Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s Rookie of the Year title has often arrived at an important point in a model’s career. Since the publication introduced the designation in 2010, its winners have included women who went on to build careers extending well beyond their first appearance in the issue.
Kate Upton won in 2011. Kelly Rohrbach Walton followed in 2015, Alexis Ren in 2018, and Jasmine Sanders in 2019. In the years since, their careers have taken notably different directions.
Upton became a co-owner of a consumer brand. Rohrbach Walton founded a film production company. Ren has expanded into education, wellness, and acting. Sanders has continued building within fashion and modeling, eventually returning to SI Swimsuit as one of the publication’s Legends.
Their paths offer four different examples of what can follow an early, highly visible career milestone. For some, the recognition became a foundation for work in entirely different industries. For others, it helped support longevity within the industry where they started.
The Rookie of the Year title captured where each woman was at one moment in her career. What came afterward says considerably more about where she chose to take it.
Kate Upton Turned Recognition Into Ownership
Kate Upton’s 2011 Rookie of the Year shoot took her to Boracay in the Philippines. A year later, she landed her first SI Swimsuit cover. She returned to the cover in 2013 and again in 2017, while expanding beyond modeling into film and other major magazine appearances.
Her rise also coincided with a changing definition of what could make a model famous. A video of Upton dancing the “dougie” at a Los Angeles Clippers game went viral in 2011. It expanded her audience well beyond fashion. By 2013, she’d been named Model of the Year at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.
More than a decade later, that recognition has become useful in an entirely different industry.
In October 2023, Upton joined canned cocktail company Vosa Spirits as a co-owner alongside founders Spencer Bailey and Michela Drago. The arrangement went beyond a celebrity endorsement. Forbes reported that Upton would participate in developing new flavors, packaging design, and marketing strategy.
Vosa sells two primary product lines: Vosa Vodka Water, a still canned cocktail at 5% ABV, and Vosa High Line, a lightly carbonated line at 7% ABV. The products are produced and packaged in Michigan, where the company initially launched before expanding into additional markets.
In 2024, the company introduced its High Line Tropics variety pack with Upton participating in the launch.
Rather than licensing her image to an existing product, Upton holds an ownership stake and has a stated role in decisions about what the company sells and how those products reach consumers.
15 years after her Rookie of the Year title, her work now includes product development and brand strategy alongside modeling.
Kelly Rohrbach Walton Built a Production Company
Kelly Rohrbach Walton was named Rookie of the Year in 2015 following her SI Swimsuit shoot along California’s Big Sur coastline. Acting followed, including a starring role as C.J. Parker in the 2017 “Baywatch” reboot and later appearances in “A Rainy Day in New York” and “Yellowstone.”
Her more recent work has moved into film production.
Rohrbach Walton founded Maybe? Productions. The company connects her interest in community-based work with filmmaking. Its inaugural project is “Baby/Girls,” a feature-length documentary produced with Latchkey Films.
Directed by Alyse Walsh and Jackie Jesko, “Baby/Girls” was filmed over two years inside Compassion House, a Christian maternity home in Arkansas. The documentary follows Grace, Olivia, and Ariana through pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood as they navigate family relationships, faith, financial pressures, and decisions about their futures.
Rohrbach Walton is one of three producers credited on the film, alongside Melissa Leardi and Alex Waterfield. Nick Capote is credited separately as executive producer. That places Rohrbach Walton within the core producing team on the first project released under her company’s banner.
The project then shifted from production to finding an audience.
“Baby/Girls” made its world premiere in the Documentary Spotlight program at SXSW in March 2026. By its festival launch, Latchkey Films was listed as the film’s distributor and public contact.
The film later screened at DC/DOX, where Rohrbach Walton joined Leardi and directors Walsh and Jesko for a post-screening discussion. It also screened at the Bentonville Film Festival, where it won Best Homegrown.
The project extends beyond festival screenings. Its official site provides information about Arkansas organizations working on teen pregnancy prevention and support for young parents, educational resources, and information for groups interested in hosting screenings.
A decade after her Rookie of the Year title, her work has shifted from appearing in productions to helping build them.
Alexis Ren Turned an Audience Into a Platform
Alexis Ren’s career began well before her 2018 Rookie of the Year title. She started modeling as a teenager and developed a large online following before appearing in SI Swimsuit. By the time she competed on the 27th season of “Dancing with the Stars,” where she and Alan Bersten finished fourth, she had built an audience that extended well beyond modeling.
What she’s done since reflects a broader question facing a generation of people who became famous online: what do you build with an audience once you have one?
In 2021, Ren launched We Are Warriors, an online community that began with fitness programming during the pandemic and expanded into educational content touching on areas including wellness and personal finance.
She has also been pursuing acting, an interest she has said required her to approach her existing audience differently. Rather than treating a large following as proof that she could act, Ren has spoken about spending several years training before pursuing more substantial roles.
That work led to appearances in projects including “The Enforcer,” alongside Antonio Banderas and Kate Bosworth, and “Second Chance,” with AnnaLynne McCord.
The shift doesn’t necessarily represent a rejection of social media. Ren has described it more as a change in how she views the platform that originally helped build her career.
“I would consider social media closer to a bicycle, a tool that I can get from one place to another, as opposed to a career,” she told Grazia.
The audience remains, but the way she uses that audience has changed.
Jasmine Sanders Turned a Breakthrough Into Longevity
Jasmine Sanders took a different route because she never really left the industry that brought her to Sports Illustrated.
Known to many followers as “Golden Barbie,” Sanders was named Rookie of the Year following her 2019 SI Swimsuit debut in Costa Rica. The following year, she appeared on one of the issue’s covers alongside fellow cover models Kate Bock and Olivia Culpo.
Her career already extended beyond swimwear. Sanders worked with fashion and beauty brands and became the face of Vince Camuto’s Illuminare fragrance. She also partnered with Reebok on her own colorway of the Freestyle Hi sneaker. Designer Alexander John built the palette around her own makeup.
Sanders’ story, unlike the other three, is largely about longevity within the profession itself.
She continued walking for fashion houses and appearing in campaigns and editorial work while maintaining her relationship with SI Swimsuit. In 2024, the publication named Sanders one of its SI Swimsuit Legends as part of its 60th-anniversary issue.
She returned again for the 2025 issue, this time for a shoot in Zurich.
Career evolution doesn’t always require leaving the original career behind. Sanders took an early milestone and turned it into continued work in the same competitive industry years later.
Her Rookie of the Year title became one marker in a career that never really paused.
What They Did With the Platform
Put the four careers next to each other and Rookie of the Year looks less like a prediction than a starting point.
Upton converted some of the recognition she built through modeling into ownership of a consumer brand. She took a stated role in product development and marketing. Rohrbach Walton created Maybe? Productions and made a two-year independent documentary its first project. Ren has treated her online audience as infrastructure for other interests, from education and wellness to acting. Sanders continued building within modeling itself, eventually returning to SI as one of the publication’s Legends.
Those are four different definitions of what it means to capitalize on an early career break.
They also reflect something the original title could never measure. Rookie of the Year captures a particular moment: a new face, a successful debut, an audience paying attention. It says little about what happens when that moment ends.
A career can move into ownership. It can move behind the camera. It can expand into a new medium. Or it can remain in the same industry long enough for “rookie” to become an increasingly distant description.
Rookie of the Year identified these women at the beginning of something. What it couldn’t predict was what they would eventually do with the attention.
