I am a pround mother of 4 girls, Ciara (32), Samantha (27), Sabrina (15) & Simone (13) my two oldest girls have blessed me with 4 grandchildren, 2 boys (finally!) and 2 girls. I I am a dog mom to Roxanne Rose and my husband David is my biggest cheerleader.

I do still book destination weddings through my business Behind The Scenes Inc and run an event venue in downtown Greensboro called Elm & Bain.

Years ago ABC handed me a lifeline and throughout my career the members of ABC have taught me how to run my business and has provided me with friendships that will last me the remainder of my life. So I’d love to tell you a short story about myself and I’ll create a future blog post of updates that I would love to see be made at ABC!

So let’s start at the begining I was born in Hawaii…just kidding! I’ll start when I joined ABC. I had been working at a company called Dun & Bradstreet for 10 years I was in sales and I planned and executed all of our team trainings, outtings and holiday parties. I loved my job, and would still be there if they wouldn’t have laid me off and exported thousands of jobs in June 2002. It was a week or more later that I signed up for the Penn Foster Program because I did like the social aspect of the events more than I liked planning the training and meeting events.

Once I finished the Penn Foster program I actually received an email from Sonya Scott who was the State Manager in Tennessee and I was and am still located in North Carolina. So I went to that meeting, drove 4 hours to get there and stayed overnight in the hotel where the meeting was being hosted. I was sold, Sonya invited me in and everyone was so nice and open and sharing of information that when I got home I called ABC home office and started my membership this was early 2003.

In North Carolina we had just at about 30 members, but no meetings and Sonya was actually also our State Manager but TN and NC can be quite a distance away. I reached out to the corporate office in 2006 asking if it was possible for me to plan a meeting in my state and at that time the Monahan’s were in charge of ABC and they flew all the way to Greensboro, North Carolina to meet with me and made me State Manager! I was in awe of them and the honor that they bestowed upon me that I went to work right away. When I retired from the State Manager position in 2012 we had just at 160 members in North Carolina alone.

The reason I had to retire from my State Manager position is because I had started having health issues. I had a hard time speaking, breathing, and visited several doctors over the year until in late 2015 I was diagnosed with throat cancer. After 2 surgeries and 30 treatments of radition, I rang that bell at Cone Health Cancer Center stating that I was cancer free in Feb of 2016. I never stopped running my business, although I was forced to slow down quite a bit and did hand off some of the current weddings to other ABC members to execute. During this time for me ABC was very important, by using the Hotel Division and doing room blocks I was able to still bring in some income to sustain my business as I was planning weddings full time.

In early 2019 Jacqueline Vasquez who was Director of Outreach at that time called and stated that she would be stepping down from the position and that she wanted to see if I was interested in taking her place. As you know I said yes and was super excited about all of the wonderful things that I would be able to put in place for our membership!

Then COVID happened before I could really get up and running like I had planned and I had nothing to do except sulk. So; I asked for forgiveness and re-built the ABC website and created a new ABC member database so all of our members could renew online whenever they wanted. Since then I have also updated the corporate membership offerings and have plans in the works for many more changes, all that will benefit our membership. We now have an ABC Pinterest account that gets over 32,000 visits per month and have started our YouTube account also. We have membership listings online so you as a member can receive clients directly from our website and corporate members to reach out to for resources. Our social media stance has changed and is quickly increasing in engagement on both Facebook and Instgram Platforms, a lot of this success has to do with Cathy MacRae reaching out and assisting.

There will not be a day in my future that I will not be an active ABC member. This organization and its members have made such an impact on my life that there isn’t anything that I wouldn’t do to make sure that ABC is here for future wedding & event professionals. There also will not be a time that I am not open to a phone call, email for information from members on what YOU want your membership to be. Yes, I am also open to constructive feedback since without it we can’t grow as people or as an organization.

ABC has been around since 1955 and if I have my way with it we’ll be around until 2055.