Event Production &

Community Engagement  

Whether it's a pre-parade-themed party or a startup pitch competition finale event, I love a gathering. Events are community-building efforts, in action. Below are some of my favorite events to date, with descriptions of what made them so special to me. Since this page is a bit long, here is a summary of the events I’ve led:

• For Play

  • Blessed Fest: Celebrating Queer Creativity

  • Louisiana Regional Burning Man Event

  • Haunted Trail Installation

  • Double Rainbow Birthday Celebration

  • Krewe of Dead Beans Parade Party: Dead Wedding

  • Krewe of Rainbow Hooplah

• For Work

  • Urban Land Institute: Crosstown Concourse and Charity Hospital Collaboration

  • BioDistrict New Orleans: Geography of Innovation with Bruce Katz

  • Venture for America: Virtual Summer Training Camp Program

  • Shibusa Systems: Open House Tour

  • Venture for America: Virtual Summer Training Camp Program

BLESSED FEST

Through acting as project manager and producer for 'Blessed Fest,' alongside other LGBT+ creatives in Savannah, I showcased the transformative and uplifting impact of co-creating. By centering collaboration, this festival initiative was produced FOR the queer community, BY the queer community, instituting best practices that led to greater inclusivity, joy, and artistic expression.

Taking place from April 19 to April 21, 2024, with twenty-two hours of programming, hundreds of local community members contributed and bore witness to this collaborative creation. This was the 10th anniversary of Blessed Fest, hosted by House of Gunt, a local Savannah drag and queer performance family; I was brought on to expand what was once a one-night show to a full weekend of diverse programming.

I led set design, programming, community outreach efforts, marketing, flyering, strategic partnerships, fundraising, and post-production efforts for Blessed Fest.

Here’s what some of our attendees said of the festival: “inspirational;” “the most collaborative and creative event in Savannah all year;” “littttt;” “a beautiful embodiment of community and creativity;” “the real renaissance;” “so camp, so many beautiful community events, and joyful!!!”

BLESSED FEST by the Numbers:

• 3 days, April 19-21, 2024

• 4 Blessed Fest events

• 22 hours of programming

• 5,114 Instagram likes on promotional campaign

• 258 tickets sold

• $2,290.42 raised

• 28 House of Gunt performances

• 8 Additional Queer Performers

• 21 Queer Market Vendors

• 12 fabricated set pieces

• 3 brainstorming events

• 45+ community art creations

  Photos below provided by Gillian Kate, Jaycen Hughes, and Victoria Cooper.

Engulf (Louisiana) Regional Burn 2021

I lead City Planning, which included camp placement, art placement, and wayfinding for our 2021 Regional Burning Man event. After pre-planning our city, I then worked with our Site Operations team to ensure placement and set-up went smoothly.

To begin placement duties, I gathered contact information from previous Theme Camp Leads. I also led an outreach campaign on Facebook and Instagram recruiting new camp leads. I built a survey to collect information such as camp dimensions, anticipated noise levels, safety plans, and communal events.

Brennan Steele, Allen Blow, and I compiled a draft map using Google Maps that included submitted descriptors, contact information, and specific GPS coordinates. After Theme Camp Leads registered comments, we finalized the layout and built a digital map for distribution.

I coordinated with Site Operations to place physical markers so campers could identify their sites for build-out. We printed large digital maps for wayfinding and distributed signs around the site for all attendees to stay oriented. The map was also uploaded onto the Engulf website and onto the final event confirmation email so all attendees could save it onto their devices.

In total, we registered a record 22 theme camps and 12 immersive art installations, a 22% and 20% increase respectively. We burned three major art pieces. 520 people attended the festival, breaking the previous annual attendance record of 462.

We set a priority to fundraise for more lighting so that the big printed maps could be illuminated in 2022.

HAUNTED TRAIL INSTALLATION

After finding out that a local community member needed help installing their neighborhood haunted trail, I got to work securing a team. With just three weeks notice, I recruited 25 SCAD students to work on the installation, contributing well over 100 hours of work to the over $500,000 of decorations. I coordinated all communication, schedules, and expectations, and also contributed to the set design and staging. Over 2,000 people came to admire the installation at no cost! We also helped break down the installation after Halloween.

Double Rainbow Celebration

A fact that surprises absolutely no one is that I love celebrating my birthday.

My 27th birthday fell over Memorial Day weekend, in the emotional high of a post-vaccinated world. I knew I wanted to bring it in big with some overnight camping, but it wasn't until I met a new friend Tina that the plan came together.

We met on May 1st at a May Day Parade and immediately became fast friends parading through the French Quarter under a sky bursting with a natural phenomenon: a double-halo sunbow in a blue sky. Tina owned a plot of land an hour outside of New Orleans and was down to throw together a birthday celebration, which we named the Double Rainbow Celebration in honor of the sky during our auspicious meeting.

I got started rallying my community to help make the weekend happen.

The event was formatted as a mini Burning Man event: folks purchased tickets and then everything on the land was decommodified, focused on the 11 principles: gifting, radical inclusion, self-reliance, communal effort, leaving no trace, civic responsibility, participation, etc!

What culminated in just three weeks of planning was nothing short of magic. Over 120 friends -- new and old -- gathered for a communial camping extravaganza dotted with music, art, wellness, and meditation.

I organized all of the talent and volunteers. I tapped in sound experts, terraforming folks, workshop leads, and lighting professionals. I handled all of the scheduling, digital promotion, ticket sales, and event insurance. While I loved leading the charge on this event, it would not have been possible without the exceptional people of New Orleans sharing their enthusiasm, vision, and dream. Friends came offering yoga, building a treehouse, and creating a DJ dome with projection lighting.

In the end, we had nine bands, seventeen events, and a whole lot of fun. Pond floatillas, greased watermelon, meditative movement, sound baths, some unbelievable music, fire spinning, fireworks, bonfires, tree houses, and parades!

The most miraculous part?

Another double-halo sun rainbow on the last morning of the festival! Not an excellent photo, but check it out below. Undoubtedly the best birthday ever!

Till Death Do Us Part-y: Krewe of Dead Beans Parade

Okay, I acknowledge that the combinations of words above may not make sense to anyone outside of New Orleans. Essentially, my favorite New Orleans parade is the Krewe of RED BEANS, but my neighborhood subset of the parade is given the theme DEAD BEANS (think: elaborate costumes made of black beans and cannellini).

Many of my closest friends lived in our neighborhood, so to get people in the theme, we hosted a "Till Death Do Us Part-y" Dead Wedding. For the party, every attendee picked a role out of hat and we proceeded to have a faux wedding. We crafted two dozen roles and backstories for a fake wedding, ranging from ring bearer to minister.

We thrifted and 'bean-dazzled' dozens of accessories to be given out: the groom's party got bean bowties; the bride, groom, and flower kid got full outfits; beaned rings, wedding parasol, and bridal veil to boot. We even made a big batch of red beans and a two-tiered wedding cake!

The party had a groom's side and bridal side pre-party in separate areas of the house, then we reunited for the ceremony. The crowd threw beans at the couple as they walked down the aisle. The roles we gave out complicated the plot of the day, including an ex-lover who objected to the vows and a jealous cousin who proposed during the reception.

After hours of fun, we had an almost-traditional New Orleans second-line wedding parade through our neighborhood to the start of the official Krewe of Dead Beans parade! The folks there fully thought our wedding was real. One of our most epic house parties to date, made more fun by the commitment all brought to their roles, costumes, and backstories.

Krewe of Rainbow Hooplah

Crosstown Concourse and Charity Hospital Collaboration

At the Urban Land Institute National Conference in 2018, I heard Frank Ricks share his highly acclaimed Crosstown Concourse project and was immediately inspired to bring this relevant project to the New Orleans community.

The panelists included:

• Frank Ricks, FAIA - Principal, Looney Ricks Kiss

• Paul Angelone - moderator - Senior Director, Advisory Services, ULI

• Joseph A. Stebbins II - Executive Vice President, 1532 Tulane Partners, LLC

• Carey Nagle, AIA - Principal, BNIM

• Andy Kopplin - President and CEO, Greater New Orleans Foundation

Beyond the keynote conference session, I also organized a hard hat tour of the still-untouched and highly guarded Charity Hospital structure, a VIP sponsor luncheon, and a welcome dinner for ULI leadership.

Major knowledge that was shared included using complex funding sources, including city, county, state, federal, philanthropic, and private financing that were essential to jump-starting both projects. Beyond the development plans and financing, there was also a focus on the Crosstown Arts Foundation, workforce development initiatives, and innovative programming that helped turn Crosstown into a 'vertical neighborhood' for all to work, live, thrive, and play in.

The connections forged from this program spurred personal and professional relationships between the New Orleans team and Memphis’ project leaders, an invaluable resource for strategic planning and problem-solving for Charity Developers. This touch-point also created an opportunity for the citizenry of New Orleans to gain clarity and insights into the future of Charity Hospital, which previously felt opaque.

GEOGRAPHY OF INNOVATION

Another event I led for the New Orleans business community was the Geography of Innovation Conference. I had been running the New Orleans BioDistrict Board for several years, and we set a strategic initiative to bring the state board into a more accessible place for the public.

I had read Bruce Katz's "The New Localism" and found the content to be highly relevant to the city's biomedical district redevelopment efforts. One of our board members had connected with Katz’s team previously; he pitched the event proposal. Once approved, I got moving on all of the event logistics. I coordinated calendars for some extremely busy folks, booked the venue, set up ticketing through Eventbrite, set the agenda, put together speaking points, executed marketing the event, and ultimately had an extremely successful event with over 200 attendees. See details on the program on the right.

Venture for America’s Virtual Summer Training Camp Program

Venture for America is a fellowship for recent grads who want to learn how to build a business while making an impact. VFA Fellows get training and join a startup in an emerging US city, where they live and work for two years at one of the hundreds of partner companies. They learn hands-on what it takes to build a company while getting the mentorship, network, and ongoing support to prepare themselves to become successful entrepreneurs. The goal is to spark job growth in cities that need it by sending our top talent to help grow the businesses that will make it happen.

I joined the Venture for America fellowship after graduating from Columbia, and, four years later I returned to be a ‘Fellow-in-Residence’ leader for the summer training camp program. When COVID hit, our team had to pivot Training Camp to be fully virtual. Over a month of programming, we held 242 Zoom program sessions, hosted 46 Fellow-led community-building events, gave 2000 e-kudos, delivered four weekly work-product challenges, and led countless breakout rooms.

My main takeaways from this crash course in virtual programming were:

1. Breakouts rooms are key for community building: we broke the 212 fellows into five dueling ‘Credo Houses’ and used software like Remo to allow for mingling out of sessions

2. Have vulnerable spaces: small ‘goal setting groups’ let the fellows share where they were at emotionally

3. Recognize what doesn’t need to be a video call: walk and talks or de-pressured video-off calls were needed

4. Make the most out of digital: fun slack channels, Zoom polls, online Catan competitions, virtual escape rooms, and online talent shows were all hits!

5. Be prepared for tech: all of our (40+) guest speakers met in a virtual ‘green room’ where we ran through the run-of-show and tested tech before we threw them into Training Camp with the fellows

6. Gamify experiences: we incentivized responsive and social behavior through our Credo House competition

7. Acknowledge hardships and celebrate wins: daily feedback surveys, open mics for all to share, and 1:1 conversations allowed our community to be heard.

For a deep dive on each of those reflections, read my full LinkedIn post on “Reflections from Virtual Training Camp.”

Upon the completion of our first Shibusa cottage, I was motivated to put together a COVID-safe open house to spread the word about our unique building process. I created promotional materials and sent them out to a list of major real estate players in the New Orleans community. We had elected officials, financiers, media outlets, community partners, and suppliers sign up for limited time slots to tour the home.

I led seven, 45-minute sessions for five individuals at a time. All signed in for tracking and wore N-95 masks, and also confirmed that they had received their first vaccination. In addition, I set up a virtual Zoom tour for those who were unable to attend in person.

I also worked with our engineering partners at PACE Group LLC to set up a fully immersive virtual tour of the cottage using Matterport Technology. Between February 2021 and December 2022 there were 1,864 virtual visits.