Adrienne Smith is the founder and CEO of football media company Gridiron Queendom. One of the company’s leading products is the Blitz Champz, a fun and educational football-themed card game for kids 7 and above.
The game blends the excitement of football with critical math skills. The game is easy to learn in under three minutes and features a diverse lineup of male and female players. What is more, it has even been adopted by schools and educational programs and has been utilized by some NFL teams and NFL FLAG as a fun and effective learning tool for kids, according to CTkidsandfamily.
Following the start of the NFL season, Smith is looking to align millions in sales for this football season with Blitz Champz. For 2023, she is looking at selling 20,000 units. In this regard, she hopes to sell 5,000 units of the Blitz Champz to each of the NFL teams and for those with a large following, she wants to sell to them 10,000 units.
“From there, in 2024, have more products available. On top of just selling the games as well, we are also in the process of creating Blitz Champz battles throughout the country. And this is where there would be tournaments– we would have a junior division for kids and an adult division, where you come and you play… we could be competing for prizes, we could be competing for cash and we could be competing for autograph jerseys,” she told Forbes.
The professional football player has often dismissed the notion that the sport is male-dominated. “Football is not a male-dominated sport. We have girls and women playing this sport in large numbers, not only in the United States, but throughout the world,” she told Vibe.
A five-time WFA (Women’s Football Alliance) champion and gold medalist with the US Women’s Tackle National Team, Smith said she had always had a love for the game. Growing up as a kid, she would watch football with her parents and do her own tackle practice with her teddy bear named Ginger.
“I would run and tackle Ginger over and over again,” she recalled. After more than 10 years of playing professional football, she still has love and appreciation for the sport. “It has been a wonderful journey, both on and off the field,” she told Vibe.
Her parents, who are both late now, were academics. According to her, they instilled in her the importance of education and a strong work ethic while she was growing up in Alexandria, Virginia.
“My parents told me education is power and the way to get up and out in this world. So I always knew I would get a master’s degree.” Today, she has an MBA from Columbia Business School and an undergraduate degree from Washington University.