Renée Fishman is doing pretty well for herself. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she went to law school at Columbia University, and then got hired at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, one of the 10 biggest law firms in the country, where first-year associates get six-figure salaries. Almost five years later, the 30-year-old is focusing on an area she’s interested in—intellectual property and technology licensing—and making enough to buy an apartment near Union Square. So why does she keep thinking about starting an event business?
“I’ve always been very creative,” Fishman says. “Law firms aren’t exactly known for being a hotbed of creativity.” Lately she’s been dabbling in entertaining and events by volunteering to help plan benefits for City Harvest and making elaborate party favors for friends. She holds dinner parties with four to six courses and wine pairings. She once stayed up until 5 AM making dog biscuits for a birthday party for her brother’s dog, and pulled two all-nighters making a tea set entirely of chocolate for a bridal shower. “Sometimes my nights doing my creative work seriously rival my late nights at work,” Fishman says. Although she isn’t planning to leave legal work anytime soon, she is considering an entertaining-related side business.
Fishman is one of a growing group of people in other industries who like to talk about—if not necessarily pursue—careers in events. Call them event planner wannabes, or just people who feel bored, burned out, or creatively stifled in their current jobs.
“Every few years a new profession seems glamorous,” says Julia Labaton, president of event and public relations firm Red PR. “Everybody who’s tired of what they’ve been doing for the past few years that involves any kind of production or organization decides they want to be an event planner.” Not that they know what that means. “Generally people don’t realize how much work it is—that you’re up at 5 AM when the florist gets there and up until midnight putting bows on gift bags,” she says.
Labaton and other event pros report getting calls from friends, strangers, and friends-of-friends looking for advice on moving into the profession. “People always say, ‘Can so-and-so call you?’” says the director of events at a women’s magazine, who receives such calls a few times a month. (She asked to remain anonymous, perhaps to keep from getting even more.)
She also gets accosted in social settings. “People say, ‘Oh my god, I love your job. I want to do that.’” Her husband is a physician, and even some of his doctor friends are among those fantasy party planners. “I say, ‘Oh yeah, you’re saving lives, but you’d give it all up to plan events,’” she says. “And I think some of them would.”
The increased interest corresponds to the profession’s newfound pop culture exposure. The glut of celebrity magazines (In Style, In Touch, Life & Style, et al) describe high-profile parties and often include the people who put them on, and television shows from The Sopranos to The Apprentice have featured characters or contestants working on event-related tasks.
Because planning events has only recently been recognized as a real profession, many people in this area today came from different backgrounds. Theater and other arts have been a popular feeding ground, but these days, people who have trained in areas such as law, accounting, and medicine—often at no small cost—are considering moving to events.
Some have acquired a taste of the event world while volunteering, entertaining at home, or helping a relative with a big celebration. (Talk to.phpiring event pros, and you’re likely to hear “I helped plan my sister’s wedding” a few times.) For some, such a career change is something they talk about doing but never quite get around to, the way some people talk about writing a novel or losing 15 pounds.
Paula Lauriano worked as a flight attendant and in various marketing capacities before moving into event work. Now she’s an event consultant for Morgan Stanley, where some finance types envy her job. “They’re investment banking analysts, and sure it sounds more fun to plan parties,” she says. “But are you going to give up your corporate salary to do that?”
Typically, the answer is no. But some prospective planners do follow through. Jennifer Williford worked as a paralegal for four and a half years after college, initially thinking she’d go to law school—until she saw how unhappy the lawyers around her looked. “To me it was a miserable life,” she says. “I was making a lot of money, but I didn’t have the time to enjoy it.” She took online courses from George Washington University, quit her job, and then interned—unpaid—for three months at an event firm before getting a job in the Brooklyn Museum’s event department. Three years later her salary is about two-thirds of what she made as a paralegal, but she’s happier. “I’ve learned to manage without the higher pay,” she says.
Coincidentally, the coordinator who works under Williford, Sarah Stutman, was once a paralegal at a Wall Street law firm. “I realized that I was better suited to a more people-involved career,” she says. “It’s not something that as a child you think, ‘I want to grow up to be an event planner.’”
Likewise, Michele Hardiman didn’t see planning events as a typical career path. “Had I known before, I probably would have gotten a degree in it in college,” she says. Instead she works as a L’Oréal product development assistant while taking courses from New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, which offers basic and advanced certificates in event management. Sixty people completed the basic certificate in the past year, while many other students quit after a few classes if they get a job in the field, according to Anthony Macari, who oversees the program.
The Fashion Institute of Technology launched an event planning program in 2002 that caters to already-working college grads, like Tiffany Marsh, a 26-year-old in pharmaceutical marketing, and Lori Robb, a 56-year-old former medical assistant. FIT’s Joan Volpe estimates that 45 percent of the program’s more than 150 students currently work in unrelated fields.
“A lot of people come out of the financial sector,” says Barbara Berman, an FIT instructor. “They’re just crunching numbers, and this allows them to use the other part of their brain.” But before their classes, students don’t necessarily have a full view of the profession. “They don’t realize it can be just as much work as anything they’ve done in their other career,” she says. And the event industry’s not-quite-investment-banking salaries keep some from quitting their other jobs. “I had a couple of lawyers who can’t believe event planners make so little.”
Still, the job comes with another kind of payoff: being on the other side of the so-what-do- you-do? conversation. “People say, ‘Oh, that’s such a cool, fun job,’” says new planner Stutman. “I don’t think I ever got that reaction at a law firm.”
—Chad Kaydo
Photos: Steve Olson
“I’ve always been very creative,” Fishman says. “Law firms aren’t exactly known for being a hotbed of creativity.” Lately she’s been dabbling in entertaining and events by volunteering to help plan benefits for City Harvest and making elaborate party favors for friends. She holds dinner parties with four to six courses and wine pairings. She once stayed up until 5 AM making dog biscuits for a birthday party for her brother’s dog, and pulled two all-nighters making a tea set entirely of chocolate for a bridal shower. “Sometimes my nights doing my creative work seriously rival my late nights at work,” Fishman says. Although she isn’t planning to leave legal work anytime soon, she is considering an entertaining-related side business.
Fishman is one of a growing group of people in other industries who like to talk about—if not necessarily pursue—careers in events. Call them event planner wannabes, or just people who feel bored, burned out, or creatively stifled in their current jobs.
“Every few years a new profession seems glamorous,” says Julia Labaton, president of event and public relations firm Red PR. “Everybody who’s tired of what they’ve been doing for the past few years that involves any kind of production or organization decides they want to be an event planner.” Not that they know what that means. “Generally people don’t realize how much work it is—that you’re up at 5 AM when the florist gets there and up until midnight putting bows on gift bags,” she says.
Labaton and other event pros report getting calls from friends, strangers, and friends-of-friends looking for advice on moving into the profession. “People always say, ‘Can so-and-so call you?’” says the director of events at a women’s magazine, who receives such calls a few times a month. (She asked to remain anonymous, perhaps to keep from getting even more.)
She also gets accosted in social settings. “People say, ‘Oh my god, I love your job. I want to do that.’” Her husband is a physician, and even some of his doctor friends are among those fantasy party planners. “I say, ‘Oh yeah, you’re saving lives, but you’d give it all up to plan events,’” she says. “And I think some of them would.”
The increased interest corresponds to the profession’s newfound pop culture exposure. The glut of celebrity magazines (In Style, In Touch, Life & Style, et al) describe high-profile parties and often include the people who put them on, and television shows from The Sopranos to The Apprentice have featured characters or contestants working on event-related tasks.
Because planning events has only recently been recognized as a real profession, many people in this area today came from different backgrounds. Theater and other arts have been a popular feeding ground, but these days, people who have trained in areas such as law, accounting, and medicine—often at no small cost—are considering moving to events.
Some have acquired a taste of the event world while volunteering, entertaining at home, or helping a relative with a big celebration. (Talk to.phpiring event pros, and you’re likely to hear “I helped plan my sister’s wedding” a few times.) For some, such a career change is something they talk about doing but never quite get around to, the way some people talk about writing a novel or losing 15 pounds.
Paula Lauriano worked as a flight attendant and in various marketing capacities before moving into event work. Now she’s an event consultant for Morgan Stanley, where some finance types envy her job. “They’re investment banking analysts, and sure it sounds more fun to plan parties,” she says. “But are you going to give up your corporate salary to do that?”
Typically, the answer is no. But some prospective planners do follow through. Jennifer Williford worked as a paralegal for four and a half years after college, initially thinking she’d go to law school—until she saw how unhappy the lawyers around her looked. “To me it was a miserable life,” she says. “I was making a lot of money, but I didn’t have the time to enjoy it.” She took online courses from George Washington University, quit her job, and then interned—unpaid—for three months at an event firm before getting a job in the Brooklyn Museum’s event department. Three years later her salary is about two-thirds of what she made as a paralegal, but she’s happier. “I’ve learned to manage without the higher pay,” she says.
Coincidentally, the coordinator who works under Williford, Sarah Stutman, was once a paralegal at a Wall Street law firm. “I realized that I was better suited to a more people-involved career,” she says. “It’s not something that as a child you think, ‘I want to grow up to be an event planner.’”
Likewise, Michele Hardiman didn’t see planning events as a typical career path. “Had I known before, I probably would have gotten a degree in it in college,” she says. Instead she works as a L’Oréal product development assistant while taking courses from New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, which offers basic and advanced certificates in event management. Sixty people completed the basic certificate in the past year, while many other students quit after a few classes if they get a job in the field, according to Anthony Macari, who oversees the program.
The Fashion Institute of Technology launched an event planning program in 2002 that caters to already-working college grads, like Tiffany Marsh, a 26-year-old in pharmaceutical marketing, and Lori Robb, a 56-year-old former medical assistant. FIT’s Joan Volpe estimates that 45 percent of the program’s more than 150 students currently work in unrelated fields.
“A lot of people come out of the financial sector,” says Barbara Berman, an FIT instructor. “They’re just crunching numbers, and this allows them to use the other part of their brain.” But before their classes, students don’t necessarily have a full view of the profession. “They don’t realize it can be just as much work as anything they’ve done in their other career,” she says. And the event industry’s not-quite-investment-banking salaries keep some from quitting their other jobs. “I had a couple of lawyers who can’t believe event planners make so little.”
Still, the job comes with another kind of payoff: being on the other side of the so-what-do- you-do? conversation. “People say, ‘Oh, that’s such a cool, fun job,’” says new planner Stutman. “I don’t think I ever got that reaction at a law firm.”
—Chad Kaydo
Photos: Steve Olson
By day, Renée Fishman is a lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges...
...but at night she’s dabbling in event work, making elaborate party favors for friends, and volunteering for City Harvest benefits.
