How I Became the Woman Hollywood Calls When the Impossible Needs to Happen
When people ask me what it’s like to run an events company, I always say that it depends on the answers to the type of seemingly unusual questions I find myself asking. And they often start as random as:“And how many custom trucks do we need?”“How many stops across the U.S.?”“How many months will we be on the road?”“What’s the guest count per stop?”It always sounds impossible. I always say, “Yes.”
That’s how I found myself running one of the first major national tours for a new tech client. It was seven months on the road, 12 cities and roughly 2,500 guests per location. We customized entire trucks in a matter of weeks, tricked out with every detail the client dreamed up, including full kitchens capable of serving hot food, storage for tents and gear and enough AV options to rival a festival.
We flew from state to state chasing permits from health departments and city officials — never totally sure we’d get approvals until the eleventh hour. And naturally, at some point, one of the trucks broke down in the middle of nowhere.
But my team never flinched. We exceeded expectations. We found the workaround. We always do. Our production manager ran the entire tour with a broken wrist in a cast, smiling (almost) the whole way, ready for each new city and its own unique brand of commotion.
That’s the kind of energy that keeps this machine, my company, running.
And each event eventually hits a point where I take a step back for half a second, and watch it become something even bigger than what we planned. While those trucks tore down highways, fans began honking like we were a touring band. In more than one city, people actually trailed us all the way to the venue, phones out, wanting to catch the moment the doors swung open. Guests showed up hours before the official start time just to claim their spot at the front of the line. Somewhere between the honking caravans and the early-bird lines, the whole thing shifted. It wasn’t an “event” and we weren’t just building this thing. We were architecting a community in real time.
I love running my company and am grateful every day for the incredible projects we get to be part of. But anyone who thinks this business is all glamour and no grit has never been in the trenches at 3 a.m. with a deadline closing in. There’s no world where you shortcut your way out of a crisis. And there’s no existing AI agent you can summon when a client realizes the branding is wrong on hundreds of gloves hours before doors open and you need the best, most-trusted embroiderer in all of Manhattan right away (that particular night, we had just six hours to redo every glove, and get them back on-site before the first guest arrived). We made it happen. We always make it happen. That’s the power of relationships. And when the client nods and says, “It’s perfect. This is exactly what we wanted,” every minute under pressure becomes worth it.
One evening on the night of an opening at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, rain came down in sheets just as the show was set to begin. Within mere minutes, we had sourced and distributed hundreds of umbrellas so guests stayed dry and the energy stayed intact.
I’ve taken 2 a.m. crisis calls, while pregnant, troubleshooting a high-profile musician hired for a next day performance who now was unable to perform.
These are the moments the public never sees. They’re also the moments that define my career. That’s the part no one teaches you: Relentlessness. You earn it through rolling up sleeves and the feeling of precision and the sense of responsibility that you owe yourself and your clients. When you do what you love, it’s a process that becomes extremely sacred and personal. We treat every event like we’re hosting people in our own home: The pacing, warmth and the way the experience unfolds. Everything is intentional. Everything is designed to feel effortless.
And then there are the requests that arrive out of (almost) thin air. On the morning of a VIP preview, a partner decided on a very exciting pivot. We needed 3,000 green plastic balls for a last-minute immersive forest lake installation. The only issue: Every, and I mean every, single store sold them in multicolor packs. So we sent teams all over Southern California, bought out the inventory and hand-sorted thousands of balls until only the green ones remained. Guests, and all of the internet as the project trended, saw a perfect, seamless installation. They’ll never know what it took, and honestly, that’s the point. We donated the balls to a local school after for their play-yard, all of the colors, to minimize waste.
That’s why clients come to us and stay with us: They know we will say yes; they know we will perform; and they know the outcome will shape the future of their brand. We say yes because there’s no event we’ve faced to date where we haven’t excitedly figured it out. We anticipate needs, we have a network that spans industries and time zones, and we are uncompromising in the way we solve problems.
“No” isn’t in our vocabulary at Gold Sky. The only question is “how?”. And in an era obsessed with shortcuts and automation, we’ve proven again and again that while it can help, in our industry nothing beats deep experience, a commitment to excellence, years of business relationships, and the instinct and intuition necessary for the kind of hospitality that makes people feel something real. That makes people feel they are part of something larger.
At Gold Sky, that feeling is everything. It’s what turns an event into an experience, and an experience into a memory: The unforgettable moments building community in real time, where people show up, connect, and soon realize they’ve just stepped into one hell of an event.
That’s how I found myself running one of the first major national tours for a new tech client. It was seven months on the road, 12 cities and roughly 2,500 guests per location. We customized entire trucks in a matter of weeks, tricked out with every detail the client dreamed up, including full kitchens capable of serving hot food, storage for tents and gear and enough AV options to rival a festival.
We flew from state to state chasing permits from health departments and city officials — never totally sure we’d get approvals until the eleventh hour. And naturally, at some point, one of the trucks broke down in the middle of nowhere.
But my team never flinched. We exceeded expectations. We found the workaround. We always do. Our production manager ran the entire tour with a broken wrist in a cast, smiling (almost) the whole way, ready for each new city and its own unique brand of commotion.
That’s the kind of energy that keeps this machine, my company, running.
And each event eventually hits a point where I take a step back for half a second, and watch it become something even bigger than what we planned. While those trucks tore down highways, fans began honking like we were a touring band. In more than one city, people actually trailed us all the way to the venue, phones out, wanting to catch the moment the doors swung open. Guests showed up hours before the official start time just to claim their spot at the front of the line. Somewhere between the honking caravans and the early-bird lines, the whole thing shifted. It wasn’t an “event” and we weren’t just building this thing. We were architecting a community in real time.
I love running my company and am grateful every day for the incredible projects we get to be part of. But anyone who thinks this business is all glamour and no grit has never been in the trenches at 3 a.m. with a deadline closing in. There’s no world where you shortcut your way out of a crisis. And there’s no existing AI agent you can summon when a client realizes the branding is wrong on hundreds of gloves hours before doors open and you need the best, most-trusted embroiderer in all of Manhattan right away (that particular night, we had just six hours to redo every glove, and get them back on-site before the first guest arrived). We made it happen. We always make it happen. That’s the power of relationships. And when the client nods and says, “It’s perfect. This is exactly what we wanted,” every minute under pressure becomes worth it.
One evening on the night of an opening at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, rain came down in sheets just as the show was set to begin. Within mere minutes, we had sourced and distributed hundreds of umbrellas so guests stayed dry and the energy stayed intact.
I’ve taken 2 a.m. crisis calls, while pregnant, troubleshooting a high-profile musician hired for a next day performance who now was unable to perform.
These are the moments the public never sees. They’re also the moments that define my career. That’s the part no one teaches you: Relentlessness. You earn it through rolling up sleeves and the feeling of precision and the sense of responsibility that you owe yourself and your clients. When you do what you love, it’s a process that becomes extremely sacred and personal. We treat every event like we’re hosting people in our own home: The pacing, warmth and the way the experience unfolds. Everything is intentional. Everything is designed to feel effortless.
And then there are the requests that arrive out of (almost) thin air. On the morning of a VIP preview, a partner decided on a very exciting pivot. We needed 3,000 green plastic balls for a last-minute immersive forest lake installation. The only issue: Every, and I mean every, single store sold them in multicolor packs. So we sent teams all over Southern California, bought out the inventory and hand-sorted thousands of balls until only the green ones remained. Guests, and all of the internet as the project trended, saw a perfect, seamless installation. They’ll never know what it took, and honestly, that’s the point. We donated the balls to a local school after for their play-yard, all of the colors, to minimize waste.
That’s why clients come to us and stay with us: They know we will say yes; they know we will perform; and they know the outcome will shape the future of their brand. We say yes because there’s no event we’ve faced to date where we haven’t excitedly figured it out. We anticipate needs, we have a network that spans industries and time zones, and we are uncompromising in the way we solve problems.
“No” isn’t in our vocabulary at Gold Sky. The only question is “how?”. And in an era obsessed with shortcuts and automation, we’ve proven again and again that while it can help, in our industry nothing beats deep experience, a commitment to excellence, years of business relationships, and the instinct and intuition necessary for the kind of hospitality that makes people feel something real. That makes people feel they are part of something larger.
At Gold Sky, that feeling is everything. It’s what turns an event into an experience, and an experience into a memory: The unforgettable moments building community in real time, where people show up, connect, and soon realize they’ve just stepped into one hell of an event.