Lauren Gibbs – Outlook Newspapers

Lauren Gibbs, a member of the USA Women’s Bobsled Team that won the silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, will be joined in conversation by John Naber, the swimming champion who won four gold medals and one silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada. The program is scheduled Friday, June 8, from 11 a.m.-noon in the Scott Pavilion at the Pasadena Senior Center, followed by a reception.
Gibbs, the daughter of Pasadena Senior Center Executive Director Akila Gibbs, was a champion volleyball and track and field athlete in high school at Westridge School for Girls in

Pasadena and captained the volleyball team at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. After earning an MBA from Pepperdine University, she excelled as the sales manager for a Denver-based online retailer with a goal of becoming a CEO. When a friend on the U.S. Women’s Rugby Team suggested she try out for the U.S. Women’s Bobsled Team because of her continued athleticism, Gibbs was wary but did some research. In 2013, she walked away from her lucrative corporate career to attend a training camp in Lake Placid, New York.
Continue reading “Olympic Stars to Speak at Senior Center June 8”

Photo courtesy USA Bobsled Former Westridge athlete Lauren Gibbs won a silver medal in the bobsled event at the Winter Olympics last week.

When Westridge School graduate Lauren Gibbs told her parents in 2010 she was thinking of leaving her sales manager position and six-figure salary to try out for the United States women’s bobsled team, her parents laughed.
“We all did,” her mother, Akila, said by phone from South Korea. “Even she said that it would make a great cocktail story.”
Four years later, Gibbs, 33, has much more than a cocktail story. She has a silver medal.
She teamed up with decorated Olympian Elana Meyers Taylor and took second last week in the women’s bobsled event at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
The American duo finished .07 seconds behind gold medalists Mariana Jamanka and Lisa Buckwitz of Germany, who won the four-run race with a time of 3 minutes, 22.45 seconds.
“Sharing an Olympic medal with Elana is pretty special,” Gibbs told NBC. “This is her third and my first, so it’s unreal. She’s a legend in this sport, and I’m just honored to be part of her journey.”
Continue reading “Former Westridge Athlete Wins Olympic Silver”