Jacquie Pierri ’12 has at least two things in common with Snoop Dogg: They were both at Spring Weekend in 2010 and at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics 16 years later. In February, Pierri represented Italy — the games’s host country — as a defender for the women’s ice hockey team.
The first game in Milan was “magical,” Pierri said, adding that she had 45 friends and family members fly in to watch her play. Her fan club included teammates from her days on Brown’s women’s ice hockey team.
While at Brown, Pierri studied engineering. It was challenging to balance her studies with athletic commitments, but her degree “opened up a lot of doors” for her career in environmental sustainability, she said.
“We would jokingly refer to her as ‘Mother Earth,’ but she was really ahead of her time, particularly regarding climate knowledge and activism,” former teammate Joy Joung ’11 wrote in an email to The Herald.
During Pierri’s time on the women’s ice hockey team, the team won the Mayor’s Cup twice and made it to the ECAC playoffs for the first time in six seasons during Pierri’s senior year.
“Jacquie had a fearless approach to competition, paired with a level of dedication and dependability that made her a constant source of trust and motivation,” former teammate Katelyn Landry ’12 wrote in an email to the Herald. “Whether it was showing up early to practice, encouraging others or stepping up in high-pressure moments, she consistently embodied what it means to be a true team player.”
After her graduation from Brown, Pierri’s plans to travel were cut short by the passing of her father, a time Pierri described as “destabilizing.” Following a friend’s suggestion, she began playing for the Calgary Inferno of the now-discontinued Canadian Women’s Hockey League.
While living in Canada, Pierri worked at a natural gas company. She joined a sustainability group within the business but she eventually felt she had “hit a dead end in terms of feeling like (she) was having an impact with sustainability.”
Pierri had an “itch to live in Europe” and decided to get her master’s degree in a program that allowed her to spend one year in Barcelona and one year in Stockholm.
“I thought I was done with hockey, sincerely,” Pierri said.
But while she was abroad, she was contacted by SDE Hockey, a club team in the Swedish Women’s Hockey League, where she ended up playing for two years. During her time on the team, Pierri wrote her thesis on sustainable ice rink refrigeration.
After earning her master’s degree in sustainable energy systems, Pierri decided to move to Italy, where her father’s family lives.
There, she joined her regional professional team — the EVB Eagles South Tyrol, known as the Bolzano Eagles — in 2021. For the last two and a half years, she has also worked for Living Future, a sustainable building company.
In hockey, the first through ninth-ranked teams at the Women’s World Championships qualify for the Olympics via their 2024 International Ice Hockey Federation world rankings or tournament play, and the tenth spot is given to the host country. Prior to the games, Italy was ranked 17th.
But at the 2026 games, Italy’s women’s ice hockey team finished in eighth place.
The team “in its entire history, has never won any games at the Olympics. And then we played in the quarterfinals,” Pierri said, noting that she is “really proud” of how the team performed.
Landry watched the games from the West Coast. For her, Pierri’s Olympic debut was before sunrise “but there was no chance I was sleeping through that,” Landry wrote. “I found myself getting emotional watching it; it was such a powerful reminder of what an extraordinary person she is, both on and off the ice.”
Now that the Olympics are over, Pierri will finish out the hockey season with the Bolzano Eagles before rejoining Italy’s national team for the World Championships in mid-April.
“I’m 35 this year, and so I never in a million years thought I would still be playing hockey at this age, let alone still remaining competitive,” Pierri said.
“People tell you, ‘Your body falls apart,’” she said. “Maybe that’s true for a lot of people. I haven’t found that to be true. I’m the strongest I’ve ever been.”
Rebecca Goodman is a university news senior staff writer covering career and alumni. She is a junior from Cambridge, MA, studying English. Outside of writing, you can find her at the Avon or in the basement of the Rock.
