Sister Bay Native Moves Up at Sports Illustrated

For 1989 Gibraltar graduate Kim [Anderson] Kelleher, an early professional setback proved vital to her future success.

Kelleher, who takes over as Vice President of Global Sales for the Sports Illustrated Group next month, had a promising career in the publishing industry in the late 1990s when she changed direction. Kelleher got in on the ground floor of a highly touted Internet startup, Cityspree, at the height of the dot.com boom. Unfortunately, it was also the beginning of the dot.com bust.

Kim [Anderson] Kelleher

Within 18 months, Cityspree was bankrupt. But the experience Kelleher earned in Internet sales was invaluable when she returned to a publishing industry grappling with the transition to the web.

“It was one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my career, and one of the hardest,” she said. “It was in the midst of the frenzy in the digital world in the late-nineties, and it was a chance to start something from absolute ground zero. It was a huge success for me personally, if not financially. I grew so much in that year and a half.”

She had taken a chance and been humbled, but she held on to valuable lessons.

“I think it’s really important to take yourself out of your comfort zone,” she says. “I have always worked hard to push myself, and when I reach my comfort zone I try to step out of it.”

Kelleher grew up in Sister Bay, where her parents, Peter and Diane Trenchard, own the Bay Ridge Golf Course. She had one goal in mind during her high school days – to live in New York City. She earned a history degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993, but found her first post-college job as an administrative assistant with a short-lived home decorating magazine, Elle Décor.

After Cityspree failed, she began making her way back up the publishing ladder, this time armed with a healthy dose of knowledge gained from her headlong dive into the Internet world.

By 2004 she had been named Vice President and Publisher of Self, a Condé Nast title. As newspapers and magazines across the country sputtered, Kelleher earned a reputation as an innovator and one of the few in the industry able to sell in the digital world. In 2008 she was named Condé Nast’s Publisher of the Year. Self became the company’s best revenue producer. So what’s the secret to thriving in publishing during the rise of the web?

“It’s really about being flexible,” she says. “There are no rules. It’s all new to everybody. In the digital world we’re all just following the consumer. Marketers are really allowing consumers to take the lead now, and where consumers go, advertisers will follow. We have to produce the product in any format that people want to consume it.”

Kelleher was happy at Condé Nast, where she worked for nearly 10 years, but then Time Inc., Sports Illustrated’s parent company, came calling. Kelleher was ready for a new challenge, particularly at a magazine with a strong brand led by Editor Terry McDonell, one of the most respected people in the publishing world.

Kelleher will oversee everything the brand touches, managing the team charged with generating revenue through their website and special editions like the Swimsuit and Sportsman of the Year issues, as well as their iPad e-reader expected to launch later this month.

Though she’s excited by the challenges of online publishing, she’s not a doomsayer for print, saying “there’s a bit of an en vogue aspect to the new mediums.”

“I don’t think that the printed word is in any long-term jeopardy,” she says. “At the end of the day the different mediums can help grow that audience. I still can’t start my day without the New York Times printed edition. It’s all about pushing your content out there in whatever medium your audience wants to consume it. You don’t have to be exclusive to one platform.”

She may have already brought the magazine at least one new reader. Though her father has been a long-time subscriber, her mom admits she’s rarely flipped through its pages.

“I’ve never read Sports Illustrated very closely,” Diane Trenchard says. “Now that Kim’s there I may just have to start.”

Kimberly [Anderson] Kelleher

Vice President of Global Sales, Sports Illustrated

Hometown: Sister Bay

Education: Gibraltar High School (1989); UW-Madison, history (1993)

Notable: Named Condé Nast 2008 Publisher of the Year; featured in AdAge’s “40 Under Forty;” named one of Folio magazine’s Industry Influencers; first woman to head sales for Sports Illustrated

In the community: Kelleher serves on the board of directors for Fertile Hope, a national organization dedicated to helping cancer patients whose treatments carry risks of infertility. She has also developed charitable partnerships to promote heart health, sun safety, and smoking cessation.

Kelleher lives in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City with her husband Dan and two sons, Brendan, 3, and Declan, 1.