March is Women’s History Month, and we recently marked International Women’s Day, so I wanted to catch up with Jennifer Sey – a woman who is not afraid to risk it all to stand for what’s right.
Jennifer Sey talks about starting the XX-XY Athletics company
Jennifer Sey talks about starting the XX-XY Athletics company
USA TODAY staff
Five years ago this week, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
COVID-19 disrupted all of our lives in major ways. For Jennifer Sey, the pandemic led to monumental changes that are still being felt today.
Sey had a successful career that she loved at Levi’s, serving as the iconic San Francisco company’s global brand president. When she began speaking up in 2020 about the harm that was being done to kids – including her own – by keeping schools shuttered far longer than necessary, she raised the ire of her colleagues.
Yet, Sey wouldn’t back down, and she was eventually pushed out from Levi’s in 2022 for simply speaking the truth.
Sey, a former national gymnastics champion, is still telling it like it is. She’s turned her truth-telling to women’s sports and has become a fierce advocate for keeping women’s athletics and spaces for women only.
In March 2024, she launched her own clothing brand, XX-XY Athletics, to raise awareness about the problems that come with allowing transgender athletes on women’s teams and to advocate for women in sports.
March is Women’s History Month, and we recently marked International Women’s Day, so I wanted to catch up with Sey – a woman who is not afraid to risk it all to stand for what’s right.
Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
I want to start by asking you about President Donald Trump’s recent signing of the executive order protecting fairness in women’s sports. You were there, standing right behind him. Talk to me about that, especially given the fact that not long ago you were a Democrat.
Well, it’s been five years since I’ve been a Democrat. So I’ve become accustomed to not being one anymore. I’m registered as an independent, and I did vote for Trump this last time, not the two previous times, but my parents, my siblings, my in-laws, all Democrats, my former friends, all Democrats. So I’m very familiar with where they’re coming from on all of these issues and how righteous they feel.
I think first and foremost, I was honored to be invited to it. I didn’t know what it would be like. As it turned out, there were probably a few hundred women in the room, many of whom I knew.
So it was a really nice moment for all of these women to be acknowledged and honored for the hard work that we’ve all done in the last few years.
I will stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone willing to fight with me on this issue. I mean, I did support him and I voted for him. But outside of that, even if I hadn’t, he’s absolutely 1,000% doing the right thing on this issue. And I was proud and honored to be there at the end of the day.
You’ve been calling out the NCAA to really stand up for women’s sports. They made some changes after the executive order, but what would you like to see them do?
I think that the title of their policy kind of reveals their intentions. The title is related to transgender athletes in NCAA sports. It isn’t protecting women’s sports. So I think they sort of reveal their inclinations with the title.
I feel like the policy is no good at all, that it needs to be trashed, thrown away and done over. From my perspective, there are two major flaws, the first being it doesn’t set a clear boundary for who can participate in women’s sports.
The second is in the policy. They go to great lengths to state that athletes can still participate on the teams that align with their gender identity and receive all benefits except competing. So to my mind that says they could get scholarships, they can be in the locker room, they can practice with the team, they can travel with the team. They’re basically a member of the team.
I feel like these loopholes are intentional. They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth, and they aren’t really going the distance to protect women’s sports. And I’m not alone in that.
It’s been about a year exactly since you started XX-XY Athletics. How are things going and can you talk about what sparked your interest in starting this company?
I was an elite gymnast as a child, so I have a long background as a high-level athlete. I certainly recognized the value and benefits for women and girls in competing in sports and believe very strongly in that even though in my case it went a little awry in terms of the abusive culture of gymnastics. I still believe I benefited more than I lost. And I care deeply about protecting female athletes and giving other girls the opportunities that I had.
I was a long-standing corporate executive, fashion executive and brand builder ousted from that community because of my COVID dissenting ways. And so I just found myself out of a job and trying to figure out what was next for me. I realized at that point I was not going to get uncanceled, and I would have to make my own way.
I’m the breadwinner in my family. I need to work. I want to work, and so I just had this idea that in the throes of woke capitalism, there are so many Americans that feel pushed away by large mainstream brands and maybe there’s an opportunity to combine my athletic background and my corporate expertise. And it was just like a lightbulb moment.
And we were off to the races, and I just sort of had a real hunch that a brand like this could change the cultural conversation and be very successful. And I certainly recognize that brands can have a real impact on how we think about issues.
I don’t think we can win until we normalize standing up for this very kind of commonsense issue. So I thought we could be a significant part of making it normal to stand up and say, “Hey, girls sports are for girls.” Seems like a normal thing to do.
It’s been three years since you were pushed out of Levi’s. How has this transition been for you? Are you happy with the decision that you made to stand up for what you believe and the right to say it?
I have no regrets. You know, it’s not that this transition time in my life hasn’t been difficult. Most people don’t do startups in their mid-50s. I certainly thought I would retire in San Francisco, a city I’d lived in for over 30 years and from a company that I had worked at for 23 years.
But I don’t regret anything. I will never not stand up for free speech, truth and children. It’s kind of that simple. I don’t know how else to say it. I wish someone had stood up for me when I was training and being in a very abusive environment when I was a child.
I think as adults we have that obligation to children, not just our own children. And look, I was right. I was right about everything, so why would I regret it?
You know the ramifications firsthand of speaking out for what you believe. What advice would you give young female athletes who believe strongly on this issue?
You have to do it anyway. You have to. The truth is too important and the only reason the bullies are able to get away with that kind of harassment is because good people remain silent.
We’re the majority. If we all stood together and locked arms and said we stand for truth, we stand for biological reality, and we stand for women and girls, the cultural conversation would change overnight and the policies would then be downstream from that.
Support the people that are doing it already, and then join us. Because the truth is just too important.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques
