TrailRunner Team - TrailRunner International

Jamie Zaninovich

Jamie Zaninovich is Vice Chair of TrailRunner Sports, based in the San Francisco Area. Drawing on nearly 30 years of global sports industry leadership experience, Jamie helped launch TrailRunner Sports in 2023 and advises clients on matters related to operations and governance, marketing, sponsorships, media rights, crisis management, sustainability and social responsibility, and international business development.

Prior to TrailRunner International, Jamie served as the Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer at the Pac-12 Conference. Before that, he was the Commissioner of the West Coast Conference and a senior athletic administrator at both Princeton University and Stanford University.

Jamie has negotiated and managed long-term media rights agreements with every major U.S. broadcast outlet and partnered with professional sports leagues, professional sports teams, and governmental agencies to organize and host large-scale sporting events including NCAA March Madness, the Rose Bowl, and the College Football Playoff. He also has led collegiate sports conference expansion and international business development in global markets and served on the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee. A recognized leader in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in sports, he developed the Pac-12/Southwest Athletic Conference Legacy Series in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative. He also designed and implemented the first collegiate conference sustainability program in the U.S. while at the Pac-12.

Jamie was named to Sports Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40” list. He regularly lectures on sports business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and he sits on multiple boards, including the Green Sports Alliance, the Positive Coaching Alliance Leadership Council, and the Hvar Field School (Croatia) Advisory Board and previously served on the Lott Impact Trophy and San Jose Sports Authority boards.

A native of Eugene, Oregon, Jamie is a graduate of Stanford and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and resides in Millbrae, California with his wife Karen and their two sons, Max and Lucas.

Jim Hughes

A founding member of the firm who helped launch TrailRunner International as its first Managing Director in 2016, Jim leads TrailRunner’s Executive Committee as Chief Executive Officer responsible for all global operations. He draws on nearly 30 years of experience in journalism and corporate communications to advise clients on financial communications, corporate positioning, crisis communications, and special situations such as restructurings, M&A transactions, IPOs, and executive leadership changes. He has developed and implemented winning communications plans for public policy matters, regulatory actions and investigations, cyberattacks and data breaches, class action lawsuits, and labor and employment issues.

Before TrailRunner, Jim served as SVP and Head of Media Relations for Citizens Financial Group. Earlier in his career, he worked for Comcast and for CVS Health in roles focused on corporate communications, crisis communications, public policy communications, reputation management, and consumer and B2B public relations. A former political, legal affairs and breaking news reporter for The Denver Post, Jim was a member of the reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news in 2000 and covered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as an embedded reporter.

Jim has been awarded degrees from Union College (BA, English) and from the University of Colorado (MA, Journalism). He completed additional graduate coursework in literature at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. Jim lives in Olympic Valley, Calif., with his wife and their two teenaged children.

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