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Baseball Executive Featured at OCSF
Shawn Lawson Cummings ’86, who as vice president of international consumer products marketing and corporate sponsorship for Major League Baseball has become one of the most influential women in American sports, will be the featured speaker at the March 30 Occidental College Speakers Forum at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena.
The title of Lawson Cummings’ talk is “Major League Baseball’s International Marketing Strategy: An American Sport in a Global Market.”
An 11:30 a.m. reception will precede the noon luncheon. The Ritz-Carlton is located at 1401 S. Oak Knoll Ave. Tickets for the luncheon are $25 per person ($15 for Oxy GOLD members). For reservations or additional information, contact Jamie Murphy at (323) 259-1456 or jmurphy@oxy.edu.
Last June, Sports Illustrated recognized Lawson Cummings as one of its 101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports – one of only seven women to make the list. In its March 2005 issue, Black Enterprise named her to its list of the 50 Most Powerful Blacks in Sports.
Lawson Cummings joined MLB Properties in 1995 and has held a variety of marketing positions. She is currently responsible for all aspects of Major League Baseball’s international licensing operations and corporate sponsorship and marketing relationships for business development. Under her guidance, Major League Baseball’s international sponsorship revenues jumped 35 percent in 2004, while the consumer products business has nearly tripled to $247 million in sales in less than five years. In 2003, Major League Baseball’s licensing program in Japan was named Best Sports/Special Events Brand License of the Year by the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association.
Lawson Cummings graduated from Occidental with a degree in psycho-physiology. A two-time NCAA Division III champion in the heptathlon and a nine-time NCAA All-American honoree, she was inducted into the Occidental College Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1991. She completed her studies at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration in 1991.