About

Stacie Townsend is a former student-athlete that has evolved into an attorney-entrepreneur-advocate-author-coach-athlete. At her core, Stacie is a dealmaker that has brought over $1 billion in deals to a successful close, all while playing pickleball, finding ways to be creative, and striving to live her best life in Palm Beach.

Attorney

Stacie is currently a business attorney in West Palm Beach, Florida, with Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, P.A. (which has been dubbed Florida's law firm for business). She advises executives and business, including technology and entrepreneurial companies, across the globe on any issue they may encounter from start-up to exit. In addition to advising on day-to-day matters, such as corporate governance, compliance, and commercial agreements (including vendor, customer, employee, software, and licensing agreements), Stacie has extensive experience in buying and selling companies with enterprise values as small as $100,000 to as large as $500 million.

Before her legal career, Stacie graduated number one in her class at the University of Iowa College of Law. Go Hawkeyes!

Entrepreneur

Stacie inherited her love of business and entrepreneurial spirit from her mother, Elizabeth Townsend, who worked for Little Caesars Pizza for 40 years and was one of the visionaries behind Little Caesars "Hot-N-Ready Pizza." With her undergraduate and graduate degrees in business, Stacie was inspired to start her first business after working with countless entrepreneurs as their legal advisor. Her first business, a pickleball brand called Pickler (www.thepickler.com), was, and still is, a passion project for Stacie, which was started to give her pickleball-addicted parents some pickleball-specific attire for the pickleball courts. Pickler has now evolved into a pickleball advocacy and educational platform.

Advocate

At the core of Stacie's career as a business attorney, she is an advocate for her clients. Not only is Stacie an advocate in business and for her clients, she also advocates for athletes (including pickleball players) and certain causes. For instance, Stacie serves as an at-large board member (focusing on business development) for the USA Pickleball Association, a non-profit whose mission is to grow the sport of pickleball in the United States of America. She donates her time and business expertise to further the sport of pickleball. You may also find her in or around the pickleball courts donating her time to raise money for worthy causes.

Author

To date, Stacie has authored three books, including a #1 New Release on Amazon and a pickleball educational book that is accompanied by 144 video lessons:

Coach

Stacie has extensive coaching experience, not only in the traditional sense in the sports world, but also in an advisory role with for-profit and not-for-profit businesses. On the sports side, Stacie coached softball at the collegiate level at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), as well as at the international level with the France National Softball Team. Stacie also scripted, directed, produced, and edited Pickler's educational platform, which features over seven hours of pickleball instruction and a 400-page instructional book. On the business side, Stacie is a board member of the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches. As mentioned above, she has also found an avenue to merge her passion for sports and business as a board member of the USA Pickleball Association, which is the national governing body for the sport of pickleball in the United States of America.

Athlete

Before her legal career, Stacie was a professional and international softball player, who, after playing for the Great Britain National Softball Team for eight years and playing at the collegiate level for UTEP, was inducted to both the British Softball Federation Hall of Fame and the UTEP Athletics Hall of Fame. She also was named to the All-World Softball Team after the 2012 World Championships. During her star-studded career with the UTEP Miners, Townsend was a finalist for NCAA Woman of the Year during her senior season. She still owns UTEP career records for earned run average, wins, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched and strikeouts. Go Miners!

Stacie has now entered into her second act as an athlete on the pickleball court. Since finding the sport in 2017, she has elevated to the pro ranks, cashed checks for professional tournaments, and won numerous medals at events across the country, including the USA Pickleball Association National Championships, the US Open Pickleball Championships, and the Tournament of Champions.