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Dynasty Financial Partners inks deal with homegrown tennis star
Danielle Collins, one of the brightest rising stars on the Women’s Tennis Association tour, has agreed to a sponsorship deal with St. Petersburg-based Dynasty Financial Partners that will see her wear the company’s logo on her clothing at the 2021 Miami Open, which starts this week.
The deal looks to be a boon for both parties, as well as the reputation of St. Pete, which is home to the WTA’s U.S. headquarters. Collins, 27, was born and raised in the Sunshine City and played college tennis at the University of Florida before transferring to the University of Virginia, where her career really took off as she won the NCAA women’s singles championship in 2014 and 2016. In 2019, she was a semifinalist at the Australian Open, and in February she made headlines around the globe when she defeated world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty at the Adelaide International in Adelaide, Australia.
Collins and Dynasty connected when she became a client of CW BOSS, a division of Cyndeo Wealth Management that specializes in helping high-profile sports and entertainment professionals manage their finances and investments. Cyndeo is part of Dynasty’s platform that provides wealth management and technology tools to independent financial advisory firms. The rapidly growing company moved its headquarters from Manhattan to St. Pete in 2019 and the firms that it works with now have, collectively, more than $60 billion in assets under management.
Collins, said Dynasty founder and CEO Shirl Penney, “is a client of one of our affiliates and she’s local to St. Pete, and part of what we like to do is support local. And we love to support women in sports and business, so there was a lot of alignment there. Once we met Danielle, we really enjoyed the conversation and we pretty quickly signed her up.”
Penney said it’s a coup for Dynasty to be featured on Collins’ gear alongside other globally recognized brands like Babolat and New Balance. At a hitting session last week in St. Pete, Penney’s 14-year-old daughter Townsend, a promising junior player who attends Bradenton-based IMG Academy — a facility that has produced legends of the sport such as Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Monica Seles — got a chance to trade groundstrokes with Collins. Townsend, an eighth-grader, lives on campus at IMG Academy and is taking high-school-level classes, Penney said.
“From a parent’s perspective,” he said, “being at an elite academic school with a great tennis program seems like a good path, but whatever relationship she wants to have with tennis, that’s really up to her.”
In an exclusive interview with the Catalyst two days before she was set to play her first-round match at the Miami Open, Collins said she’s been sharing some of her tennis knowledge with Townsend and is excited to see where their relationship goes.
“I hope I can be somebody who’s encouraging Townsend,” she said, “because both us being from St. Pete and being a part of a relatively small tennis community, I think it’s important that as females, especially, we stick together. And if there’s knowledge and wisdom that I can share from my career, or things I wish I would’ve done differently at times, I hope I can pass that along to her because when I was younger, I always wished that there was somebody who had played college tennis or professionally that I had as a mentor in my life … somebody who could talk to me about what life was like on tour.”
Offering advice and support to young tennis players is just one way Collins gives back to St. Pete. She has become involved with the St. Pete-based Children’s Dream Fund and gave away hundreds of pairs of New Balance shoes to needy and sick kids during the holiday season. “I didn’t have a whole lot of financial support when I was younger,” said Collins, who famously grew up honing her craft on the city’s public hard courts instead of private clubs that require paid memberships.
For more of our interview with Collins, watch for another article to be published in the coming days.
JOHN DONOVAN
March 22, 2021at3:25 pm
Dynasty has done well for itself and St. Petersburg. And will be rewarded.