EVENT PRODUCTION
Nothing brings people together quite like, well, bringing people together. Your event is a microcosm of the world you want to create, and it allows you to immerse people in that vision.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when our desire for interpersonal connection has only grown stronger, the entire industry of event production has shifted and a new world of digital opportunities has taught us how much potential there still is for convening online.
I have managed every type of event from working as a nightlife promoter and stage producer to organizing corporate seminars and digital conferences, and I want to work with you to bring your next big event to life!
Oaklash is a weekend-long festival of drag and other queer performance that takes place annually in Oakland, California. I founded Oaklash in 2018 with my good friend Beatrix LaHaine, and what started as a celebration of local queer art has grown into a nationally recognized event featuring hundreds performers from the Bay Area and all around the world!
Now its own 501(c)3 non-profit organization, Oaklash is dedicated to building new and ever-expanding stages to showcase & elevate Bay Area queer talent. We aim to create safe and welcoming environments that not only accept but celebrate members of the queer community, especially queer and trans people of color.
For our 2020 event, we took our festival online and live-streamed 30 hours of programming via our Twitch channel. What seemed like a setback at first ended up expanding our audience to over 250,000 viewers all over the world!
The HIV2020 Online Conference was a key population-led, inter-disciplinary, and sex-positive event that reaffirmed the leading role communities play in the global HIV response.
Initially planned to take place over three days in Mexico City, the global conference was re-imagined as a series of virtual sessions that took place over the course of four months. All sessions were offered with simultaneous translation in five languages.
I led all communications efforts for the event including social media promotion, website design & management, press relations, newsletter updates, and making all sessions available as recordings to ensure that over 35,000 advocates and activists around the world had access to this digital event.
Each year, more than 4,000 corporate executives, diversity & inclusion professionals, and LGBTQ experts convene at the Out & Equal Workplace Summit. The annual Summit is conference where business leaders can network, share strategies and best practices that help create workplaces which are inclusive of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.
I had the pleasure of joining Out & Equal for the 2015 Summit in Dallas, Texas and the 2016 Summit in Orlando, Florida. As part of the communications department, I led online promotion and press relations, developed a conference app, designed signage, programs, and merchandise, and worked with corporate sponsors to ensure their branding was prominent across the entire event. Additionally, I managed a team of photographers and videographers as well as worked with social media influencers to help document the event.