(Clockwise from top left:) Liz Castelli, Erica Taylor Haskins, and Adette C. ContrerasPhoto: Amber Marlow
How they got their start: The women drew from their backgrounds to pave their way in the experiential industry. Castelli was previously a science teacher—which she credits for helping her establish solid foundations of processes that keep the business tightly organized—while Contreras comes from an advertising and marketing agency background, and Haskins has experience in creative strategy and account management.
"We’ve all brought these earlier career experiences to the table while building Tinsel over the last 12 years, while growing as experience experts with the support of the talented group of professionals that make up our all-star team, Team Tinsel," the trio says.
What innovation means to them: "Innovation is such a tricky thing because no one can really predict the future, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to plan for it," Contreras says. "For me, innovation is less about the hot new thing and more about thinking creatively to improve the current situation—whatever that might be."
For Contreras, she always starts by thinking about "the why." "Why are we doing it this way? Why are these the patterns we are seeing? Why is this important to solve? In any industry and in any business, especially during these times, it’s important to map out possible scenarios and figure out ways to tackle each one," she explains. "Maybe there was a time when it was OK to just stay the course and keep doing things the way things have always been done, but now is definitely not that time, and we are definitely not those people!"
How they stay inspired: Castelli notes that as Tinsel has grown, the team has expanded to include experienced producers, planners, designers, and technical specialists, which have helped the founders continuously expand their skillsets, areas of expertise, and professional circles.
"I love the challenge of producing formats that are new to us and in spaces we’ve never activated before," Castelli adds. "Our team has built beachside pop-up showers for a shower gel launch. We’ve reimagined a technicolor tour of NYC in a raw warehouse for the world’s largest streaming music platform. And this summer, we’re gearing up for a 3,000-person party with celebrity guests and headlining entertainment at a stadium in DC. Every new project presents our team with ways to stretch, grow, learn, and build." 
The Tinsel team once created an indoor "sledding" hill at a black-tie holiday party.Photo: Courtesy of Tinsel
Memorable moments: "There are certainly moments that stand out, like our indoor sledding hill for a black-tie holiday party and a live tattoo booth at The New York Public Library in celebration of our 10th year in business," Taylor Haskins says. "But the program that will always be one of my proudest accomplishments by our team is our work with Pizza to the Polls leading up to Election Day in 2020. During the peak of the pandemic, our team strategized, designed, and produced this historic mobile program that hydrated, caffeinated, fed, and entertained over a million people waiting in line to vote across 29 nationwide markets."
She adds, "The campaign was amplified online by celebrity champions like Kerry Washington, Sophia Bush, and Whoopi Goldberg. With robust protocols for COVID-19 safety and a newly acquired knowledge of electioneering laws, our team had the great honor of using our experiential skills for a campaign with historic impact."
Their favorite thing about the experiential industry: "Collectively, we appreciate that there truly are no guardrails around experiential activations," the trio explains. "When clients come to us with business objectives, we always start with a deep dive to uncover their must-haves and success metrics, so we know just how wild our team’s wild card ideas can get. We love that experiences can happen IRL in a contained space, on the road, by sea, in someone’s backyard, virtually, or any combination of these locations. The sky is quite literally the limit."
Back to the full list: 20 Experiential Experts Changing the Future of Consumer Events
