Grant Thornton extends partnership with paddle champion Jessica Fox
Accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton has extended its ambassadorial partnership with canoe prodigy Jess Fox, in a deal which will include her 2028 summer Olympics campaign in Los Angeles.
Already an Australian sporting legend, Fox joined Grant Thornton as a brand ambassador in May of 2024, and shortly after added two more Olympic canoeing golds to her career medal tally in Paris following CI victory in Tokyo in 2021.
As the prominent face of its marketing materials, Grant Thornton has now extended its relationship with Fox for another three years until early in 2029, a partnership which will include her dual title defence at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“We look forward to continuing to work together as Jess prepares for the 2028 summer Olympics,” said Grant Thornton Australia CEO Said Jahani. “Jess’s principled, measured and relentlessly focused approach mirrors how we show up for our clients, and to us, Jess embodies our ‘Reach for Remarkable’ commitment to genuinely care for each other, our clients, and communities.”
In addition to her three Olympic triumphs, Fox, who is widely considered the greatest individual paddler of all time, also has more than a dozen canoe and kayak world championship gold medals under her belt, but was forced to withdraw from her home event in Penrith last year due to the discovery of a tumour on her kidney, which was successfully removed as per reports.
Now she is back in training, with attention turned to the upcoming ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships to be held in Oklahoma in July as somewhat of a ‘wet-run’ for the 2028 games, where Fox will be defending not only her status as the only ever women to win the C1 event, which was first introduced at Tokyo, but also her Paris title in the K1 class.
“I want to share a massive thank you for the support Grant Thornton and its people have shown me,” Fox said. “It’s an honour to be the firm’s brand ambassador and I’m really excited to be continuing the partnership. I’m looking forward to working with the firm over the next three years so together we can continue to reach for the remarkable.”
Grant Thornton said its long-term brand connection strategy with Fox, described as both a first for the firm and for the wider Australian accounting and advisory industry in terms of adopting such a campaign, has provided a scalable “platform leveraging above the line and below the line advertising, activations, communications and digital support.”
Along with the partnership being built on shared values, the firm in somewhat more of a ‘reach’ also drew parallels between the world of business advisory and professional canoe slalom, saying that “Jess navigates whitewater the way Grant Thornton navigates complex business landscapes, by reading conditions, adapting fast, and finding the best path forward.”
