# Jennifer Sey

Jennifer Anne Sey (born 1969) is an American author, business executive, and retired artistic gymnast. She was a seven-time member of the United States women's national artistic gymnastics team and was the 1986 U.S. Women's All-Around National Champion. She was also a member of the 1985 U.S. Women's World Championship team that finished 6th, as well as the U.S. Women's Team at the 1986 Goodwill Games. Following her gymnastics career, Sey entered the business world, and is presently the Founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics. She developed a social media following due to her views around school closings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

## Early life

Sey grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and moved to Haddonfield, New Jersey, where she competed in gymnastics as a teenager and attended Haddonfield Memorial High School. In 1983 she moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania to train at the Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center. She graduated from Allentown Central Catholic High School in 1987. In the 1985 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Sey was hospitalized after fracturing her right femur. Sey then won the 1986 USA Gymnastics National Championships and deferred her college education to train for the 1988 Olympics. However, she decided not to enter the Olympic Trials owing to an injured left ankle which made it "physically impossible" to continue. After that disappointment, Sey lost her appetite for a while.
In 1988, Sey enrolled at Stanford University. She competed on the gymnastics team for one season in 1989 and graduated from Stanford in 1992 with a double bachelor's degree in political science and communication.

## Career

Sey began working at Levi Strauss & Co. in 1999, rising to chief marketing officer and brand president. In February 2022, Sey resigned from Levi's after nearly 23 years at the company, over disputes with management. Sey claims the resignation was in regard to her views on school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout 2020 and 2021, she gained attention on Twitter and in the media as a critic of K-12 school closure.
Sey is the author of Chalked Up, an autobiography of her time as an elite gymnast, and was one of the producers of Athlete A, a documentary on the Larry Nassar scandal at USA Gymnastics which won an Emmy for the 2020 Outstanding Investigative Documentary. In November 2022, Sey published Levi's Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice, an autobiography of her time at Levi's.
Since leaving Levi's, Sey has been a contributing author to the Brownstone Institute, a think tank that opposes various measures against COVID-19, including masking and vaccine mandates, and has written columns for the New York Post about the "woke mob" and cancel culture. In February 2023, Sey compared the online harassment from speaking up about COVID-19 school closures to harassment from speaking up about abuse in sport.
In March 2024, Sey started XX-XY Athletics, a sportswear company. The brand's statement is that they want message "being brave, telling the truth, and protecting women’s sports". The company ethos states “it is simply unfair and dangerous at times to allow males (XY) to compete in girls and women’s (XX chromosomes) sports.” The company employs brand ambassadors like Riley Gaines that some have deemed "anti-trans."

## Personal life

Sey was a longtime resident of San Francisco before relocating to Denver, Colorado during the pandemic, where she now lives with her husband and four of her children.