Strauss & Co., holding a variety of leadership positions. She began in 1999 as an entry level marketing assistant and became the Global Brand President in 2020, the first woman to hold this post. As a child, Jen led an intense life of dedication, challenge and competition. She won the U.S. National Gymnastics Championship title in 1986, less than one year after having suffered a devastating injury at the 1985 World Championships.
In 2008, Sey released a memoir, “Chalked Up,” a New York Times E-Book Best Seller detailing her triumphs and struggles within the world of competitive gymnastics. In 2020, with the release of “Athlete A”, an award-winning documentary on Netflix laying bare the abuses in the Olympic movement, Jen added Emmy winning Producer to her list of credits.
In 2020 Jennifer spoke out about the harms to children from school closures during the pandemic. Her calls to prioritize children went against the mainstream narrative and she faced pressure from the company she had committed more than two decades of her life to to stay quiet. After 28 years in the corporate world, Jennifer Sey left it all to speak her mind. Now she’s doing just that. She has a book coming out in November 2022. The memoir will focus on what it’s like to be a woman in newly “woke” corporate America.
She also has a Substack newsletter called Sey Everything which is focusing on many of the same themes and aims to be a place where independent thinkers can share their views and challenge today’s prevailing media narratives. Lastly, she is producing and directing a feature-length documentary film that focuses on the impact to children from school closures and other restrictions during the pandemic.
Jennifer Sey may have lost her job, but she kept her voice, and she aims to use it.
CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS
Truth: She starts by sharing her unique experience of growing up in an intense environment of training as a young elite gymnastics athlete and U.S. National Gymnastics champion starting around the age of nine years old and moving away at the age of thirteen years old. She went to college and talks about her first real job in the marketing field. Jennifer talks about having creative aspirations such as writing, make movies but was shy on confidence. In 1999 she began her career with Levi Strauss & Co. working her way up from an entry level assistant position to Brand President. She loved the company, culture, and product. Jennifer shares the journey of navigating life in learning for herself, building confidence in seeing the truth, an awakening of sorts. Believing in her own eyes and ears. She realized that her strength and skill as a leader was to see a complicated or complex situation and simplify it. She is now, at 53 years of age an independent working in her element and using her own voice in her Substack Sey Anything, making films and writing a book.
Winner: Her days are a bit different now as an independent entrepreneur versus the corporate days, but she’s structured, maybe a little looser but still structured! She is making sure she gets in her exercise, family, and allotted time for her various projects. Her rule as it pertains to exercise is tune in to find out-so relatable! Consistency over intensity-winner! One thousand percent she turns to her husband for support, she proudly speaks to their partnership and a winning combination. He talks the talk, walks the walk and helps to remind her to be do what she thinks is right, to use her voice and to make herself bigger instead of smaller. They have only grown strong over their journey together.
Next: She has so many wonderful projects, the book recent release, the cheerful tone in her voice as she talks about leading a team…a big team in the corporate world and getting to know her new community in Denver. The options are endless for this Silhouette, stay tuned!
INTENTIONAL INSPIRATION
Use your voice, Sey the thing.
RESOURCE LIST
JENNIFER SEY
Levi’s Unbuttoned by Jennifer Sey
Favorites:
Drinking, A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke
