Community Impact, Sports Fandom, and Brand Growth With Marissa Solis of The NFL

 

In this episode of UNAIDED,  Marissa Solis joins Evan Brandoff to talk about how she has been applying purposeful growth throughout her career–from her incredible eighteen-plus years at PepsiCo to her current role leading all global brand and marketing initiatives for the NFL. Marissa dives deeper by discussing the community impact of sports on brands as they continue to grow. For Marissa, sports are the ultimate connector. We can see this in the way sports fandoms create energy, loyalty, and community that brands can leverage. Join her in this conversation as you discover the power of sports to brand growth and, most importantly, to the community.

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Community Impact, Sports Fandom, And Brand Growth With Marissa Solis Of The NFL

We welcome Marissa Solis onto the show. After incredible eighteen-plus years at PepsiCo, Marissa now leads all global brand and marketing initiatives for the NFL. Let’s get into it.

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Marissa, thank you so much for coming to the show.

Thanks for having me. This is great. I’m looking forward to it.

Likewise. First off, it’s our Longhorns’ big game. It’s March 24th, 2023. We’re playing Xavier. What do you think? Do you think we could beat Xavier and make it to the Elite 8?

I always root for the Horns. I’m hoping that the Horns do well. We shall see.

It is great to have a fellow Longhorn on the show. Speaking of which, did you grow up in Texas? Where are you from originally?

Originally, I’m from Mexico City but at the ripe age of ten years old, I moved to South Texas. I grew up in what’s called the Rio Grande Valley. You’re Longhorn. You might know. It’s South Texas in the border area. I grew up there and ended up doing my high school years in Texas.

How was your English when you moved to Texas?

I went to an American school in Mexico City to start kindergarten and first grade. I knew a little bit of English but Spanish was my first language. I learned through the years and talk the language now.

You talk the talk. What was high school like?

I grew up in a very small community. It’s about 99% Hispanic. There was only one high school in my town. It was a big high school with about 5,000 students but high dropout rates because there was a high poverty rate where I grew up. Of 5,000 students, only 500 ended up graduating. Maybe 100 went to college. It was an interesting place to grow up on the border. There were a lot of cross-border issues. That’s probably what inspired me to go to Georgetown, study international relations, and try to be an ambassador.

I should clarify. You are a Longhorn but that was grad school. That wasn’t your undergrad. I was reading an article that mentioned that you didn’t even know college was a thing until middle school or high school.

Coming from Mexico City, usually, you study higher education within your same city. You stay with your parents. I didn’t know college was a thing. Growing up in that community, it wasn’t something that a lot of people even could aspire to do. Luckily, I had a teacher take a few of us on a road trip from South Texas all the way up the East Coast and showed us some awesome universities.

Lo and behold, I fell in love with Georgetown and Washington, DC. The whole vibe was great. I was able to attend there. Ironically, I got a full scholarship through the Coca-Cola Foundation program. It’s a scholars program, which is ironic because I ended up working for PepsiCo later in my career but I’m always grateful for the full ride and the education that I got there.

Did anyone from Coca-Cola ever reach out to you once you were moving up the ranks at PepsiCo about the irony of the situation?

It’s very ironic. The program is 30 years old. They reach back and try to use it as a recruiting tool but back then, that was a 2nd or 3rd class. You get your scholarship and then move on. You provide some updates on what you’re doing in college but nobody ever reached out. Ironically enough, I ended up in CPG marketing and could have been at the Coca-Cola company but instead, I ended up at Pepsi. It’s the irony of fate.

Speaking of which, you had an incredible eighteen-plus-year career at PepsiCo. You’re making such a big impact at the NFL. There’s so much that I’m excited to dive into with you. For the purpose of this conversation, I would love to focus on purposeful growth, the power of sports for brands, and growth opportunities in the NFL. Starting with purposeful growth, you had mentioned on a prior call that if you were to teach a college course, it would be about purposeful growth.

Particularly as you got into the corporate world and the business, there’s always a focus on growth. You don’t succeed in marketing or business unless you have a growth mindset. It is always about generating value and creating that value for an organization but more and more, purpose is as if not more important. You can’t create profit for profit’s sake.

You don’t succeed in marketing or business unless you have a growth mindset.

You have to make sure you have a positive impact on the world. Companies that focus on both and are able to have a combination between growth and purpose and make sure that growth is always providing a positive impact are the organizations that I look up to and will be the real leaders. I always say that for me, that’s a goal. There’s always purposeful growth. We have to monetize to succeed. Make sure you don’t forget the obligation to give back and ensure the communities around you and the communities that quite frankly you serve as an organization grow alongside you.

Thinking about PepsiCo, for example. When we think about purposeful growth, is that happening at the PepsiCo level or the brand level? Should it be happening at both levels?

It happens at both levels. It’s a bit of top-down because the vision of the company should embody purpose. Indra’s vision was a performance with purpose, which inspired a lot of my thinking. It does have to come grassroots up too. The people within the company have to believe in that purpose. Brands are the way to bring it to life because the action that you do day-to-day comes to life through storytelling. You inspire through storytelling. What better way to do that than through the brands? At PepsiCo, the way it all came together was beautiful because PepsiCo as a whole was a performance with purpose but then each brand lived a purpose of its own. Each brand contributed to living purposefully and driving growth in a purposeful way.

That’s interesting. Can you talk through an example? Are there specific campaigns where the core values of the company come to life, which is then going to yield a culture of more success?

It’s all of it. From the PepsiCo standpoint, there are tons of examples. A good one is sustainability. When you think about the importance that sustainability has to the future of our world, and then in a certain way, the footprint that PepsiCo leaves because we sell consumer products, our food and beverage products leave a footprint in the world. When I was at PepsiCo, we had an obligation, and they still do, to make sure that we left a positive footprint and contributed to the sustainability of our environment.

Lay’s was a brand that embodied that mission. There were a lot of initiatives around sustainable packaging. They’re working on biodegradable packaging. My favorite one was a global initiative where Lays partnered with different companies to create sustainable soccer fields so that inner-city kids could come and play in these fields. They were sustainable fields made out of packaging. That’s one example. Whether it’s sustainability, diversity, inclusion, and education, there were different ways that brands through their narrative and purpose could bring to life a positive change in the world in many different areas. Performance with purpose was the mission of the company.

You brought up diversity, equity, and inclusion. As someone on that thread, you did an incredible job of building the Hispanic Business Unit at PepsiCo. If I bust the name of the unit, I apologize.

We called it HBU for short. The Hispanic Business Unit is the first of its kind in Corporate America and something I’m very proud of. It’s a perfect example of purposeful profit because it wasn’t born out of a need to say, “We need to be more inclusive. Let’s market to Latinos.” It was born out of a business need. When you look at the food and beverage world in particular, first of all, we looked at, at the time, 60 million Latinos, the growth that the Latino population was going to have in the US, the purchasing power of the population, and then the fact that Latinos over-index in snack and beverage consumption. It only made sense from a business perspective to focus on that community.

The purposeful part of it was as we are servicing this community, it is imperative that we invest in the community. We did a lot of investments in small businesses owned by Latinos and female entrepreneurs, particularly Latinas. That’s the plan now even after I’m gone. Esperanza Teasdale and Antonio Escalona are running that business unit across food and beverage and continuing to grow the business because it’s doing very well but also continuing to grow the community piece of it and the purpose behind it.

 

What I find particularly interesting is exactly what you were speaking about. There was a business need. There is an opportunity to do well by doing good, impacting specific communities, and growing your business at the same time. You mentioned that this was the first HBU.

It’s the first HBU in corporate. If you follow the history, particularly of Hispanic marketing, it was always a marketing endeavor. Multicultural marketing has been around for a long time. Brands would do Spanish-language ads or advertise in Spanish-language media. It wasn’t new. What was new was that it was truly a business unit. Everything about it was made by and for the Latino community. Our R&D was Latinos looking to make and produce products with the flavors that the Latino community loves.

We were developing products for the community. We were selling the products through the community. There are thousands of small mom-and-pop shops that sell our products all over the US. Many of these are owned by Latinos who sometimes don’t even speak English. What an amazing thing to do then to create a Latino sales force that speaks their language, that goes and services their stores, and that explains to them the assortment of products that we have.

It develops a new trust because you’re speaking the language and catering to the community. That sales force has done a tremendous role in not only forging new businesses but new relationships with all of these mom-and-pop stores. The finance, marketing, storytelling, and everything about this business unit were geared toward that community. That was the difference. That’s why it was the first of its kind because it was truly a 360 business from end to end across the board.

It’s amazing. Shifting gears slightly, in your last couple of years at PepsiCo, you’ve worked on some of the most incredible partnerships and own the relationship with the NFL for Frito-Lay North America. You believe in the power of sports. What do you see as the power of sports specifically for brands to get involved with sports?

Sports are the ultimate connector or the ultimate unifier. Everybody gathers around, whether it’s the TV in the arena or the stadium to cheer for their team. We started the call by talking about March Madness. Who doesn’t talk about March Madness in the brackets? There’s power in the fandom that it generates. That fandom creates energy, loyalty, and a community.

It’s a powerful opportunity for brands to leverage the platform to tell their stories and to leverage their goods and services. It’s a tremendous marketing opportunity. Going back to purposeful growth, it’s a great opportunity to sell your brand and product but also a great platform to do good. Sports are a unifier. Sports touches every community. It’s a platform to do well and grow your business at the same time.

That’s interesting. How can a brand, through sponsoring a sports league or a team, accomplish doing good while reaching a passionate group of target consumers?

Depending on the sport and the league, when forging those partnerships, make sure that collaboration is based on mutual values and that the conversation goes beyond, “My logo is going to be here. What are we going to sell?” What are you involved in from the community perspective? There are so many things, for example, at the NFL that we’re involved in and that we do for the community, whether it be youth in sports, whether it be women, or whether it be uplifting mentorship or education.

If your brand at the same time has those values and wants to serve the community in that way, the best way to do it is to partner with the sports league and do it together. If we have a movement on mental health, for example, what a perfect way to talk about mental health and shine the light on that issue than partnering with a sports league? The NFL could be an example or any other sports league to showcase how sports can heal and how sports can have the power of uplifting well-being and linking that to your brain. That’s a small example but there are so many things.

Empowering girls is an awesome example. P&G is a great example of how they partnered with the Olympics to use a platform, not just to empower young girls and young women in sports but they talk about the role of moms and what they have been able to do for Olympic athletes. I love that campaign. It’s an example but there are different things that companies can do with their brands by partnering with a sports organization to grow the business and deliver a positive impact in the community.

 

Doritos is working with the NFL. Is the NFL coming to Doritos and saying, “We have X initiative and would love to get Doritos involved,” or is it more so Doritos saying, “We want to support an initiative in this area. What can we do with the NFL?” Who’s typically leading the outcome of where the brand will play and impact people?

I’ve had all sorts of experiences where sometimes a brand will approach the sports entity and say, “We’re looking to do this.” There are other times when the sports entity has approached the brand, “We have this opportunity.” The best outcomes have always been when the two come together as mutual partners and when you start in a place of values. What are the core values that you represent? It’s talking back to unity, connectivity, well-being, and uplifting different communities.

When you start from that place, then everything else comes to life, “We’re going to talk about how together, for example, we can uplift the Hispanic community.” From your brand perspective, how does your brand connect to this community? What are the kinds of things you’ve done in the past? The sports entity can say the same thing. From that collaboration and dialogue come some great ideas. That is when I’ve seen things work at their best.

It can work if you already come with an opportunity, or if the league approaches you but most of the time, those things come from a transactional place, “We would love to get our logo on this stadium. Let’s sponsor the thing.” That’s great. I don’t think it truly leverages the potential of both the brand and the platform. Once you come to the table with that mutual understanding and that desire for true partnership, then magic can happen.

You see it everywhere. There are examples of that everywhere in sports, particularly in the NFL because I believe that the partnerships that the NFL has are very strong partnerships that are longstanding partnerships that for years come out of a dialogue between the brand and the league in terms of the amazing things that we can do together to grow our league, fandom, and the brand’s business but more importantly, to give that positive impact back.

I’m sure this is a question that so many of us are dying to know. How did the NFL ultimately win you over and convince you to join after over eighteen years at PepsiCo?

It was a crazy time. I always say that I’ll probably write a book about it at some point because it was a tough decision. I think of the mindset I had at the time. I was going crazy. You talk about being in a company for close to twenty years. It’s a place you consider your home and a place you love. There’s nothing wrong. It’s a place where you had the total runway to do all these great things.

My plan had always been to retire from there, “I’m going to retire from PepsiCo and go on to the next thing in my life.” All of a sudden, you throw a wrench in that plan. Part of it was that COVID changed a lot of things. I had a lot of opportunities to think about things and reflect on my life. I don’t think I was done taking risks yet. This was a tremendous risk. It was a huge risk. You’re giving up pretty much your career here to try something completely new. Part of that inspired me to take risks.

I am a lifelong learner. One of the things that drive me every day and motivate me is learning, being challenged, or learning something new. The prospect of learning the sports industry, being on the inside of the NFL, and getting to know how the place worked, what the real business was, that business model was intriguing to me. I love sports. That’s the way the league would be over.

It was like, “It is a risk. It’s exciting. You’re going to learn a lot.” Maybe part of it was proving to myself, “Can I be successful in a different thing?” and applying the same values and principles. I haven’t changed who I am. I haven’t changed my core beliefs, yet I feel I can be successful in this new world. All of those things together were what finally got me over the edge.

It’s incredible. The NFL is very lucky to have you. You were speaking about the different business objectives of the NFL. From a marketing perspective, what are the marketing objectives of the NFL versus the 32 NFL teams?

First of all, we do share a very important objective with the 32 teams, and that is the fandom. Our number one job is to grow our fan base and to continue to engage and grow the avidity of that fan base. Whether you’re a Dallas Cowboy or whether you represent the league, that ultimately is our goal. Where it differs is as a league, we want to lift the league as a whole what the power of that shield means and the power of the NFL globally but in doing so, we also want to lift the 32 teams. Those 32 teams are entities that each in and of themselves are powerful brands. It’s not any different than the model I was talking about within PepsiCo. PepsiCo was all about performance with purpose.

Each brand lived that in a very different way. For the league, it’s the same thing. We want to elevate what the league stands for, which is that unifier, that stage for epic possibilities where anything can happen, and that place of purpose or the platform for good where we are unstoppable if we all come together as one to give back to the community. That is the league. We’re all stewards of this beautiful game that bring people together, and then each brand does it in a unique way. Cowboys are very different than the Chargers, the Bucks, and the Philadelphia Eagles but in the same way, we’re a coalition that is aiming to do the same thing.

We’re all stewards of this beautiful game that brings people together.

Are you able to influence Aaron Rodgers to join the Jets? I would appreciate it if you could put in a good word.

I wish I had that power. I could put in a good word but I don’t think that my level of influence goes that high.

That’s fair enough.

I hear you. One of the things I love about this job is an incredible passion that I find everywhere I go. It was similar to Pepsi because everybody knows Doritos, Pepsi, and Lays. When you talk about your brands, people know them and love them but when you talk about the NFL, you have to say, “I work for the NFL,” and everyone is like, “What about this guy or this team?” Everybody has something, either a player that they love, a team, or this dream of being from Dallas, having been in Dallas for the past few years and remembering what it was like to win a Super Bowl. That dream stays and remains. It has been here for years. I know that dream from a Dallas perspective.

Being part of the league, I can see it across the 32 teams. For every team, the fan base has those dreams. That’s what I love the most about marketing in the league. I’m a steward of those dreams. I want to make sure that we keep creating those dreams and making them come to life for fans so that they keep engaging in the game, enjoying it, and bringing the happiness and joy that the game brings.

You mentioned flag football before. Where do you see the biggest growth opportunities for the NFL in terms of fandom?

There are so many opportunities. I’ll talk about first that from the highest of levels, our fan base is strong. Our fan base is avid. We are the biggest sports platform in America but as America changes and as the demographics continue to change, there is so much opportunity for the future. Making sure that we stay relevant to that future fan base is critical for our growth.

As we start to see those demographics diversify, the values that Gen Z and young people bring to the table, and women participating, we’re making sure we’re talking to every community out there. That’s going to be important for relevance. Relevance will equal growth in the future. That’s at the core of everything but when you talk about particular pillars, I’ll start with media and entertainment.

Relevance will equal growth in the future.

We are an entertainment entity at the end of the day. The game itself is that entertaining. We’re making sure we’re reaching new audiences. Where they are and how they behave is a huge growth opportunity. You saw Thursday Night Football with Amazon. It’s the first time to do a streaming platform. It was very successful. The future growth will be being part of these platforms.

As you see as you look at Sunday Ticket coming to YouTube, all of these things are going to be very important. That’s a pillar of growth that we see. We’re making this game global. There’s so much opportunity. It jazzes me to talk about it because while we are the number one sports league in the US, we’re not number one in the world, which is interesting.

Formula One?

If you look across the world, FIFA is a massive platform. Formula One is a massive platform globally. We have an opportunity to grow all over the world. The fandom is there. We already have 400 million fans globally. The games that we have been able to do in London, Munich, and Mexico City are sold-out games. They are record-breaking games in terms of viewership. Being able to grow the game across the world is going to be a massive platform.

The last one is flag. We talked about flag and the growth of flag football. Flag isn’t new. It has been around for a while but now, there’s tremendous momentum because we see flag as the pathway to entry into our sport. It allows everyone to participate in the sport. When you participate in the sport, you’re more likely to engage in the sport as a fan.

We want to make sure the sport is accessible and reachable and that everybody has the opportunity to play. Flag is a game. It’s all the skillset and everything that football brings but it allows every gender and every ability level to come in and take part. It’s super important for us to continue to elevate it in 2023. It’s gotten tremendous momentum. We completely revamped Pro Bowl into the Pro Bowl Games. Flag was at the center of it all. That was extremely successful.

We’re now in partnership with all of our clubs in momentum mode to drive high school sanctioning for the sport across the US so that every high school has it as an official sport. It’s only sanctioned in eight states. Our goal is to make sure that it’s sanctioned in all 50 states. What’s even more exciting is we have the bid to make this sport an Olympic sport as early as LA28. By becoming an Olympic sport, imagine that it becomes a global platform, which again ties back to the global growth of the sport and how we will take it across every country.

It’s very exciting. There are other things in terms of technology and making the game accessible. We launched NFL + in 2022 as well. In terms of bringing the game to people and making sure people participate in the game and then the fan engagement across social media and the world, be our broadcast partners. The world is bright. There’s lots of room for growth.

What do you see as the biggest risk to growing fandom for the NFL?

I don’t know if you would call it a risk. I see a lot of opportunities. I’ll rephrase it because I don’t know if it’s a risk but it is what I consider an obligation. We are such a massive platform already. We are probably the most visible platform in the world. With that comes tremendous responsibility and obligation. It goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. With such a massive platform, we have to give back. We have to serve the fan base that we serve in a different way to truly live up to the potential that the platform has. The risk is not doing that because then, in my mind, you wouldn’t live up to your full potential.

The opportunity is as we grow the revenue of the game, the fan base, the viewership, and the avidity, we have to grow the impact and make sure that we’re leveraging the platform for good, whether it’s to raise awareness of critical issues that are impacting the world, whether it’s to raise money quite frankly and to give money to these critical organizations that are making a change, volunteer hours, in-kind donations, and equipment. There are so many things and so many ways the league is already contributing but to me, the biggest risk would be to have the growth and the profit side and not have the purpose side if that makes sense.

You mentioned Gen Z and Gen Alpha before. How is their engagement or interest in NFL compared to Millennials and Boomers when they were the same age that Gen Zs and Gen Alphas are now?

It’s very different. First, you start with participation. Because of COVID, we started to see deep declines in youth participation in the sport. That’s critical. That’s one of the reasons flag is so important to get the back end and get them engaged. That’s one of the things but two, if you look at Gen Z and Gen A, they engage in media and entertainment in a much different way than I engaged in it. They have so many more channels and platforms now. Their attention span, quite frankly, isn’t there.

It’s not like you’re going to get a teenager to watch a four-and-a-half-hour game. We have to engage them in the game in a much different way. Social media is a great way to do that via influencers that they look up to, that they believe in, and that they follow. Our influencer marketing or our creator community is growing to reach this audience very specifically.

They have different values and beliefs than other generations. They demand that positive impact. These new generations engage in brands that give back. First of all, you can’t market to this generation. They see right through you. You have to be very real or authentic. You have to have a purpose in giving back, or they don’t engage. It’s as simple as that.

 

As we think about bringing them into the fold because they’re the new fans and they’re the fan base of the future, we need to think about all those things. What verticals do we engage in to drive their interest? Is it fashion, music, or gaming? We make sure that the league is present in all of those verticals. How do our players engage with this new generation?

We have a marketing strategy called Helmets Off because we want to take the helmets off our players and have people see them as human beings on and off the field. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Mic’d Up series where you hear what they’re saying, and even things like the Manningcast. It’s a very different way to watch and enjoy the game. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Nickelodeon program.

I can’t wait for my fifteen-month-old to get a little bit older so I have an excuse to watch that broadcast. It’s the best.

That broadcast is the best. I watched the Christmas game on Nickelodeon because I love the players getting slimed and then running through burgers. It’s the coolest thing. We have to do all of those unique and creative things to engage this new audience. Otherwise, I can’t see your fifteen-month-old ever watching a traditional broadcast, even in the stadium. There are new ways to engage our fans and make sure they feel part of the game and part of the community.

The Savannah Bananas are doing that pretty well in baseball. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them.

All those kinds of things are important to make the game more exciting.

Here’s my last question for you. This has been so interesting and helpful to our audience. Thank you. Fifteen years from now, what do you think will be the biggest changes to the NFL?

This is all Marissa’s prediction. We will see how cool this is. Fifteen years from now, we are going to see our platform in a completely different way. It’s probably more streaming, mobile, and on-the-go than a linear experience. That’s going to be three years from now. It’s very soon. You’re going to see the game being global. You’re going to be seeing it played all over the world. I have a vision of the World Cup. I could see a football World Cup that we could enjoy and see all the different countries competing in the game.

I see women engaged in the sport more than ever as players, as coaches, and as hopefully more owners and more front office. I see women. I see a lot more diversity, every community and ethnicity represented, and continued growth but then I also see the impact. We’re doing it now in the US. I want to see all the stuff that we do for our communities impact all over the world because there are things the world is experiencing now and well into the future that require powerful platforms like the NFL to get involved in and change the game.

I lied about the last question. Do you see a world where flag football is as popular as tackle football?

Already, there are world championship games for flag that are being played now that will continue to elevate. I see that as the gateway to tackle. More and more, boys and girls are going to join and be part of leagues all over the world. That’s going to be feeding into our pipeline of tremendous talent and continue to grow both games, the flag and the tackle game. It’s very exciting.

Marissa, I’m so excited to see what you achieve at the NFL. In the past few months alone, the impact that you have made on communities, the commitment to flag, and everything that you’ve been doing has been incredible. Thank you so much for coming to the show. I hope that a year from now or two years from now, we could see what predictions have come true and do another episode where we talk through it.

It’s always great to talk about all the wonderful things that the league is doing to continue to be purposeful and grow.

That’s the best combination. Thank you so much, Marissa.

Thank you.

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Thank you for reading this episode with our guest, Marissa Solis. As a recap, we discussed purposeful growth, the power of sports for brands, and NFL growth opportunities. Thank you for tuning in. I’ll see you next time, everyone.

 

Important Links

• Marissa Solis
• NFL +

 

About Marissa Solis

Marissa Solis is a magnetic business leader with over 25 years of marketing management, communications and sales experience in both the U.S. and Latin American markets. Currently, Marissa leads all global brand and marketing initiatives for the National Football League including both traditional and digital media, in-stadium marketing, and social justice initiatives.

A graduate of Georgetown University with a B.S. in International Economics and the University of Texas at Austin with an M.A. in Public Policy, she began her career in brand management at Procter & Gamble Latin America where she led marketing for brands like Ariel, Downy, and Pampers in Central America and the Caribbean.
Marissa spent a few years at Deloitte Consulting as a management consultant leading change initiatives and communication consulting for Public Sector clients and also spent time as a political consultant, contributing to the communication strategies of key campaigns in Texas and Mexico before taking a role in marketing at Pepsico’s Frito Lay North America Division in 2003. During her 18-year tenure at Pepsico, Marissa led numerous brand marketing initiatives and national campaigns and held roles in shopper marketing and sales for key PepsiCo retail customers like Walmart, Target, and Costco.

She led Culinary Innovation and Marketing for Pepsico’s Food Service division where she launched a new line of Frozen Snacks for the company that sold over $100MM. Ad Age recognized Marissa as a trailblazer in the She Runs It! awards for creating the new line of branded frozen snacks. In 2017, Marissa led the creation of a cross functional Hispanic Business Unit — the first of its kind – winning Industry Recognition for work to engage Latinos in key brand initiatives. She went on to lead marketing for brands at Frito Lay North America, including the coveted relationship with the NFL, and won several Reggies, Sports Clios, and a Grand Prix Cannes Lion for her work on Cheetos, Doritos and Tostitos brands. In 2021 Marissa was recognized by Adweek as one of the Most Powerful Women in Sports for elevating the football watching occasion with the NFL and Frito Lay partnership.

Marissa serves on the Board of Directors of Consolidated Communications, a leading broadband and business communications provider serving wireless and wireline customers across rural and metro communities. She also serves as a board member on the North Texas Chapter of the Make a Wish Foundation and The Melville Family Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of minority children in Dallas. She has a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and resides in McKinney, Texas with her husband Juan and 16-year-old daughter Gabriela.