NBA taps former consultant as new chief marketing officer
The National Basketball Association has hired Kate Jhaveri as its new chief marketing officer. Jhaveri, who has held several high-profile marketing positions in Silicon Valley, started her career as a consultant at A.T. Kearney.
Jhaveri takes over as CMO on August 15, replacing Pam El, who retired at the end of 2018. She will report to NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO Mark Tatum.
As CMO, Jhaveri will lead global marketing operations for the NBA, its developmental league (the G League), and its esports league (NBA 2K League), guiding marketing campaigns and brand messaging across all platforms. She will also lead the consumer insights and analytics departments to enhance the NBA’s consumer data strategy.
The basketball league recently saw its least-watched, lowest-rated finals in the last 10 years when the Toronto Raptors won the 2019 championship. However, with playoff MVP Kawhi Leonard having departed the Raptors for the LA Clippers, the league will, in all probability, receive a large market Finals matchup after a one-year blip.
The NBA is a particularly social media–savvy league, with 1.6 billion likes and followers across platforms. The NBA’s fans also skew much younger than other pro sports leagues.
Jhaveri joins the NBA from Amazon’s video game viewing platform Twitch, where she served as CMO for the past two years. During that time, she established the company’s brand strategy, led a global team of 90 people, and was responsible for growing and engaging Twitch’s 15 million daily active viewers.
Before that, Jhaveri was Twitter’s head of consumer marketing for three years, managing consumer-facing campaigns that drove increased user growth, engagement, and brand relevance. She also previously spent three years at Facebook as head of brand and mobile marketing.
Earlier in her career, Jhaveri spent seven years at Microsoft, where she oversaw the global marketing communications team for Windows, Internet Explorer, and bing.com. She started her career at management consultancy A.T. Kearney, where she was a strategy consultant for four years and worked with numerous Fortune 100 companies.
Jhaveri holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross.
“Kate is an industry leader who has an excellent record in creating successful marketing strategies for some of the most renowned companies in the world,” Tatum said. “We are looking forward to adding Kate to our team and having her lead our marketing efforts to further reach and engage our global fanbase.”
