Jasmine Maietta earned a BA in Anthropology at Bowdoin College and a Master’s in Economics at Trinity College-Hartford. She then worked in Marketing and Global Brand Development for major corporations such as Hasbro, Reebok and Peloton. During her college years, Jasmine had been a varsity basketball player and assistant team coach. Not surprisingly, these two skills combined in June of 2020, when she founded her company, round21.
round21 is a unique combination of arts and sports. The idea for round21 came in 2018, after Jasmine had spent decades around athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, and entertainers who love sports. Athletes often express their identity with art on hoodies or sneakers, but footballs, basketballs, ping pong paddles and soccer balls remained a blank slate.
Jasmine believes that sports and art should coexist, and there’s a creator and connector in every player. She founded round21 to give today’s outspoken athletes a way to say something about who they are with what they play with. Jasmine says that her passion for marketing and brand-building actually stems from her undergraduate studies in anthropology, where she learned to “dig into” people and the cultures that shape them. A second generation Indian-American, she also credits her big, tight-knit family with inspiring her to learn and grow through experiences of others as well as her own.
Partnering with a roster of multicultural creative artists (some of whom have been professional athletes themselves) round21 produces artistically decorated athletic equipment. round21 was featured on Forbes’ Next 1000 list for 2021.
In an interview by Alexandra Spier of Authority Magazine, Jasmine explained that switching from a large corporate culture to a small start-up business was not easy. She needed to unlearn many accepted ways of thinking and doing business. Particularly difficult was establishing a business during the pandemic, and she realized she had underestimated how small and unproven her brand was. She quickly realized that she needed to help her artist partners and suppliers understand and work with the potential of round21, rather than becoming discouraged by the current situation.
Jasmine is driven by an entrepreneurial soul and constantly strives to improve by building on both her successes and her shortcomings. She goes by the old adage that you never lose, you just win or learn.
