| 11.04.09 9:00 AM |
Miami Planner Opens Green-Focused Planning Firm
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 | Jessica Welle, president of Green Planet Events
Photo: Gary James for BizBash |
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After 13 years at Maritime Telecommunications Network, Jessica Welle left her post as the satellite communications company’s director of purchasing and logistics in January to pursue a career in the event business—an interest she’d cultivated working on parties for friends and family. A self-proclaimed “green freak,” Welle opened Green Planet Events in February. “I didn’t want to be the same event planner as everyone else [in the market], and [green events] was a good niche for me,” she says. “There is so much waste produced from events that this seemed like a natural way to help the planet.”
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Maritime Telecommunications Network, Dorsch Gallery |
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| 09.09.09 9:30 AM |
Graphic Designer Creates Budget-Conscious Custom Invitations
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 | | Eva Petersen |
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After graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2005, Eva Petersen moved to Miami, where she worked at various galleries in the Wynwood arts district and as an educator and research assistant at the Miami Art Museum, before serving as art director for Wynwood, the Art Magazine. During this time, Petersen created postcards and flyers for the galleries’ various events, which led to freelance work designing invitations for Miami’s Paper Fetish Design Studio. “While I was there, I had other projects, but I started turning down more and more to focus on invitation design, which was more rewarding to me,” Petersen says. She launched her own custom invitation company, Eva Petersen Design in January.
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Y.M.C.A. of Greater Miami |
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| 06.24.09 9:00 AM |
Internationally Inspired Menus From an Up-and-Coming Caterer
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Before getting into the food industry, Elizabeth Guerra spent 10 years working with Thomas Lighting as a lighting consultant to electrical engineers and architects. She spent most of her spare time in the kitchen, cooking birthday dinners for friends and colleagues. When she transferred from Ohio to Miami in 1998, she decided to work with food full time, and opened Relish Miami Catering last year.
Though she hasn’t had formal culinary training, Guerra hones her techniques and keeps up with trends by reading food magazines and her collection of more than 300 cookbooks, and by taking one-off cooking classes at Miami-Dade College. “There’s a difference between studying and working,” says Guerra. “If you don’t have the right palate and sensibility about food, it doesn’t matter how much you study under another chef—you’ll be a great technical cook, but not necessarily a great chef.”
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Miami-Dade College, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, Junior League of Miami |
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| 10.06.08 1:49 PM |
Planner Leaves the Field and Steps Into the Kitchen
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 | | Tiffany Photo |
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YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR From her college years spent as a hostess at Tavern on the Green or her stints in New York working for prominent caterers, Elsylee Colon has been involved in culinary arts for a long time. Her experience as an event planner and working in the hospitality industry helped her fine-tune her knowledge of food presentation and styling techniques.
Colon began experimenting with flavors and textures as a child. Her grandmother, also a chef, encouraged her to play around and create new dishes and recipes for family gatherings. With those newly discovered dishes, Colon would later make gifts for her family and friends that were always created by hand and especially for them, a quality on which Colon's business, Elsylee Galetes Artesanals, centers.
"I think that this personalized element is usually taken for granted today by most catering and food companies," she says. "Giving someone a handmade gift that was made specifically for them at the time of the order makes them feel ultra-special and unique."
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| 08.11.08 5:01 PM |
Caricaturist Captures the Corporate Market
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 | | Ken Fallin |
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LESS ACTING, MORE DRAWING Caricaturist Ken Fallin has entertained the public for years with his whimsical pen-and-ink drawings of public personalities, gracing the prestigious pages of The Wall Street Journal and In Style magazine. Before he hit it big in the caricature world, Fallin's first passion was acting. Leaving his hometown of Jacksonville for the bustling city of New York, he jumped into the Broadway scene to seek out the writer of Forbidden Broadway. After suggesting some new numbers, including actors finding the name "Nina" written on different parts of their bodies (a nod to caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, Fallin's inspiration, who was known to hide the name of his daughter Nina in most of his drawings), Fallin began a 20-year gig designing the show's posters. When his drawings began making more money than his acting talents, he knew he'd found his real gift.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T Fallin perfected his techniques at Emerson College, the Art Institute, and New York's prestigious Parsons design school, as well as through courses taught by New Yorker cartoonist Mort Gerberg. While in school, he took a course in record album design and book cover design, which later proved beneficial when he designed a series of CD covers for RCA Records. What makes his caricatures different from other artists', he says, is what he characterizes as his focused approach and respectful dedication to his clients.
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| 07.13.07 11:20 AM |
VeryWendy: Where Art Meets Fashion
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 | Wendy DeFeudis
Courtesy of VeryWendy Designs |
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Wendy DeFeudis brings more than 15 years of experience in fashion illustration and design, marketing, and public relations to VeryWendy Designs (646.522.0604), the business she launched in 2002. The majority of her business is event-related, which means she's often on-site creating fashionable illustrations, clothing, and promotional pieces for a wide variety of clients. We checked in on the recent transplant to learn a bit more about her services and background.
When did you relocate to Miami and why? "I came to Miami in April. I wanted to leave New York and was looking for a fun, fashionable, artistic place to continue my business. Miami is so hot and happening now, I thought, why not? I really believe my company has a lot of potential to succeed here."
Why events? "My business migrated to the event arena when I was asked to create my art on-site at a party for W magazine, Macy's, and Jones New York. It turns out that people truly love to watch the process of art unfolding as much as they like the end result. When I received such an overwhelming response to creating art at parties, I began to focus my marketing in that direction."
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