For its second installment, Action Figures turns the lens on Jasmine Maietta, a former pro basketball player, coach and corporate leader who has spent her life at the intersection of competition and creativity. Before founding Round21, Maietta brought her game-day mindset to global roles at Under Armour and Peloton, experiences that now inform her mission to merge art and sport into a shared cultural language.

What drives Jasmine Maietta today isn’t performance metrics but her full on belief. “Belief is the most important thing in life,” she says. “What is life without belief?” That conviction, rooted in her years as an athlete, became the foundation for Round21—a creative studio and lifestyle brand that marry art and sport into collectible products and cultural moments.

Identity Became the Real Uniform

For Maietta, sport was never just a game. “My introduction to sports was in the fourth grade when my brother put a basketball in my hand at the YMCA,” she recalls. What started as a way to connect with family evolved into a lifelong lens through which she views the world. Growing up during the rise of Michael Jordan, she recognized early that what you wore, like your shoes and your jersey, communicated identity and pride. “What you put on your feet speaks,” she says. “That was the first time I knew what I put on said something about who I was.”

That connection between expression and competition became Round21’s DNA. Every piece in the brand’s catalog from the limited-edition basketballs and jerseys, to the ping-pong paddles and footballs create stories. “Every Round21 product is a story, and every story is told by a storyteller,” she explains. Artists and athletes co-create these objects, transforming gear into cultural artifacts. “We empower the artists to create what they believe the world needs to see.” It’s a deliberate inversion of how traditional brands operate and it’s a new power dynamic where creativity drives commerce, not the other way around.

No Safety Nets, Only Vision

Maietta’s path from corporate marketing to creative independence wasn’t smooth either. After two decades in global brand roles, she walked away from a salary, a network and the safety of structure to start something of her own. “I left twenty-five years of being in the corporate world with a safety net and said, ‘I’m going to go and do my own thing.’ That was the biggest bet I’ve ever placed on myself.” Her gamble paid off. Within months of launching, Round21 won the NFL Players Association Super Bowl Pitch Competition and later partnered with the WNBA Players Association—proof that her vision for sport and art could coexist at scale.

Practice Like You Play

Still, Maietta doesn’t romanticize the grind. She defines hustle not as speed but as endurance. “There’s a difference between someone who says, ‘I play sports,’ and someone who says, ‘I’m an athlete.’ The latter knows what it’s like to die to sweat, to win, to fail,” she says. That same mindset fuels her company. Whether experimenting with fabric colorways for the New York Liberty or collaborating with artists like Shema Love and Sophia Chang, she treats every creative shot like a jumper in overtime: repetition, patience and heart. “We try things, we test things. We don’t know what’s going to hit, but we keep shooting even if we miss.”

Be the Action Figure You Want to See

Asked what being an Action Figure means to her, Maietta pauses before offering a definition that could double as a life philosophy: “Being an action figure means actively living what you want to see in the world.” To her, belief, hustle and passion are the essential moves. Through Round21, she’s building a platform where individuality becomes community and art becomes the bridge between people and play.

“The world doesn’t need another T-shirt brand,” Maietta continues. “The world needs more reasons to connect.” That, in essence, is the Action Figures mindset—turning movement into meaning and action into legacy.

And in case you missed it, check out the DraftKings Action Figures episode with Steven Barter of Barriers Worldwide.

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