Paul Martin, Dhayana Sena, Marissa Urban and Eden Hamblin are four of more than 325,000 Xbox Ambassadors around the world. The program, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, began as a way for Xbox gamers to help other gamers through troubleshooting, technical support and helping them reach new levels in a title.
From there, it grew into a community that showed up for each other in many other ways, including initiating charity streams, teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) to girls and creating relationships with all kinds of gamers around the world, says Lea Natalello, who joined the Xbox staff in 2017 and works closely with the Ambassadors. When she started, there were 50,000 in the community.
“From day one, the Xbox Ambassadors community has always been about the gamer and our fans,” Natalello says. “Then, over time, we started thinking about what the word help really means. We talked to the community and asked them what it meant to be an Ambassador. What we found was that many wanted to give back to the gaming community that had done so much for them. We were able to really grow into this program and community that empowered good gamers to share that goodness as far as they could reach.”
Find out more about the Ambassadors and the program at Microsoft Stories.