Ad Age is marking Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 with our Honoring Creative Excellence package, in which members of the Hispanic community revisit some of their favorite creative projects. (Read the introduction here.) Today, guest editor Marissa Solis turns the spotlight to Diana Flores, the professional flag football quarterback and captain of the Mexican national team, who writes about staying committed to making a change for women in sports.

In the final seconds of my Super Bowl LVII commercial,  “Run With It,” there’s a scene where I’m talking to my mom (well, the actress playing my mom)—in Spanish. The action-packed commercial is over two minutes long, but those few seconds en Español may have made the biggest impression on the Latinos watching the Super Bowl that night. I know they made the biggest impression on me. 

Representation matters a great deal to me, and so getting to star in the first-ever NFL commercial featuring a female athlete during the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles was unbelievable, thrilling and a tremendous honor. I love that I got to represent not only my fellow Latinos on one of TV’s biggest nights, but also my fellow female athletes. 

For Latinos, nothing matters more to us than our family, so that scene with my TV mom wasn’t just emotional to film, but also emotional to watch. We all know that what we see in the media plays a role in our feelings about ourselves and what we can achieve, and having a Latina’s story told authentically in the commercial was powerful. “Run with It” definitely broke cultural barriers. 

“Run With It” also broke gender barriers. The commercial paid homage to “the women pushing football forward” and it definitely featured groundbreaking women who have pushed women’s sports—and representation— forward, including sportscaster Erin Andrews, U.S. flag football quarterback Vanita Krouch, teen tackle football player Bella Rasmussen and the legendary Billie Jean King (not to mention all of the other amazing women featured in the commercial and those who worked behind the scenes). Everyone who worked on “Run With It” believed in the commercial’s message of female empowerment and unity. 

Getting to work with Billie Jean King was incredible. I was pinching myself because I was on set with the woman who had inspired me as an athlete, both on and off the field. When her scene was over, Billie and I had a special moment together. She asked me, “Now, after winning a world championship and all you’ve accomplished, what do you want to do next?” I told her, “I want to make a change for women in sports.”

Billie asked me the same question again and I answered in the same way: “I want to make a change for women in sports.” After about the fourth time she asked me, she said, “The reason I asked you the same question so many times is because I want you to maintain that same determination and confidence. Making a change won’t be easy—it will take time and you may have to sacrifice a lot before it becomes a reality. But in the end, it will all be worth it.”

Those words stayed with me, and the moment she said them, I knew that what we were doing on the set of the Super Bowl commercial was something special and powerful. It was part of a greater mission to empower female athletes around the world. And I feel like with “Run With It,” we did just that.