Zaileen Janmohamed

President & CEO

Zaileen “Z” Janmohamed is the president and CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC), a non-profit corporation bringing major, world-class events to the San Francisco Bay Area with a mission to unite the region through sport by building pride, connecting communities and re-energizing the Bay.

Zaileen leads the first-ever contingent of professional sports team executives and industry experts from across the Bay. With Zaileen at the helm, they will lead a stellar line-up of events in the Bay Area, including NBA All-Star 2025, Super Bowl LX and FIFA World Cup 26. Notably, 2026 will be a blockbuster year for Bay Area sports fans and communities as the region becomes the first in history to host these two momentous sporting events in the same year. Driven by the belief that diversity, equity and inclusion are catalysts to fuse and maximize culture and business, advocacy is an imperative within Zaileen’s BAHC role.

A longtime sports and entertainment industry veteran, Zaileen is a passionate leader with a wealth of experience in brand, agency and property verticals of the sports business. Prior to joining BAHC, she was the head of commercial development and innovation at LA28, where she was responsible for identifying and actioning new initiatives and partnerships to monetize the 2028 Olympic & Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. Grounded in deep relationships and strong collaboration - with the International Olympic Committee, International Paralympic Committee, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, National Broadcasting Company, global corporate partners, regional government, commercial and community leaders, and more – Zaileen advanced the business of the movement in Los Angeles. As part of this effort, she drove groundbreaking initiatives including launching the first name, image and likeness marketplace called the Athlete Marketing Platform for Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

Previously, Zaileen guided brands, including Intel, Google and VISA, in sponsorship and experiential marketing opportunities as senior vice president and general manager of GMR Marketing's San Francisco office. She also served as the head of Olympics management at VISA, Inc., where she was responsible for delivering VISA’s premier sports sponsorship on a global scale for the Olympic Games including the Rio 2016 games. While she began her career with Major League Soccer (MLS), Zaileen’s deep passion for the professional soccer industry and global football began well before her exposure to the MLS Headquarters in New York, during a critical period in the 10th year of the young league’s existence, that included exposure to the creation, formation and addition of two MLS franchises.

In 2016, Zaileen was honored as a member of Sports Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40 Class” and Leaders in Sport’s globally acclaimed “Leaders Under 40.” She has been named by Adweek as one of their 2021 “Woman Trailblazers,” and has been inducted into the Sponsorship Hall of Fame. Just this year, Zaileen was named “Woman of the Year” for her incredible work of bringing three major sporting events to the Bay Area in an 18-month period. Zaileen is also the Founder of the Women in Sport Business Program at the University of Massachusetts.

Zaileen received her bachelor’s from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) and an MBA and master’s in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. A proud Canadian, Zaileen lives in the Bay Area with her husband Arif, and two sons, Aydin and Ihsan.