Bringing his HR expertise to the task, one Cottonwood Heights man is leading the effort to bring another Winter Games to Utah in 2030 or 2034.
As the only full-time employee of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, Darren Hughes is responsible for assembling thousands of pages of details that make up a bid under the International Olympic Committee’s new selection process.
“He basically organizes all of the technical work. Everything,” said Fraser Bullock, president and CEO of the bid committee, putting together specifics about everything from the number of seats available for each event to water use during the year the Games are held.
The stacks of spreadsheets, maps, contracts, vision statements, sustainability plans and other information needed to complete the IOC’s 39-page “Future Host Questionnaire” are nearly all ready, even though nothing’s due until the next stage of the bid process.
Hughes, who was brought on board shortly after the bid committee was created in early 2020 and has quietly labored behind the scenes ever since, is “the heart of that work,” Bullock said. “He’s simply amazing.”
Bullock and Hughes worked together on the 2002 Games. As chief operating officer, Bullock saw firsthand how Hughes helped grow the workforce to 50,000 people, including 24,000 volunteers recruited with the slogan, “Hard Work. No Pay. Long Hours. Better Hurry.”
After the 2002 Games, Hughes was looking at reentering the corporate world, but the consulting projects he was picking up felt like “just more traditional HR stuff, not very exciting.”
Then the International Olympic Committee came calling.
.png?width=1200&upscale=true&name=Utah%20Today%20Banner%20(v2).png)
.png?width=750&upscale=true&name=Round%20out%20your%20day%20(v5).png)
