Today we’d like to introduce you to Vivian Belzaguy.
Vivian, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Of my now 15 years working in events, 13 of them were spent working very not-sustainable ones. That’s one of the reasons why I started this company; that and my passion for protecting this planet, which started long before then. You see… my family is from Costa Rica which instilled a deep love for nature in me every time I visited, but growing up in the states and later becoming a part of the events industry was a stark contrast. I’d go from seeing mountains of green to mountains of trash in what felt like the blink of an eye.
I’d often feel inspired to take on environmental responsibility on a personal level. I’d start recycling and minimizing my use of plastic cups and water bottles, but then I would go work my events and see thousands of those things given out every minute. I remember once it dawned on me that in just a few hours, my events were quite possibly creating more waste than I could in my entire lifetime. That moment made me feel so absolutely powerless that my latest stint at sustainability abruptly ended and it was a long time until I picked it back up again.
After 13 years working mostly in concert-style events, I felt terribly unfulfilled. Sure… there was a cool-factor to being in the music event industry, but all of the events I worked felt increasingly inauthentic and exorbitantly wasteful. I knew taking a break to be in nature for a while would help me reset, so I planned a 3-month cross-country road trip. We ended up on the road for 8 months, visiting over 50 national and state parks. Somewhere along the way… after hiking through canyons, swimming in rivers and gazing at the stars, something shifted for me and I knew there was no turning back. I could no longer ignore my love for this planet and desire to protect it. That’s when my next move started to come into focus. I decided I would take my years of event experience and shift my path towards event sustainability. The “how” was not clear yet, but being in nature had made my “why” more solid than ever.
What happened next is already history… I returned to Miami with a sharp vision for what I wanted to work on. I was hungry to learn everything I could about it. I devoured books, attended conferences, spoke with industry experts, and sooner than later, I really started to know what I was talking about. As I was in the process of launching my new company – Ascendance Sustainable Events – and working with our first few clients, an unexpected turn of events took place. A well-known local music festival was moved to the environmentally-sensitive Virginia Key. Coincidentally, I was just completing a sustainability program for a smaller music festival at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was accepting a full-time position as the Senior Manager of Sustainability for none other than Ultra Music Festival. It was a dream job for me and I am so proud of what we created together with the “Mission: Home” sustainability program, which reached over 3.3 Million people online and 50,000 attendees per day of the event.
When Ultra was postponed I was given the gift of refocusing on what I was building with Ascendance, but with the events industry (and soon after – the entire world) put on hold… what could we do? Over a year ago, I had the idea of creating a free event sustainability guide for the industry. To do it right would take an amazing team, which I had… but also a lot of time and money, which I didn’t. Luckily, the idea caught the attention of a local social impact accelerator called Radical Partners which was offering a grant as part of their 100 Great Ideas program. After completing the program, I rallied the team together and we started discussions on creating the guide but it wasn’t until we were all on lock down that we were really able to carve out the time to complete it.
Meanwhile, we watched the stories roll in from all over the world on the environment’s speedy recovery during global stay at home orders and it became clear just how much the world needs to hear the message of sustainability right now. The timing was perfect. The guide was released on Earth Day as “our gift to the planet”. It provided a free resource for events to use this time to re-think their strategies and come back more sustainably. So far, the guide has been covered by 10 different industry publications and we field more requests for coverage every day. It has been so exciting to receive such a positive response and we hope the guide helps events far and wide to start taking their first steps towards a sustainable future.
Please tell us about Ascendance Sustainable Events.
I built Ascendance with the vision of creating sustainability programs that are so impactful, they go far beyond the confines of events and ripple out into the world. You see… events have these incredible opportunities to utilize their platforms to educate captive audiences in ways that are fun, memorable and above all, “cool”. When an attendee experiences well-executed sustainability initiatives at an event, they serve as a sort of training grounds for life. My hope is that attendees take those lessons home with them, change their behavior and tell their friends.
In the same way, event organizers can choose to create positive impact internally by adopting sustainable practices as a core value. These values can then ripple through the organization leading their employees, vendors and staff to follow along, which we hope shifts the way those key people operate at other events. We believe that these seemingly little changes, multiplied by the massive events we host around the world could have a major positive influence on the way human behavior is impacting our planet.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Ascendance would not be where it is today without the team of incredible women, that’s right ALL women, that have come together to bring this vision to life.
Our Event Project Manager, Arantxa Muro, was the first member of the team. She is so passionate about sustainability and integrity that everything she has worked on has not only succeeded but left a lasting impression on those who have come into contact with it.
Our Sustainability Strategist, Nicole Pamani, has helped me get all of these ideas out from my head and into the world. There was so much thought and love put into the guide and that was largely due to Nikki’s strategy, intentionality and support.
All along the way, our Graphic Designer Karyna Amador has made everything we do beautiful starting with our logo all the way up to the eye-catching layout for our entire guide. Her talents have helped us shine in a way I never could have expected.
My Sustainability Coach, Aurora Dawn Benton of Astrapto Consulting, gave us the push we needed to go from a great guide to an extraordinary one. I feel so lucky to have had her guidance and leadership on our team!
I also received significant support from The Beehive Community Development, a non-profit organization still in start up phase that supports women in bringing their visions to life. I am so grateful to them, as well as my family, friends and fiance Luke Hunter for their unconditional love and support of this project.
Finally, I’d like to thank the entire team at Radical Partners and specifically Sarah Emmons and Rebecca Fishman Lipsey. Your faith in me and this idea is what made it a reality. I am forever grateful for what you made possible and I think the events industry and the planet will soon thank you as well!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.greenyourevent.com/
- Email: hello@ascendanceevents.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascendanceevents/
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