Creative Spotlight: Leading through uncertainty with Maurisa Beaver from Party Reflections
| May 14, 2020
Maurisa Beaver is the Chief Culture Officer at Party Reflections, a family-owned special events rental company in Charlotte, NC. Join us for an invigorating chat about how Maurisa brings creativity into her daily life and how she’s staying motivated throughout these uncertain times!
About Party Reflections
Party Reflections is an events rentals company based in Charlotte, NC. The company uses Canto to manage their large library of event photos for social media and digital marketing. Read their story here.
Hi Maurisa! What do you do at Party Reflections?
I wear many hats in the role. One’s a really cool fedora when I do marketing and one is a combat army hat when I do H.R. As chief culture officer, engagement is really the focus – with both our external customer through marketing and our internal customer through H.R.
Marketing is vital for us because our industry is very visual, so we create a lot of content for our digital and social platforms. I manage and direct our campaigns and make sure our brand is on point.
You went to Furman University (another Canto customer!) for art. What sparked your interest in art?
Furman is a liberal arts college so I had to take a little bit of everything. One of the things I took was Art Appreciation and it blew my mind. It put order in the world for me and my professor was amazing. I thought to myself: Did I see myself in a science lab for eight hours a day? Nope. Could I see myself in the library everyday? Nope. But I could see myself in the art building for hours and hours.
The thing that was so great to me was that you had to work in every medium. I had to take drawing, painting, printmaking and ceramics. But through it all, it was all creative problem solving. It forced me to be a very strong problem solver and to think outside the box.
Even though I didn’t go on to get a MFA like a lot of the other students and I went into business, I still use a lot of what I learned.
That segues perfectly into my next question! I was wondering how you incorporate creativity into your everyday life and work.
My work has a creative element. One of the fun parts of what I do is picking out new products, such as new plates, glassware or linens. I go to fabric shows and see new trends, and then I get to pick those products for the company.
A lot of what I learned in school comes in handy with some of the advertising and design that we do. And some of it is just creative problem solving that we’re faced with when we’re trying to design events and spaces for clients.
I don’t have nearly as much time to create art because I’m raising four kids and running a business. I feel like this is my art right now. To me, the deliverables for the events that we create, I consider art. But in my free time, I did pull out my watercolors just a couple of weeks ago because it is therapeutic and I miss it.
With everything going on in the world right now, how are you staying motivated and inspired?
I am finding a lot of energy in extra time. I’ve got some business books and things that I have wanted to read and I want to use this time for improvement. It’s also been helpful to have a set routine and schedule.
We can only take it one day at a time. I know it’s not going to be like this forever. We may not know when it’s going to end, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we are going for it. As a company, we’ve had to make changes quickly to adapt to the situation, but once the pandemic is over, people are going to want to gather and get together. All of those things are going to pick back up and we’re going to be there. We just have to make the best decisions we can for today.