NEW YORK, USA // Charece Williams Gee currently serves as a Head of NBA & Hoops Partnerships at PepsiCo North America Beverages where she spearheads all national and regional basketball partnership marketing for Pepsico beverage brands. This includes 9 athletes, 12 NBA/WNBA teams, and grassroots basketball partnerships, and of course the NBA/WNBA/G League partnerships. Prior to this role, she oversaw baseball, soccer & Hispanic fan strategy for Pepsi sports. She started her Pepsico career on the brand marketing side, developing portfolio promotions in conjunction with marquee events such as Super Bowl and NBA playoffs before her role expanded to include portfolio and packaging innovation.
Charece began her professional career as Account Development Manager at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex where she spearheaded business development initiatives. Thereafter, Charece worked for Wasserman Media Group as a marketing consultant. She first consulted on the Wells Fargo account before moving to NYC to overseeing the American Express team sports efforts. Most recently, Charece was Vice President, External Relations & Strategic Planning for the National Basketball Retired Players Association. (NBRPA). Along the way, Charece developed a reputation as a trailblazer, based on her continuous pursuit to learn and push boundaries.
Charece’ s diverse career, spanning across property, agency, non-profit, and brand roles within sports, have resulted in award winning efforts. Charece, a graduate of NC State University where she was captain and MVP of the women’s volleyball team, was recently named Top 40 under 40 by The Network in October 2019. She was also presented the She-Mogul Award by WISE Atlanta during the 2019 Sports Power Brunch during Super Bowl. She has been heralded for her tenacity and vision, her ability to sell in new ideas, and pushing her company to new heights. For all those reasons, Charece was recently honored as a Rising Star during the 2019 Shadow League Awards.
Charece defines her proudest career moments as those where she can amplify the voice of women and other under-represented groups. A few of her favorites include the signing of A’Ja Wilson as the first WNBA endorser for Mountain Dew and becoming the first brand sponsor for the WNBA 3-point competition. Additionally, while at the NBRPA, Charece spearheaded the change of the organization’s bylaws, to make the resources of the nonprofit available to former WNBA players. In her “free” time, Charece Co-chair’s Mosaic, PepsiCo’s African American Employee Resource as a way to grow and advance diverse talent. Her work with MOSAIC helped her win the prestigious Harvey C. Russel Award for Diversity, given annually by PepsiCo’s CEO.
Upon graduating Cum Laude with a B.S. in Business Management from NC State, Charece went on to earn an M.B.A and Master of Sports Business Management from the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida. While completing her double Master’s program, Charece served as an Academic Counselor for football team and as a Player Development Associate for the National Basketball Association.