Très Chic: Event Management alumna gets creative in career
Posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2018
In the nearly five years since she graduated from Algonquin College, Event Manager Rebecca Trafford has planned, organized, programmed, and fussed over everything from private events to nationally significant cultural extravaganzas. An alumna of the Event Management program, Trafford has some simple advice for students currently enrolled in the program.
“Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer!” she says.
“Get out there and experience as much as you can. It’s one thing to dream of planning (events), but you need to experience them to really know what worked and what didn’t work. That’s key.”
The Ottawa firm that hired Trafford shortly after her graduation from Algonquin, Chic & Swell Creative Meetings and Events, often solicits volunteers from the College for onsite placements related to specific events. Such practical experience meshes seamlessly with the approach of the College’s program, Trafford says.
“It’s very hands-on,” she says. “The College got us out there on the ground at the events to really experience them and gave us the opportunity to meet the different professionals that one would encounter and work alongside within the industry.”
The program goes way beyond theory, says Trafford. “It really taught you how to be a well rounded Event Manager.”
Nowhere is applied learning more evident that in the annual fundraising events students are required to produce for the Children’s Wish Foundation, Trafford says. Teams of five or six students have to create, market, and run an engaging and successful fundraiser — with no budget.
During her student days, Trafford’s group produced a masquerade benefit gala. “We had over 200 guests and we raised over $10,000 dollars.” That year, her class raised $76,000 overall, she says. Since the program began incorporating these “Wish Events” into the curriculum in 2008, it has raised over a million dollars for the Children’s Wish Foundation.
Giving back to the community in this way was rewarding, says Trafford – but so was the rich experience gained through the student project, supported by instructors. “Everything from (choosing) the theme to picking the venue, to choosing the menu, to selling the tickets, to designing your marketing, to the programming, to the decor, health and safety…. It was fully detailed on how to actually plan an event.”
This past year has been particularly busy for Chic & Swell Creative Meetings and Events. The firm has played a role in a number of Canada 150 and Ottawa 2017 activities, from a New Year’s Eve kick-off event to programs related to the recent 105th Grey Cup Festival. If Trafford wasn’t involved in planning the events, she was assisting in supplying them with their rental needs through Chic & Swell’s sister company, LouLou Lounge Furniture Rental.
“I would say the hardest thing about event management is juggling all the different tasks,” Trafford says. “Some days I go into work with a plan in mind of exactly what I intend on working on that day, and then the emails come through with last minute event requests and the phone rings and you are sent on a completely different path.”
Mind you, says Trafford, the ceaseless variety is also the best thing about the job. “I love Event Management because it’s something different every day. I am certainly not a cookie-cutter desk job type of girl.”
“I credit Algonquin College for setting me on the path towards my achievement,” she says. “With the experience I gained, the networking I was able to do and the list of events I was able to participate in as a volunteer… I truly think it was a full package in preparing me for the real world of events.”
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