Beth Paretta has always loved the thrill of the race.

“I started reading car magazines when I was 5,” she says.

Despite that early passion, Paretta took a circuitous route to her current role as the owner of Paretta Autosport, the first woman-owned, woman-driven team in the INDYCAR series.

Paretta received a bachelor’s in broadcasting and film from Boston University and an MBA from the University of Vermont. She started her career in the alpine skiing business before transitioning to working in automotive dealerships and car brands. In 2011, she became the director of marketing and operations for Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s performance division.

At the time, she remembers companies lamenting a looming engineering shortage and realized the most obvious solution was to widen the talent pool by attracting children to STEM careers.

“How do we make it fun and exciting?” she said. “Where’s that spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down?”

Beth Paretta, owner of Paretta Autosport

Paretta settled on automotive racing as the answer and set out to create a woman-forward racing team to provide representation and inspiration to future generations.

In this episode of Promo Insiders, Paretta, who will be a keynoter at January’s ASI Show Orlando, talks with ASI Media’s Theresa Hegel about her love of racing and the challenges of leading in a high-profile, fast-paced environment. She also hints at one of the topics she’ll cover in her keynote: the unique story of how Paretta Autosport quickly built and trained its racing team after announcing in January 2021 its intention to be in the Indy 500 that May.