The launch of Ascendance Sustainability Group officially marks the death of my very first entrepreneurial endeavor, Idea Garden - Creativity & Consulting. Idea Garden was supposed to be a branding design and marketing agency, birthed by combining my years of marketing experience with a newfound love for graphic design. It did, in fact, serve that purpose for many years and many clients… a lot of which still TODAY use the graphics and websites we created for them as early as 2009. Over time however, it evolved into something different.

A former client’s website from 2017… still going strong!

You see, prior to founding my first company, I was on the grind at Universal Orlando Resort for 5 years in many different roles… all of them circulating around promoting and producing our annual events like Mardi Gras, Grad Bash and cult favorite, Halloween Horror Nights. It was my first and last real corporate job. I’ve since made it my mission in life to never go back to the days of 7am alarms and counting up PTO, but I did absolutely love my time there. The incredibly talented and wonderful people I worked with at Universal taught me everything that built the foundation for where I am today.

After launching Idea Garden in 2009, I landed what would eventually be my biggest client - Atlantis, Bahamas. What started as managing a few promotional radio contests for them eventually led me right back to huge event marketing campaigns around their concerts, sports tournaments and more. It was also around that time that I became more personally invested in attending music events… not only for the fun of it, but to observe the production quality and to see all the things I had learned behind the scenes in action.

An event my team promoted, did a social media activation for and filmed!

Fast forward years later to 2017, I found myself conflicted about working and attending these events. Knowing what I had learned about what humans were doing to the planet and seeing events “make it rain” waste, litter and carbon emissions on our environment; I just couldn’t blindly participate anymore… but I also knew there had to be a better solution than quitting events.

This is when I unknowingly planted the seed that would later kill Idea Garden.

I read THE book on Event Sustainability and called some friends in the event industry to get some practice. I offered to help pro-bono since it was my first time trying out this new service from Idea Garden and soon, Rakastella’s “Keep Her Wild” sustainability program was born. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had basically signed myself up for an unpaid internship that would change the entire course of my career.

Our very first Keep Her Wild post! Look at all those partners we brought on!

After successfully executing Rakastella’s first year program at Virginia Key, almost a full year after I had called them to volunteer, I started to see a dark cloud loom over Idea Garden. I knew I had found a new passion in helping outdoor music festivals be kind to the earth. It was, after all, the perfect marriage of my two favorite things: nature and music events… but I also knew the Idea Garden brand was not a good fit for the trendy cool kids that run these kinds of events. That’s not what it was intended for anyway.

So, the concept for Ascendance Sustainable Events was born in 2018 and I considered them a sister company of Idea Garden for a time. Little did I know this new little sister would be a murderer!

Expired Idea Garden Website… RIP.

When Ultra Music Festival was moved to Virginia Key for their 2019 edition, I had taken on a few larger events, including a 12K-person festival in Mexico, and felt I had really gotten my footing in event sustainability. However, never in my wildest dreams did I expect to get a call from the Ultra gods! A call, turned job interview, turned acceptance letter had me taking on full-time work as an employee of the festival and running Ascendance on the side with zero time to tend to Idea Garden.

My experience at Ultra will be for another blog, where I’ll happily tell you about the overwhelming success of Mission: Home and how we danced on clean dance floors for basically the first time ever… but what happened during the event is what planted the seeds of Ascendance Sustainability Group, or ASG as we lovingly call it.

I felt more proud of this than my college diploma.

To pull Ultra off, I knew I had to work with the best in the business and so we partnered with Anna Borofsky and Clean Vibes for the waste management program, Dr. Aurora Dawn Benton of Astrapto to help with audits and Jesse Uzzell of Climate Futures to start measuring and managing carbon footprint. Seeing what it took to make this event come together while witnessing these pros at work had me realize we were legitimately building a little sustainable city over the course of a couple months… but WHY ON EARTH were we breaking all of that progress down in just a few weeks, not to speak to each other again until the next event? It felt like such a sad ending for the level of skill, passion and grit that went into it all.

What happened next was unthinkable… on the heels of our second edition of Ultra, after another year of working with this talented team, it became the first U.S. festival to be cancelled due to this coronavirus thing. It made worldwide news and yet here we were at home with our new little sustainable city that would never see the light of day.

Worst day ever.

Enter lockdown, a force-quit on life; a silence so loud I had no choice but to look back and see how I got here… and when I did, there I saw Idea Garden so far in the distance. After two years in the dark, I realized my garden had died and as much as it pained me, I knew it was time to let it go.

Covid brought with it unexpected opportunity, however. All this time and new connectivity online had me doing virtual speaking engagements on a weekly basis. This caught the attention of the awesome team at TEDxMiami who invited me to speak at their version of Countdown, an event focused on climate action. My talk would be about “Leveling up your impact against climate change”. It focused on the concept that if we look at events as a microcosm of the world, we can apply what we’ve learned about sustainability in events to our lives, our companies and our cities.

Thanks for the great thumbnail face, YouTube. :/

After giving this talk I knew I had to heed my own advice, but I also knew I couldn’t do it alone… so I called up Anna, Aurora and Jesse and with our powers combined, ASG was born to take our talents to businesses, municipalities and more.

We dream about projects like helping a city become circular, building a sustainable residential development or engaging a community in ditching plastic. We fantasize about clients who have realized their ways are not so good for the planet and really want to do something about it. We’ve learned that it’s those clients who are the ones with the power to not only change their ways but become the next example of what’s possible for the world.

So that’s it… that’s our mission. To work with organizations who care about the environment and want to transform negative impacts into positive influence.

Our mission.

The funny thing is that in getting this mission off the ground, I realized that Idea Garden is actually not dead at all. It’s evolved. I’ve had to use every single skill that it took to run Idea Garden for almost 10 years in the development of Ascendance. Logos, website, social media graphics, sales documents, copy writing… it’s all been painstakingly created by yours truly.

I hope you love it, but beyond that I hope it inspires you to harness your power to protect the planet in your life, your business and your community.

Peruse the website or sign up for the Ascendance newsletter here, for more about how we can help.

- Founder, Vivian Belzaguy Hunter

This #EarthDay, I'm following my own advice from my TEDxTalk and "leveling up" my positive impact. If this pandemic taught me anything, it was that my work in sustainability is no longer bound by event gates. 

So, please meet my latest labor of love, Ascendance Sustainability Group (ASG), on a mission to help local governments and businesses of all kinds harness their power to protect the planet, because we believe EVERYONE should have access to #sustainability. 

While working music festivals with Ascendance Sustainable Events is still my jam, ASG is here to apply what mass events have taught us to larger-scale projects.

I am beyond thrilled to be collaborating with some of my most favorite people in the sustainability world to to give organizations access to expertise in all aspects of sustainability including waste, energy, procurement, nature conservation and community engagement.

To learn more about these fantastic folks and what we'll be up to PLUS support a sustainable business on Earth Day, follow us on instagram here and check out today's posts! 

• Ascendance Founder, Vivian Belzaguy

One year ago today, I was on an Ultra Music Festival production walk-through at Bayfront Park when rumors of us not even having a show to produce started to whirl. I had just high fived my Eco Village team as we finished our final planning meeting. I had a semi-truck of waste management gear on the way for load-in. I had people about to board planes to come work with me. I had my interns running errands and rushing projects to completion. I was ready to pull yet another all-nighter in the office.

… and then suddenly, STOP. Stop working. Stop the truck. Stop the running. STOP IT ALL.

The next few days felt like the twilight zone as my whole world came to a crashing halt. I had been working 18-hour days for weeks by then. The pressure had been building for months. A year in the making, my second edition of Ultra leading the Mission: Home sustainability program was just 3 weeks away. I was exhausted and yet, I was still so fired up to be working on the festival that I had grown up counting down the days to attend… and for my role to be helping them take better care of the planet, nonetheless. 

… but the unthinkable happened. That virus we’d been brushing off as unthreatening had finally reached our city. As the first few confirmed cases came in, I came out of the work hole I had been in for weeks to read up on the news. It was real… and we really were getting shut down.

The weeks after that were an emotional rollercoaster as I saw my beloved industry come crashing down. Festivals cancelled, then smaller events, then clubs and bars… it was a disaster that many didn’t survive and others will take years to recover from. Full transparency, I drowned my emotions in beer for a time… Corona actually, to add a bit of dark humor to these unbelievably dark times.

By the end of March, we lived through what would have been Miami Music Week in full lock down. We made it as fun as we could, as it would be the first one we didn’t work in years… but there was an air of fear and uncertainty looming. We had stopped hugging each other. We were worried for our families. Every project for the next few months had been cancelled and I was pretty certain I’d be losing my job at Ultra sooner than later. That call came the following week and of course, I fully understood. Hey… at least we had succeeded at having the least environmentally impactful year in the festival’s history, right?

After the initial shock (and a few more Coronas) something surprising happened. I started to feel an incredible sense of relief.

So, wait… You’re telling me I get my life back? You’re telling me I get a do-over? I get to reinvent what my future looks like? Unexpectedly, despite being locked in my house, I felt unbelievably liberated.

I dusted off a project I had dreamed up a while back… one I ambitiously expected to complete on the sidelines of working at Ultra, which would have been incredibly difficult. I might never again have this much time to focus on Ascendance’s Elevating Event Sustainability guide. It was a free beginner’s guide that I wanted to put out into the world because I strongly believed everyone should have access to this information, whether they could hire us to help them put it in practice or not.

… and so we did it. I sobered up, called in my favorite people to work with and released it on Earth Day 2020 as our “gift to the planet”. What happened next blew my mind.

Despite the fact that we had no idea when events would come back, the world wanted this guide. They wanted to know how we could bring the events industry back in a way that was better for the planet, whenever that may be.

It quickly became hard to keep track of all the interviews, press features, emails and calls, so I thought that today’s anniversary was a perfect time to celebrate some of my favorites and send my gratitude out to all of the people and organizations who found it important to share the guide with their worlds.

First, a huge thank you to Kat Bein who was the first to interview me about the guide on her Twitch show and encouraged us to have fun with it. We dressed up inspired by nature - her with a Fall in Japan flair and me with the Tropical Miami vibes. We chatted for a while about the inspiration behind Ascendance and the guide before she went on to her next guest, the amazing music producer and DJ, Justin Jay! Here’s an excerpt from my story:

“I’ve been a fan of the music festival scene for as long as I can remember, but after a while it started to not feel good to be out there dancing and having a good time but kicking around cups and trash everywhere, feeling like there was so much impact from something I was participating in… after a while I just couldn’t do it anymore, so I decided to do something about it.”

A few weeks later, I was invited to speak about Ultra’s successful 2019 sustainability program, Ascendance’s work and the guide on the Abracadabra TV Virtual Festival. One of my favorite organization’s dedicated to eradicating plastic from the music industry - Bye Bye Plastic, hosted a panel called “Miami’s Sustainable Party Fairies” that also included the amazing founders of Elektrik Fantasy Festival and Lemon City Studios. The focus on Miami here was not just for fun. My hometown is considered the most vulnerable coastal city in the world to the impacts of climate change. The panel highlighted that action towards sustainability here is not optional, it’s necessary.

The following month, another favorite organization - Debris Free Oceans, interviewed me for their “Party with a Purpose” series. Maddie and I decided to take the fun to the next level on this one and come in full festival gear, wigs and beer included. To our surprise, Miami New Times picked this interview as one of their “13 best things to do in Miami” that week… and that it was!

Finally, towards the end of this “virtual book tour” of sorts, my friends over at Orca Sound Project interviewed me on their IG Live to continue the conversation. We talked not only about the guide but about how it empowers everyone to participate in event sustainability by using it to encourage their favorite events to come back in a green way. We also discussed cost reducing and revenue generating sustainability initiatives that can help events save and make money during these tough times.

These were just a few of the many people and organizations who used their platforms to share our message. As I look back on what was the most insane year of my career, I’m eternally grateful to everyone below who took the time to feature us, prioritized this message and continued your hard work in this space, regardless of the fact that the world felt like it was crumbling down around us.

A Greener Festival, TEDxMiami, Apple News, NewsBreak, She Said So, Rakastella, Magnetic Magazine, Culture Crusaders, Sustainable Events Alliance, R.Cup, Florida Festivals & Events Association, Florida International University Institute of Environment, Sustainable Events Network of Florida and Caribbean, EDM.com, EDMIdentity, EDMTunes, Mix24.7 EDM, Nocturnal Times, Grit Daily, Voyage MIA, Respect My Region, Lean Orb, VolunteerCleanup.org, Do What You Can for the People, Attainable, Astrapto Academy, The Hive Vibration, J Sloane Creative, When Life Hands You Lennons, Conscious Electronic, The Festival Guy, Ash the Magical, NapGirls and every last person who subscribed to our email list and forwarded the guide to your contacts.

Over the past year, Ascendance has received well over 35 features via virtual interviews, panels, workshops, editorials and speaking opportunities. I couldn’t be more proud of us all for keeping this conversation going when there was no end in sight to the industry’s biggest nightmare.

It’s no coincidence that exactly a year later, we’ve finally been given a light at the end of this tunnel with the news of vaccinations planned for wide distribution this Spring. My hope is that events took this time to breathe and realize that they have a special ability to turn their negative impacts into positive ones… and that they use that super power for good on their return.

Here at Ascendance, we are excited to share that our work continues beyond the events world with the launch of Ascendance Sustainability Group. While events will always be our favorite, we know our impact can grow far beyond event gates. ASG is here to take our talents to commercial and municipal projects, helping businesses and even entire cities to go green. We can’t wait to tell you more.

- Ascendance Founder, Vivian Belzaguy

Truly blown away by how well received our “Elevating Event Sustainability Guide” has been. It’s only been 1 month since the big release as our gift to the planet for Earth Day and we’ve already received 14 features ranging from music and sustainability industry publications to mainstream media. So grateful for these shares, write ups, interviews and overall kind words. You’ve shown us that all of the hard work was worth it and now really was the perfect time. Thank you!

NEWS ARTICLE LINKS

https://www.magneticmag.com/2020/05/new-guide-how-make-events-greener-sustainable/

https://edm.com/news/ascendance-sustainable-events-elevating-event-sustainability-guide

https://edmidentity.com/2020/04/23/postponed-festivals-ascendance-sustainable-events/

https://www.newsbreak.com/n/0P0B5Fmf?s=influencer

https://gritdaily.com/ascendance-sustainability-events/

http://www.thenocturnaltimes.com/ascendance-sustainable-events-shares-strategies-on-how-postponed-events-can-increase-sustainability/

http://voyagemia.com/interview/meet-ascendance-sustainable-events-mimo/

https://www.edmtunes.com/2020/04/how-music-festivals-can-come-back-sustainably/

https://www.respectmyregion.com/ascendance-sustainable-events/

https://mix247edm.com/how-green-are-your-events-elevating-sustainable-events/

https://consciouselectronic.com/2020/04/26/promo-spotlight-ascendance-sustainable-events-celebrates-earth-day-2020/

PODCASTS

When Life Hands You Lennons: https://lennoncihak.com/podcast/vivian-belzaguy

Do What You Can For The People: https://youtu.be/DwesV0M3h4k

Kat Calls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG-RMmoVTpY

OUR GIFT TO THE PLANET HAS ARRIVED!

I started dreaming up this guide almost exactly one year ago when I asked myself, “why is it that the events industry as a whole is still playing catch up on the whole sustainability trend?”… I concluded that one of the main reasons is a general lack of resources and knowledge about sustainable best practices among event organizers. I think this creates some level of intimidation, especially for large events who are watched closely and need to get things right before they open gates to thousands of people. 

So, just like that, the idea for the Event Sustainability Guide was born. It would give event organizers a download of all the basics for getting started and it would do so in a way that was relatable and digestible for events with no experience. Sounds easy enough, right? 

Well we’ve come a long way since then and it only took a community grant, a lock-down, a dream team, and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day to finally bring this baby to life! I hope you’ll agree that the finished product is all of the things we dreamed up and more! I am blown away by the ideas that have come together from our team and the gorgeous presentation!

SPEAKING OF DREAM TEAM, bare with me while a shout out the AMAZING WOMEN behind this guide.

I must give special thanks first and foremost to my incredible friend and Sustainability Strategist, Nicole Pamani, without whom this guide would still be floating around in my head and I’d definitely be a little less sane. You have been my rock in getting this together. I’m eternally grateful.

Secondly, I have to thank my amazing coach, Aurora Dawn Benton, who gave us the push we needed to go from a great guide to an extraordinary one. You can thank her for the idea of the amazing ripple graphic from the guide, featured in our last blog post below.

Last but most certainly not least, the woman behind the ridiculously beautiful design, my sister from another mister and most talented friend, Karyna Amador. The exponential impact this guide will have because of the way you made it come to life is immeasurable. What an artist you are!

I could talk about this thing for days, but I’ll just let you get to reading! Subscribe for emails for the download link.

Happy Earth Day, world! Let’s all do something good for the planet this week. :)

Love, Viv

The concept of sustainability applies to so much more than the environment. Health, money, relationships… they all fall in that category of things we want to keep around as long as possible.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our ability to sustain our health is at risk. The economic crisis has made many of us fear for how we will financially sustain ourselves. Isolation has made us realize that our relationships are a vital part of what sustains our sanity. Everyday, we’re confronting the lesson that we’ve been taking our own sustainability for granted… but are we overlooking how the health of the planet plays a role in that too?

Let’s take just a moment to face some pretty grim realities. Beyond the prediction that climate change will throw the entire world out of balance in some future, which is estimated to affect the livelihood of over 100 million people; water and air pollution already kill an estimated 9 million people worldwide every year. Even scarier, new research conducted by Harvard University links air pollution to higher COVID-19 death rates, as lungs compromised by toxic air particles have a harder time fighting off the respiratory disease.

Meanwhile, the planet is getting a much-needed breather as we remain on lock-down. Smog has vanished faster than the virus spread from China to India to Spain. Even notoriously hazy US cities like LA and San Francisco are reporting clearer skies than they’ve seen in years after only a month in quarantine. Here in Miami our beach waters are so brilliantly blue that photos could be mistaken for remote islands. Unusual wildlife sightings are happening all over the world. Nature is not taking this time for granted. She’s doing what she can… while she has a chance.

What happens next, though? When all of this is over, do we just go back to normal and erase all of the progress the earth made? How can we step lightly back on the planet when we’re set free, not just for its well-being - but for our own? Sustainability of all kinds has never been more important and I think in some ways the world’s eyes are opening to that… but how do we make sure we don’t conveniently forget?

Personal accountability is key. We like to blame our planetary issues on others - it’s that country’s fault, it’s the airline industry’s fault, it’s the President’s fault… when in reality, we are all responsible. If we don’t acknowledge that we all need to make and demand drastic changes, the planet will not be the only one to suffer the consequences. We will too.

So what can we do as individuals, you ask? First off, vote… and not just in elections. The ballot we have the power to vote on every day is the vote with our dollars. Every dollar is a vote for or against the planet and, by association, its inhabitants - that’s us! Vote for sustainability by:

• Buying local.

• Not buying single-use plastics.

• Choosing sustainably sourced/ sustainably packaged products.

• Opting for renewable energy when you can.

• Offsetting car and air travel emissions by donating to a carbon offsetting project, like tree plantings.

• Eating vegan, at least every once in a while.

• Conserving water, even though it costs pennies.

There are so many seemingly little things we do every day that we don’t realize are contributing to the massive problems the world is facing. Yet, every time we spend money on something sustainable we’re creating new demand for the good stuff while phasing out the old ways that got us here. I think that’s the most important thing to remember when the economy “opens back up again” - we are the ones in the driver’s seat and our wallets are the steering wheel.

Already have a sustainable lifestyle down-packed, or looking for other ways to help save the planet while you’re in the process? Amazing. Next, challenge yourself to growing your influence:

• Share what you’re doing.

• Teach a kid, friend or family member about what they can do.

• Volunteer for an environmental organization.

• Find the one sustainable action you really care about and create a damn movement around it.

With Ascendance, I’m shooting for the latter. This is just my small way of going beyond the confines of my buying habits to make a bigger splash. You see, our individual behaviors ripple out to create exponential impact. Particularly, when we bring large groups of people together in the temporary worlds created by events like the ones we work with, the seemingly small decisions made by the event’s organizers create the framework for how the rest of us have to behave. This framework then pretty much decides for us whether our behaviors will have a positive or negative impact on the environment. For example, if an event doesn’t provide water refills, attendees usually have no choice but to purchase a plastic water bottle every time they’re thirsty.

We’re here to help events create frameworks that allow them to flip the switch from negative to positive environmental impact. Certainly, right now events are as zero waste and zero footprint as they’ll ever be as the entire industry is switched off for the moment, but no events is just, well… no fun. However long it takes, we know human beings will find a way to come together again - and when they do? Oh man, we will have quite a few big parties on our hands.

…but what if events could come back to a world where attendees used their dollars to demand more environmentally responsible behavior? What if we reached out and told our favorite events that this is what we’re hoping to celebrate together when we come back out into the world? What if events could use this time to reset their strategies so that they could help us all step lightly back on the planet together? What if their frameworks got so good they actually educated people on how to live more sustainably moving forward?

That’s what we’re here to help with… and in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day we’ll be releasing a free guide that we’ve worked ever-so-diligently on during our “time off” to provide event organizers with the tools they’ll need to get started. We’re so excited for it to come out this Wednesday (Earth Day!) and we hope you’ll help us share our little gift to the planet with anyone it could help.

Let’s not let this global reset go to waste. Let’s do what we can while we have the time. Sustainability has never been more important… for us and for our planet.

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 love for nature and passion for protecting this planet, which started long before then.

You see, my family is from Costa Rica. We’re one of the world’s smallest countries, yet we’re known globally for two things - pristine natural landscapes and…you guessed it, sustainability. Last year, Costa Rica ran on 100% renewable energy for 299 days, and by the year 2021, they plan to ban all single-use plastics and be entirely carbon neutral. When they achieve this, they’ll be the first country to prove to the world that it can be done.

I don’t think I quite realized how impactful it was for me to visit Costa Rica as a kid. Each time we went, my mom would make it a point to have at least 1 day on the itinerary to go see something spectacular; whether it was a waterfall, rainforest, beach or volcano…we’d always make time for mother nature. Coming back home to flat, mostly-concrete Miami was harder with every visit.

Increasing prices on flights to Costa Rica made those visits less frequent as I got older but when I got my first job in events after college, I’d save every penny to make my way back. I remember feeling like I could breathe again just at the sight of the mountains on the flight in. It was that stark contrast of being in nature and then coming home to work events that created mountains of waste that opened my eyes to the big problems with events that I’m now dedicated to solving.

At first, these visits inspired me to take on environmental responsibility on a personal level. I started recycling and minimizing the use of plastic cups and water bottles, but then I would go work my events and see thousands of those things given out every hour on the hour. I remember once I saw a huge pile of plastic that had gotten swept up at the end of the night, and 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 stint at sustainability abruptly ended and it was years until I would pick it back up again.

I left that job 4 years later to travel and upon my return, soon found myself working in events again… this time as my own business, marketing and producing elements of both concert and sporting events for the biggest resort in the Bahamas - my first client.

At first, working at this place felt like I had been awarded an amazing opportunity to be closer to nature. I’d often be “assigned” to go to the island and interact with dolphins or swim with giant manta-rays. It was a dream gig for me… or was it? I’ll never forget the shock of hearing someone say: “It’s nice to look at, but what we’re enjoying here is the imprisonment of literally thousands of animals and the waste of probably millions of gallons of water”… shit.

How had I not seen this? How disconnected had I been to be galavanting around this place feeling lucky to be here? I see now that it was all part of my process. That client and I eventually parted ways, but I continued working in concert events feeling increasingly unfulfilled. Sure, there was a cool-factor to being somewhat in the music industry, but somehow all of the events I worked now felt increasingly inauthentic and exorbitantly wasteful. I felt drained, lost and in need of new direction.

My heart yearned to travel again. I wanted a hard reset on life and my boyfriend was crazy enough to jump on the bandwagon. We moved out of our apartment, threw everything in storage, packed up the car and hit the road with our dog for what was supposed to be a 3-month stint to California and back. We ended up living on the road for 8 months and it was one of the greatest adventures of our lives. We visited 9 national parks, 11 national forests and over 30 state parks… each one increasingly reminding me of my love for this planet and desire to protect the environment. I knew then that I couldn’t go back to working in any field that wasn’t serving this purpose.

At first, I became hyper aware of my waste and committed to ditching single-use plastics as much as possible, for good this time. I was a champion for “Leaving No Trace,” beach cleanups and proper recycling, while becoming a lot more educated on what those terms meant and their true abilities to make a real difference. Because of that and my previous experience, I knew I would have to go further this time and that’s when things started to come into focus. I decided I would take my then 12 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, begged experts for mentorship and sooner rather than later I really started to know what I was talking about. It really dawned on me then, that instead of events creating these huge environmental problems, they could use their influence to spread solutions to the greater environmental problems we have today. Beyond their own ability to operate more consciously, events serve as a training grounds for every person in attendance to expand their own environmental consciousness.

This is why Ascendance was born. I think the world needs people fully dedicated to inspiring events to make sustainable choices and to show their attendees how they can do the same. So, welcome to the world, Ascendance. Let's dance the planet back to health.