Jim Rowley of Crunch Fitness named EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 New York Award winner

NEW YORK, June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- CEO Jim Rowley of Crunch Fitness was named an EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 New York Award winner.

Rowley is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran turned prominent businessman and fitness industry leader. His new book "Perspire to Greatness" covers discipline and hard truths about leadership. The book is now available on Amazon, with 50% of profits going to support Veterans' organizations.

Crunch is a high value, low price gym that is renowned for offering state-of-the-art strength training equipment and premium Relax & Recover® services for everyone, from young, strong and social customers to more mature members. Headquartered in New York City, Crunch serves 3.5 million members with over 550 gyms worldwide.

"I'm honored to receive this award and to join this community of bold business leaders and entrepreneurs," said Rowley. "Crunch debuted in 1989 in Greenwich Village, so this recognition in New York City is especially meaningful for us. This win reflects our commitment to our team, franchise owners and members. This is a proud milestone on our way to building a world with more Crunch."

Now in its 41st year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year program honors business leaders for their ingenuity, courage and entrepreneurial spirit. It celebrates original founders who bootstrapped their business from inception or raised outside capital to grow their company, transformational CEOs who infused innovation into an existing organization to catapult its trajectory and multigenerational family business leaders who reimagined a legacy business model to strengthen it for the future.

Regional winners were chosen by an independent panel of past winners, top CEOs and business leaders. Judges assessed candidates on long-term value creation, entrepreneurial spirit, purpose-driven commitment, and significant growth and impact.

As a New York award winner, Rowley will now be considered by the national judges for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 National Awards, which will be presented in November at the annual Strategic Growth Forum®, where high-growth CEOs, Fortune 1000 executives and investors converge to shape the future of business. The National Overall Award winner will move on to compete for the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award in May 2027.  

The Entrepreneur Of The Year program has recognized the leadership of entrepreneurs such as:

• Jason McGowan, Crumbl Cookies
• Jonathan Regev, The Farmer's Dog
• Daniel Lubetzky, KIND Healthy Snacks
• Reid Hoffman | Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn Corp.
• Saeju Jeong, Noom
• Allison Ellsworth | Stephen Ellsworth, Poppi
• Shelly Ibach, Sleep Number
• Howard Schultz, Starbucks Coffee Company
• Holly Thaggard | Amanda Baldwin, Supergoop!
• Jodi L. Berg, Vita-Mix Corporation
• Michael Happe, Winnebago Industries
• Jitendra Mohan | Sanjay Gajendra | Casey Morrison, Astera Labs
• Shai Eisenman, Bubble Beauty
• Samir Goel | Wemimo Abbey, Esusu
• Josh Meyerowitz, SupplyHouse

Sponsors
Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards include presenting sponsors PNC Bank, Cresa, LLC, Marsh Risk, SAP and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. In New York, sponsors also include regional Platinum sponsor Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN), regional Gold sponsors ADP and DLA Piper, and regional Silver sponsor Stagedge.

About Crunch:
Crunch is a gym that believes in making serious exercise fun by fusing fitness and entertainment and pioneering a philosophy of 'No Judgments.' Crunch serves a fitness community for all kinds of people with all types of goals, exercising all different ways, working it out at the same place together. Today, we are renowned for creating one-of-a-kind group fitness classes and unique programming for our wildly diverse members. Headquartered in New York City, Crunch serves 3.5 million members with over 550 gyms worldwide in 41 states, the District of Columbia, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and India. Crunch is rapidly expanding across the U.S. and around the globe.

SOURCE Crunch Fitness