THE MODERATOR: Welcome everyone here to the Media Center at Midland Country Club for the Dow Championship. Welcome, everyone, like I said.
I'm very excited to welcome our three guests here, starting in the middle with Carlos Padilla, head of global sports partnerships at Dow and executive director of the Dow Championship.
To his right is Jody Brothers, chief sales and partnership officer at the LPGA.
To his left, Suzann Pettersen, Team Dow ambassador and 15-time LPGA Tour winner.
Carlos, I'll kick it over to you.
CARLOS PADILLA II: Thanks, Matt, appreciate it. Hi, everyone. As Matt mentioned, I'm Carlos Padilla, head of global sports partnerships at Dow, and I also have the great pleasure serving as executive director of this tournament this week.
It's a pleasure to welcome you back to Dow's backyard of Midland, Michigan, celebrating women's world class golf but also the values that make this sport and its athlete so impactful.
For those of you that don't know, Dow and the LPGA launched this tournament back in 2019. That was shortly after an announcement of Dow coming on as an official marketing partner in 2018.
Beyond advancing opportunities in women's golf, our vision was to create a platform to give back to the Great Lakes Bay Region, catalyze deeper collaboration with customers and partners, and to inspire innovation, inclusivity, sustainability, and community.
These are the same goals behind many of our other collaborations thus far, like teaming up with some Tour players, like the legend Suzann Pettersen; thank you for being here, Suzann. You can pay me later here.
And helping other Tour events reduce their environmental impact. So far to this date, Dow and the Dow Championship have consulted with over 19 other LPGA tournaments on their sustainability journey. And supporting Epson Tour players and their journey ti the LPGA through Team Dow Next Generation, which we announced a couple years ago.
Today we're excited to announce a new chapter in our partnership, again, rooted in those same goals. Today we're launching the Dow Impact Award. The Dow Impact Award is an annual recognition that celebrates Tour players whose impact extends far beyond the fairways.
It's a platform to amplify the voices of women who are driving positive change and inspiring others through sport.
This group of athletes was chosen as they exemplify the core values that drive Dow and our partnership with the LPGA. They're innovating, inspiring inclusion, and championing sustainability in their communities around the world.
I'll pass it over to you, Jody, to tell us about our nominees.
JODY BROTHERS: Thank you, Carlos. It is great to be here at the Dow Championship.
I heard the words innovation, inclusion, and sustainability, and I just wanted to thank you and the Dow Corporation. Those are not just words, you guys live those out on a daily basis, and it's incredible to be partnered with a corporation that doesn't just use words, but it takes action. I'm very grateful for that.
The athletes that we're to recognize today, the nominees, are not all just great players on the golf course, but they also live a lifestyle, or their characteristics off the golf course embody these same values.
We have five today, and I'm going to walk through them one by one with some of the things that they've done that have qualified them for nominees for the Dow Impact Award.
The first is a duo. It's the sisters Ariya and Moriya Jutanugarn. They embody inclusion and sustainability through community development and cultural ambassadorship. They've co-founded a foundation with Habitat Humanity in Thailand to build a home for a family in need. They host annual charitable golf tournaments in their home country, and they're joint recipients of the 2023 for promoting Thailand through sport.
Our second nominee is Jennifer Kupcho. She exemplifies innovation and inclusion. Her work with Youth on Course as a global ambassador, which expands access to golf for youth all across the country. Through her work in the major championships, she supports Birdie For Meals. This initiative actually donates meals for every birdie or better that she makes in a major championship.
Our third nominee is Lexi Thompson. Lexi champions inclusion and innovation through philanthropy and visibility. She's the founder of the Lexi Thompson Foundation, which supports children with serious illnesses. She's active in supporting breast cancer awareness and military family foundations. And she's a Girls' Golf ambassador and a mentor to young fans across the world.
Our fourth nominee is Gaby Lopez. Gaby exemplifies inclusion and sustainability through grass roots and entrepreneurial efforts. She's a Girls' Golf ambassador and works with organizations in Mexico to support and promote youth golf, especially with girls. She works with the University of Arkansas to support a pipeline of Mexican golfers to play collegiately here in the states. And she's been an instrumental voice in bringing the LPGA back to Mexico. So that's your fourth nominee, Gaby Lopez.
Our final nominee is Rose Zhang. Rose embodies innovation and sustainability through long-term investment and the game's future. She hosts junior golf tournaments and created a grant endowment for aspiring female golfers from California, and she's also the youngest Girls' Golf ambassador in history, encouraging more girls to take up the game.
So those are your five nominees for the 2025 Dow Impact Award. I'll kick it back to you, Carlos.
CARLOS PADILLA II: Thank you. Suzann, could you maybe talk to us about your experience as a player, your experience working with Dow. To Jody's point, living the values and the opportunity for a company like Dow to get behind something like this and what they may mean to the players in creating more opportunities for the athletes to tell their stories and what that means to the LPGA.
SUZANN PETTERSEN: Absolutely. I've been fortunate to partner with Dow for quite some years now, and it's been a great journey to see how Dow's commitment, investment into women's golf, women's sports through their great values. I think this award just really showcases that wider commitment that goes deeper.
The nominees, they're all fantastic players, and I think, the bottom line, all these women out here, they all have a story to tell. I think this award can kind of amplify all those great commitments that these women do outside of the golf course.
They're great champions in the way they carry themselves. They're great representatives for the LPGA, for women's sports in general.
I don't think they get enough credit for all the great work they do. You have the Jutanugarn sisters. When LPGA first started playing in Thailand, there were no Thai players from -- on the LPGA. I don't know how many there are today. They've been great role models in their own way. The rest -- I mean, the list goes on.
I just really believe these girls deserve every credit they can get because it goes way beyond what their commitment to just being a professional golfer is.
Q. Carlos, do you want to stay a little bit about the award, the time line and all?
CARLOS PADILLA II: I'll let Jody talk about the structure and the timeline of the award. This is just the launch of the award. When we talk about inspiring change, we talk about having a lasting impact. The lasting impact of these players and the legacy they're leaving, you can't do that alone.
This is just the launch of the Dow Impact Award. We hope this award continues to evolve and taking on additional partners in addition to Dow.
Again, we can't do these things alone. We have to do these things collectively together, and this is just a launching point.
JODY BROTHERS: Over the next few months, we'll be highlighting these players' stories through social media channels and the LPGA's website. The two finalists will be announced on October 7th, and we'll open fan voting immediately at that point.
The winner ultimately will be decided by a combination of fan votes and executive selection committee, which will be announced on November 6.
I'm sure everybody is wondering what does the winner receive. I can say that?
CARLOS PADILLA II: Go ahead.
JODY BROTHERS: The winner will receive a $25,000 cash award with a matching contribution to the charity of their choice.
The runner-up will be recognized with a $10,000 award.
Most importantly, all the nominees will have gained a powerful platform to amplify their community impact and inspire the next generation of athletes to think beyond personal achievement, something that Suzann can speak to from her experience as a Dow ambassador.
Q. Jody and Carlos, this is for you. Talk a little bit about -- you touched on it a little bit, but just the origin of the discussions of this award, since Dow also has -- and Suzann is a part of it, is Team Dow. Dow also has Team Dow next generation. This is the current generation and then the next generation. Talk a little bit about the origin of the discussions of the award with the LPGA and Dow.
CARLOS PADILLA II: I think for us it's all about legacy. It's about leaving a lasting impact. What does that impact look like, and who are the role models that are already doing that? When you look at the logo, you see the torch, the carrying of the torch and passing the torch on.
So for us, that's in the spirit of everything we talk around our partnership, whether it be the tournament here or our marketing partnership that we have with the LPGA. It's living those values every day. We share all those values with the LPGA. That's why this partnership is so authentic and so real.
We also agree there's a lot of great stories with these athletes and that we all can do better to help tell those stories.
In this way, there's no better and no more authentic storytelling in the world than sports. We believe some of that is taking place right now in the sport within the LPGA.
For us, it came up very authentically just in normal conversation because this is what we do and this is how a normal partnership works. We're really excited about it.
JODY BROTHERS: I don't have a ton to add other than we want to use the LPGA and our fandom to tell stories, great stories for our athletes and great stories of our partners. I think this is a great combination of those two opportunities.
Q. Suzann, as a major champion and a Dow ambassador, you touched on this a little bit, but with companies like Dow that are not only investing in a tournament like this, which is a top five LPGA event, but in this market it's a big community event, but also investing in the current, in the next generation of the stars of the LPGA Tour. So talk about that from a player's side, how important that is on having sponsors like Dow to commit to the LPGA Tour and its players.
SUZANN PETTERSEN: It's absolutely crucial to have partners like Dow who sees the value in what LPGA has to offer. It's a collab effort to kind of elevate the women's game, women's sports.
I'm really proud to be part of the team with Dow of how they are really on the forefront of pushing boundaries. It started with all the sustainability aspect of it, how could we possibly run a sustainable -- like a clean, good, sustainable golf event? That had never been done on the LPGA before.
Dow has been great to elevate all aspects of the game, and I think to build a very sustainable ecosystem of how you recruit new young girls to this game is very inspiring as well.
I think just very happy to be part of such a great team that's always pushing the edges, looking for the next superstar, supporting every part of that story, and leaving a legacy within the game.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you everyone for your time. We're very excited to get this award rolling, and happy to announce the winner later in November.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports