Courtesy of Marlene Hendricks
Sports Illustrated and Empower Onyx are putting the spotlight on the diverse journeys of Black women across sports—from the veteran athletes, to up-and-coming stars, coaches, executives and more—in the series, Elle-evate: 100 Influential Black Women in Sports.
Marlene Hendricks wants to put an emphasis on the experience in guest experiences. And as the vice president of guest experiences at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, which recently hosted Super Bowl LVI, giving fans the best experience possible is becoming her superpower.
Her responsibility is as big as the nearly 300-acre complex she manages, known as Hollywood Park, home of not just the stadium but also the YouTube theater, and will soon include restaurants, shopping and a state-of-the-art movie theater. Hendricks must constantly come up with creative ways to keep countless ticket holders happy and engaged in a city that is no stranger to those expectations.
“If you ask what’s my secret sauce, it’s that I genuinely love people,” Hendricks says. “Typically, when you hear about guest services, it’s a problem. My approach is more proactive. It goes into the planning of the event long before the doors open. I call them guests, not fans. You’re coming into our home, so we want you to feel at home; we want to ensure the parking is right, the attendant that’s greeting you is right there, your seat is right. We want to ensure that everything you’re experiencing is 100%, that way we never have to talk about service. That’s my philosophy of how to engage.”
For her it’s more than a game—it’s about engaging people when they enter Marlene Hendricks’s universe. She has always been a people person, not in the traditional definition of being likable or social, but more in the sense of understanding others. She connects with people by seeing them as equals, putting herself on the other side of any situation and asking, “What would I want?”
“I try to stay grounded and not lose sight of what I’m called to do, because I think it's bigger than sports and entertainment,” Hendricks says.
As a humble and accommodating person, Hendricks does not have the commonly presumed personality of someone in charge. She uses the words “we” and “us” often when discussing her accomplishments. Her staff is family to her. She wants to see them thrive and recognizes that behind every great VP is an amazing team making them look good.
“I honestly don’t feel like I work. I have the ability to connect with my team, because I’ve been where they are,” Hendricks says. “My career really started with me as a maid cleaning rooms. So, I remember how people would look down on me. I said, ‘If I ever had this opportunity to manage people and make decisions, I would ensure I treat every single person with respect, no matter what they were doing.’ Our staff knows they’re valued.”
Courtesy of Marlene Hendricks
Hendricks, who graduated FIU with a degree in hospitality management, always knew the elements of what she wanted in a career but wasn’t quite sure how to get there or if it even existed.
“I’ll never forget when my marketing professor asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Well, I love sports, I love planning parties and I want to help people.’ He said, ‘There is no profession like that. Good luck.’ Sure enough, when I graduated I could not get a job because everyone’s like, What do you do?”
As luck would have it, the position she wanted ended up finding her. Stuck at an unfulfilling job with an insurance agency, she got a call from a former employer asking her to work with the Miami Heat. Working in guest services, she was finally on the path to her dream job, one that would prove the doubters from college wrong.
After five years with the Heat, Hendricks moved on to the Hornets in Charlotte, where she worked for 16 years and had the opportunity to orchestrate notable events such as the 2019 NBA All-Star Game and the Democratic National Convention. She also earned the NBA Pete Winemiller Guest Experience Innovation Award in ’17. Fast forward and favor would strike again when a friend sent her a post for the SoFi VP position, so she applied. Hendricks was hired in October ’21, just on the heels of Super Bowl ’22, a surreal experience even for her.
“As everyone was celebrating the Super Bowl, I was in tears,” she says. “People thought it was from the Rams winning, but it was because I know God favored me. I went to my office and broke down crying. I know where I am today, where I’m standing is because of the grace of God. This is not an opportunity because I went to college and I’m this and I’m that. No, this is favor.”
The former hotel-housekeeper-turned-VP wants to be clear that while she is grateful, it was not an easy win. Hendricks had to fight up against constant challenges and critics and had to learn to focus past the distractions to let her work speak for itself, which was undeniable. “I learned that I had to be the best, that I had to do it twice as good,” she says. “I had to be better than anyone else and I had to work harder than anyone else.”
Hendricks, who is Jamaican born, has a strong sense of community and is privy to the fact that the multibillion-dollar complex is in the lower income, Black city of Inglewood, Calif., where opportunities and resources are not readily available.
“Now that I’m in L.A., one of the things I told my counterparts is I’m not going to sit back, I’m going into the community so that people see me,” she says. “They see this big building and they don’t think they can work at SoFi Stadium. My purpose is to give hope, passion, and give them direction. I want to inspire a young woman that’s at a crossroad, that thinks she can’t do it. Hey, if I can do it, you can do it.”
Senita Brooks is a contributor for Empower Onyx, a diverse multi-channel platform celebrating the stories and transformative power of sports for Black women and girls.
