The loudest moment of Super Bowl 50, for me, didn’t happen on the field.

The loudest moment of Super Bowl 50, for me, didn’t happen on the field.

It happened in a theater filled with thousands of volunteers, long before the game began.

In 2016, when the Super Bowl came to the Bay Area, I was invited to join a small design team working on something most people never think about: preparing 9,000 volunteer hosts. I got to collaborate with Rich Cox Braden and Dia Bondi, two people I deeply respect, to re-imagine what that preparation could be.

The year before, the model had largely been people sitting in a room watching a video. This time, the Host Committee did something rare. They trusted us to create a different kind of experience. They gave us real freedom, and that trust shaped everything that followed.

So we started our design with two questions.

• What absolutely had to be covered?
• And why does someone volunteer to be a host in the first place?

That second question changed everything.

These were not just helpers filling shifts. These were people who had raised their hands to represent the openness and spirit of the Bay Area to the world. They were already leaning toward an identity: host.

We built a 90 minute interactive session designed to create connection, shared purpose, and a sense of role. Early on, we invited people to turn to someone near them and talk.

I will never forget the sound.

In a theater of about 3,400 people, everyone turned at once. The room exploded into conversation. A wall of joyful noise. Total chaos. And underneath it, something else. Energy. You could feel the shift physically. A room full of strangers started to become a room full of people in it together.

That moment does not happen by accident. It happens when people are given a role that matters and the space to step into it.

That was when it clicked for me.

We were not transferring information. We were designing an experience that changed how people saw their role.

When people step into an identity that matters to them, something powerful happens. They do not just comply. They show up differently.

It was an honor to be trusted with that kind of responsibility, and a joy to watch it come alive in real time. Even now, years later, I can still hear that room.