Do You Believe in Miracles?
Designing a Force for Good with Franzi Sessler
As we watch the Winter Olympics unfold this week, I’m reminded of that iconic 1980 rally cry around the improbable US Hockey win: “Do you believe in miracles?”
In Franzi Sessler’s world, miracles are more than luck; they are the result of choosing to work with people who want to push the world forward.
That is why whenever I have a wild, ambitious, perhaps unlikely idea that needs to come to life, Franzi is the person I call first.
Over the past decade, Franzi has been the “creative translator” at the heart of my most audacious projects, many of which have won awards for their ingenuity and impact. She helped me reimagine civic engagement for student-athletes and designed gatherings that gave democracy-makers permission to hope when things felt heavy.
Most recently, she and her team at Kreatives, her Munich-based global design agency, have helped me bring the vision of How We Future to life (Thank you, Janina! I love the design!).
Here are just a few lessons from our conversation on how to design the “miracles” our future needs.
1. Turn Constraints Into Your Competitive Advantage
For the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, Allianz (a 20-year partner of the International Paralympic Committee) approached Franzi and her team to help overcome a staggering statistic: 90% of people who watch the Olympics don’t watch the Paralympics. They discovered that when fans don’t understand the rules or classifications, they disengage. The problem was a lack of understanding, not a lack of enthusiasm for the games.
Franzi’s team set out to address this insight with 22 vibrant and short animated explainer videos. In doing so, they realized they were facing an impossibly short timeline and a limited number of talented designers.
So, they recruited talented illustrators from around the world, each bringing a different style and local perspective.
Instead of shrinking the ambition to fit a single style, they turned the constraint into an opportunity. They realized that just as Paralympic athletes come together with different abilities, their storytelling should reflect a world of different artistic styles. They even honored French masterpieces in each video to celebrate the Paris games.
The Miracle: What started as a technical challenge became the project’s magic.
Over 23 million people engaged with the videos, contributing to the most-watched Paralympics in history. One athlete even wheeled up to Franzi in the Paralympic athletes village during the games just to say that the videos helped her feel fully seen as the strong athlete she knows she is.
Franzi and her team have just recently released a new series of sport explainer videos for the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games!
2. Design for Impact, Not Just Aesthetics
When Franzi and her co-founder Tony Gui started Kreatives, they weren’t just focused on great creative work, but rather on how to use creative work to make a positive difference.
Their mission statement captures their purpose clearly: “We are a Creative Studio pushing the world forward with strategy, design and storytelling. For People and the Planet.”
This commitment to impact made her the perfect creative partner in the “All Vote No Play” movement that I helped start with Coach Eric Reveno and Coach Joe Kennedy (now a national nonprofit called “The Team”).
In 2020, Men’s Basketball Coach Eric Reveno had a life-changing moment when he realized that coaches were in a position to help athletes understand the power and impact of civic engagement. He believed that helping athletes find purpose beyond their sport wasn’t just good for their own mental health and long term success, but it could also model a new type of civic teamwork for our campuses and societies.
Recognizing that there were no civic materials that “spoke athlete or coach,” Coach Rev called me for help. Believing in the potential for student athletes to become influential change agents, I called Franzi. We got excited about an opportunity not just to meet the need of the time, but to influence a system that could shape more participatory civic futures. (See here for an article I wrote about the origin story called “NCAA is having a Ted Lasso moment”.)
Together we designed materials that reflected the energy of competitive sports—civic tailgates, civic playbooks, and “highlight reels” that embodied the energy of a championship game.
The Miracle: To date, our efforts have won multiple awards, established a national Engaged Athlete Fellowship, and reached over 150,000 student-athletes, with stories featured in Teen Vogue and ESPN, and support from greats like NBA’s Steph Curry, Stanford’s Coach Tara VanDerveer and WNBA’s Nneka Ogwumike among others.
3. Create the Conditions for Miracles
Last fall, I had the chance to visit the Kreatives studio in Munich and got to see how Franzi “architects” culture. The first thing you see when you walk in is a sign that says “13 things that require zero talent.”
They also have a massive open space called “the playground.”
“We physically move into the playground when we need to do things we don’t have the answers to,” she told me.
By keeping a “living room” feel in a professional studio, she creates psychological safety. Her team wipes their whiteboards clean before every big project, a ritual that signals they are entering “creation mode.”
There’s even a fun sign in the bathroom that says “Call your mom.”
The Miracle: They’ve proven that when you create a space that allows for uncertainty and play, experimentation becomes the default, not the exception.
How We Future: Your Turn
Franzi has taught me again and again that we can design better futures with the right partners, the right questions, and even the right constraints. This week, I have two invitations for you to create your own “miracle”:
Flip a Limitation: Pick one constraint you’re facing. Instead of fighting it, ask: “What if this is actually showing me a more creative path forward?”
Find Your Franzi: If you have a wild idea, reach out to that one creative person who can help you see the magic in the mess.
Creativity is a force for good. What are you going to create?
The Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic sports explainer videos by Allianz are out now. Watch them, share them, and be an ambassador for these incredible athletes.
