One summer night in 2007, a fortuitous thing happened while Michelle Durpetti—then an independent event planner—was on a riverboat cruise of Chicago. After years as a publicist at event planning and public affairs firm Jasculca/Terman and Associates, Durpetti had one thing left on her dream-job list: She wanted to work on Chicago’s Green Tie Ball. “I would have swept out bathrooms to work on that event,” she says of the Gateway Green’s annual fund-raiser. “It just seemed like the biggest and brightest and best of the social galas—I really wanted to be a part of it.”
Then, on that summertime cruise, Durpetti met Denise McGowan, another independent planner with 30 years of experience—including a nine-year stint as Navy Pier’s entertainment director—who was then overseeing logistics for that summer’s Green Tie Ball. A few days later, the two were working side by side as associate producers of the 3,000-guest event.
When their collaboration went off without a hitch, they felt they had the makings of a strong team in the long-term, too. In March of 2008, McGowan Durpetti and Associates opened in River North. Handling everything from vendor contract negotiation to invitation design, the firm produces events for corporate and nonprofit organizations. “I come with years of experience in producing entertainment; Michelle has been on the PR and marketing side. Our blended viewpoints and opinions make us unique. We can give clients so many different points of view,” says McGowan.
The partners are currently working on events associated with September’s Congressional Medal of Honor Society Convention and producing a temporary marketplace for the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans. They also continue to produce the fund-raiser that initially brought them together.
According to Vince Pagone, managing director of the Gateway Green, “McGowan and Durpetti have a willingness to do whatever it takes to produce a successful event. They never lose sight of the mission of the event—they really focus on its purpose. And as a nonprofit, that’s very important to us.”
