Having built and managed her own successful events company, Soraya O'Brien Jollon knew a thing or two about negotiating inter-personal dynamics in service of celebrating life's highlights. At a certain point, she took a look at her own family situation and asked out loud how she wanted to be celebrating life with the one's she loved most deeply. Find out how listening to what people need can create connection and lead to new adventures.
Guest Soraya O’Brien Jollon started her career in management consulting but realized that there were elements of corporate life that didn’t suit her. She also realized that she wanted to do something that made people happy and she was also a bit of a control freak. Enter event planning.
She found she liked all the things that make most people panic, dealing with other people's emotions and with the stress around planning stemming from such uncomfortable topics as family, religion or money (or all three). She started her own company in New York City where she planned cross-cultural and interfaith weddings, same-sex weddings, and more—all events for people with interesting stories and challenges figuring out how to navigate who they are as individuals and in partnership and with families. Yes, she was picking out napkin colors, but it was really all about building connection and negotiating inter-personal dynamics in service of celebrating life's highlights. At a certain point, she took a look at her own family situation and asked out loud how she wanted to be celebrating life with the one's she loved most deeply. The answer led her to an unexpected place.
In this episode, find out from Soraya how listening to what people need can create connection and lead to new adventures…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Soraya O'Brien Jollon is currently Chief Strategy Officer for Wedsly, a digital wedding planning start-up, where she can use her industry experience and not have to attend an event every weekend. For more than a decade, she ran the New York-based SORAYA weddings, gatherings and destinations. You can stiil find her work on her beautiful website. She now lives in Stockholm, Sweden with her husband and four children.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Soraya O’Brien Jollon: Whether it’s a technology company whether an event agency, organizations are made up of people. And basically people want to find meaning and connection in whatever they do. And so I’m just at a moment where connecting with people on a lot of different levels is really important. It feels like it’s all coming together in this role.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Having built and managed her own successful events company, Soraya O'Brien Jollon knew a thing or two about negotiating inter-personal dynamics in service of celebrating life's highlights. At a certain point, she took a look at her own family situation and asked out loud how she wanted to be celebrating life with the one's she loved most deeply. Find out how listening to what people need can create connection and lead to new adventures on today's ROADS TAKEN with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I’m here with Soraya O’Brien Jollon and we are going to talk about life’s celebrations and celebrating what life has for us. So, Soraya, thanks so much for being here.
SJ: It’s my pleasure. I thank you for the invitation.
LJR: So, we begin this with the same two questions each time and they are: Soraya, when you were in college, who were you and when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
SJ: Oh boy, I think there’s always a pregnant pause there. I think I was somebody who was trying to figure out who I was. And I came in as one person and I left as another. And I think I arrived as somebody who was really interested in being in a beautiful place that was dedicated to learning that was intellectually rigorous, but didn't take itself too seriously.
And I wanted to find an environment in which people worked hard and played hard. And I think I did a lot of both at Dartmouth. I found some good friends there, which was great, and many of them are still my closest friends. And when I left Dartmouth, I think I was so grateful for having had the experience, but also ready to, you know, burst out of Hanover and go somewhere else.
And unfortunately in true liberal arts fashion, I don't think I really knew what I wanted to do. So I feel like I would cringe if I said, oh, I thought I was going to be this, that or the other thing. I'm not really sure I knew. And so I of course did the default of like corporate recruiting and ended up in consulting, which is like an extension of not knowing what you want to do. And so I, that is not a very good answer, but it’s truthful.
LJR: It’s realistic answer, exactly, for many, many, many of us. So with that, still that liberal arts focus in life, like you, you're still wanting to experience all the things you just said, like being in a beautiful place or an interesting place, and, you know, having the balance of the rigor and the fun.
Yes, Consultant can help you continue that. But at some point you really did hone in on like who you were at core, and it seems from an outsider that you had it kind of put together. And so I mean, talk to me and talk to me about what that feeling was of saying, you know, I am going to find my own path and my own voice and who I am.
SJ: Sure. So right out of undergrad, I spent three years at a big consulting firm. And I definitely did that route where it was, you were on a project side and you traveled every week. And that was really fun and great. And I got to see a lot of places that I wouldn't have, but I quickly realized that corporate America was not really going to be a place that I wanted to be.
And now it seems crazy 25 years ago, all of the things that I heard and said and was told at that time from, I don't know, you know, your, your haircut is distracting, please don't dress so fashionably at this very conservative place. And then just realizing, I'm not quite sure this is where I'm going to be happy longterm. Once I realized what it meant to be a partner or something like that, I realized, oh, that's not for me. And so what was for me was of course the next difficult thing and essentially, I wanted to work for myself. I want to do something that made people happy and as a bit of a control freak. So enter event planning.
And I got an extremely low paying job in the wedding industry after coming out of working for an investment bank. And I realized, Hey, I'm really good at this. I really like it. All the things that people don't like dealing with people's emotions, dealing with the stress around planning, the uncomfortable topics that come up around people getting married, be they family or religion or money, or many times all three of those in the same sentence. I was good at that and, and I was also good at the design piece of you know, bringing these beautiful events and beautiful environments to life.
And so at the time. I said, I'll give myself six months in the event industry and see if I can find a job. And if I like it, and what ended up happening was I found a job. And in that six months I also met the man who is now my husband. And so it was a real moment for me. Wow. When you open yourself up to trying to find out who you are, you can be open to all sorts of different things, and that can be really attractive to other people in both a professional sense and also a personal sense. And so I'm happy to say we're still married. We now have four children.
LJR: Well, and there you are planning other people's weddings and then you get to plan your own. Right? So it's kind of like, oh, let me try those out for real to see if I like this thing. And I happened to do it for myself.
SJ: Exactly, exactly. And so, and that was a real, that was a really exciting wild ride at the time. I mean, he lived in Colorado. I moved to Colorado, which I got to spend a wonderful year in Colorado. And I still have a real soft spot in my heart for Colorado, even though I definitely consider myself an east coaster. And it was like you say, it was moment where all of these exciting things were happening to me personally. And also I could be part of creating these moments for other people. And it quickly became clear though, that I also, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to work for myself. Eventually we wanted to have a family. And I realized that, certainly in the US, one of the ways for a woman to be able to have a family and have any semblance of control over that was to work for yourself.
And, you know, four self-financed maternity leaves later…I think I probably should have moved to Sweden 15 years ago. [LJR: Right, right.] But, but it was great. And, and over the course of that time, I built a business in New York City in the wedding industry and got to work with all sorts of super interesting couples. And I think maybe I wouldn't have wanted to have been a wedding planner anywhere else. Because I didn't want to do a wedding of people who, you know, were having the same wedding that their friend was having, that their parents had had all of that. I did loads of cross-cultural and interfaith weddings. Same-sex weddings all over the map. And so in an industry that is not particularly intellectual, I found a lot of gratification out of having personal connections with people who had extremely interesting stories. I mean, when you have. Someone whose parents, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors and they are marrying not only a non-Jew, but a Muslim. And you think, how do we get all these people in room to recognize, wow, these two people have found their person and they're happy and we need to support that as a community. And so when people would say to me, oh, do you spend a lot of time picking out napkin colors? And I thought, well, probably more time than your average corporate lawyer. Yes, I do. But I spent a lot of time talking about you know, what it means to find a partner; to be in love; how to navigate family; how to be an individual who wants to be different from their family, maybe, but recognized as themselves. And, I found it really, really gratifying for a very long, long time.
LJR: Yeah. A long, long time with kids in the mix. And I have to say, for as fun as that sounds and like, okay, I'm building this community for these people. It's usually on a weekend. And so what was the balance of that? Because you know, events are tough. Very tough for that.
SJ: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there was moment. I had some of my assistants, they had worked with me for a long time. And I remember when I first had children and one of my assistants said, I think it was when you had your third child that you stopped wearing high heels to the weddings. And I was like, yes, I think, I think that was it. It was just okay, bring on the flats. Like we can't do everything. And, and there was this balance right in there.
And there did become a moment where I suddenly had four children and the span of six years. And so suddenly I had a whole host of irrational people who relied on me at home.
LJR: You'd already have that though, exactly.
SJ: I had a lot less patience for my clients when they were acting childish. Because you know, emotions are high when you're getting married, right? I think many people, if you've had a wedding or. You can kind of understand that. And yes. So the work-life balance tipped in the favor of maybe I don't want to spend every Saturday night, you know, with a great band and wonderful food, but not my husband and definitely not enjoying the band or eating the meal, to be honest and, and worrying. So. Yeah, I mean, 15 years as long time to take brides and grooms and their parents by the hand and lead them through that. So it did start to tip into, Hey, maybe I want to do something else. And that's when I started to wind down my business and I took a role as a COO of an event agency in New York that had more of a corporate focus. So there was less, “Hey, it's every Saturday night from, you know, May until November that I am at work.” And that was great, until the pandemic happened and the event industry essentially disappeared overnight. So that was, again, a real challenge. I'm sure I’m not saying anything, anybody doesn't know, but it was intense. In 72 hours, we lost 95% of our book of business. And so it became less about, are you a good event planner and more about how do you manage the expectations of your staff? We had an agency of 12 people. It was small, but mighty. And, you know, how do I upskill them, get them other jobs? How do I navigate the PPP process with the founder of the company? All sorts of things like that. So it was a little bit crash landing the plane, I guess. And also recognizing my industry was gone. All of, all of these things. And of course we were on lockdown in New York City, in an apartment with our four kids who were also homeschooling. Of course my husband was working from home too. So it was an interesting time and it gave us a lot of time to think, too. And we kind of did a life audit in terms of, Hey, so obviously the pandemic is happening, but what about our life do we really like, and what about our life would we like to change or have we always wanted to do? And maybe it's now the moment to do that.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. So let's get to that in a second. So of course you felt ownership of this company as COO as you would, you know, just being responsible. Do you think that would have felt different that moment of the industry implosion, had it been in your company? And is there a plus or minus of having wound down your own company prior to that moment of global pivot?
SJ: It's a really good question. And, gosh, I haven't thought about it that way. What I really enjoyed about being COO or number two was that I had this other person, the founder and creative director of the firm that I was in it with. I no longer had to be the sole decision maker like I did when it was my company. But then we were in this extraordinary set of circumstances and, you know, people reacted emotionally. They reacted very much from a place of fear and panic and not knowing. And that was a moment where it felt really uncomfortable to not be the one calling the shots. So I just reoriented myself to, okay. I at least had the experience of having lived through the financial crisis through 9/11, all sorts of things, you know, the bubble. But then I had this team that was relatively young and an experience, and this was major, major event going on for them. And I just thought, okay, I'm just going to focus my energies on what a can control, which is, you know, supporting them and being a sounding board or a repository for their anxiety and help them get through this, find them other placements. And again, try to help them upskill or reskill so that they could do other things either in the short-term or the long-term. And I just had different concerns than the founder slash CEO. And so I just tried to focus on what I could do. So I don't know that it was better or worse. It, it was the moment I found myself in and I had to control what I could and then really ride the wave of uncertainty.
LJR: Right. Well, and that's, I mean, I, that probably is part of the trying to control what you can in your home situation and having those conversations about what is important. So how did, how did that manifest? Because yes, you're the CEO in that situation of your family, but you have a co-CEO and for other like very high level executives. So how does one make that switch or, or, or what's the process?
SJ: Yeah, so I think it just, it started having organically. And one thing that had always been on our list as a couple was to live abroad with our family. I'm half Spanish, I'm a Spanish citizen. My husband is more complicated. He was born to American ex-pats in Brazil, but he also has an Irish passport. So all of us, including the children had EU citizenship. And so they obviously are Brazilian citizens too, but well, Brazil has a near-fascist president. So the political situation there. We're not going to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire so to speak. So we really wanted to come to Europe because we needed somewhere that, you know, we wouldn't need a visa, we could work, all of these things. And so we started and the obvious place to go would be Spain. My children are bilingual. They were in a bilingual school program, all of these things. But then we started to think about what did we really want? And some of the things that we wanted were. Both a really vibrant tech community, ideally a capital city that was both the cultural capital and also the financial capital. Access to nature, possibly on the water. And also gender equality, a place where I, as a middle-aged person—it's still really smarts to say middle age—but where I, I could, I could slot in and where age-ism and maybe sexism weren't quite as prevalent. And so suddenly all things were pointing to Stockholm, which was really surprising to us. But it, you know, three boys and a girl and the three boys play hockey, the girl tried it and our daughter said, um, yeah, I'm good, thanks. So it was good. They play, they all play soccer, so they, we wanted to go somewhere where they could continue to do these things. And again, Sweden started to inch up the list, and also where English would be an asset as opposed to something that would need to be tolerated. And our children are 13, 11, nine, and seven. And so the older ones, the window is really closing. It was okay. They were a little bit too young, a few years ago. And in two years, one or two of them will not want to do this at all. Right. And so it was. Okay. Are we going to do this? And then we set about, you know, trying to figure out how we would move to Sweden and a place we had no ties to. And one thing that really helped was my Dartmouth network actually, and not my closest friends, but just the prevailing feeling in the Dartmouth community that if someone says, Hey, I went to Dartmouth, they're willing to pick up the phone or answer an email, or somehow extend you a kindness just on the strength of that. And so that worked sort of two ways. One is that I told my close friends what we're thinking about. And some really excellent things came out of that. I mean, one example is I spoke to Melba Naj. And she said, do you know, do you remember Debbie Carbone? I said, yes, she was, a drill instructor in Spanish with me. And she said, well, she's married to a Swede. And then I spoke to her husband, who's Swedish. And he set me up with his sister who then worked with a bunch of Spanish scientists. So that's how I got plugged into the Spanish community in Stockholm. And. Gabe Schlumberger, who is a good friend and one of my children's godfathers, he said, oh, I worked with a guy at Disney who moved to Sweden and his wife introduced me to my now boss at my new job. So these were the. Really just natural conversations about, Hey, why are you moving to Sweden? Oh, I know somebody in Sweden. And then the flip side is here in Stockholm there is a little bit of a Swedish network, or sorry, a Dartmouth network, not huge, but not tiny. And. So I've reconnected with Megan Owens not even reconnected. I connected with Megan Owens because I didn't really know her in undergrad and she's been super helpful. She's lived here for over a decade and so that's been really great. And, yeah, so I think it bears, given the audience of the podcast, it bears saying my Dartmouth network helped me in accomplishing, like, in under a year we identified, Hey, we'd like to move to Sweden. In fact, we really decided to do that in January of 2021. And we moved here eight months later. So yeah, it's been a little crazy.
LJR: Yeah, crazy. So crazy. Wow. It's probably too soon to know, kind of, if it's playing out in the ways that you might've thought, when you said, what do we really want more of, or less of what, what feels right for our family right now? Any glimmers of potential knowing?
SJ: Yeah. I would say, I mean, this is. You've probably gotten this vibe already. Like we try to be pretty self-reflective right. And there've been some really tough moments. I will not lie, but we are constantly checking in to say, Hey, was this the right decision? And the answer is definitely yes. I mean, it's very difficult to describe Stockholm. In a way that makes sense, but it is at once utterly foreign and yet not foreign at all, because one can completely conduct oneself in English with no problem. The level of English here is absurdly high and things just work public transportation compared to New York city it's, you know, clean and on time and safe and all of these things. And we were a huge public transportation users in New York city, even with all of those issues. Right. But we've suddenly moved to a place where our children have slotted into a pretty interesting, diverse community at their school, which is a bilingual Swedish English school. Our youngest is actually just in Swedish school. So I don't know how he's doing because he literally spends all day with Swedes in Swedish. But you know, he's seven. It's fine. We’ll just put aside money for therapy right now. But you know, I will say that I think it was the right choice. I think that before we came, we also said, what would failure look like? How would we feel we failed if this really, if in six months we can't get jobs, our kids hate it and we move and you know, our fallback option is Spain. So it's not that bad. What would the failure be? Everyone, even then even the older children, said it would be not going, like not trying to do it, not trying to just make this move. And, you know, putting it in context, when we talk to our children who did not know any Swedish, I mean, they started immediately learning it on Duolingo. People often said, are they okay with this? And all of our kids basically said, Is school in person in Sweden? I mean, they didn't even ask, like, do I need to speak Swedish or anything like that? It was just...so I think in the context of like a really diminished school experience, they were craving connection. They were craving, you know, a lot of things and they were literally willing to move to another country and learn another language to do it. So I dunno. I mean, we've tried to create an environment in which our children feel like we won't let them down. And so they can be brave and in a weird way, that's what Swedish society is set up to be, right? If you take care of things like healthcare for people and education, it allows them to be their best self, not worrying about certain things. And so. It's been really interesting to see them flourish in different ways. And, you know, I think we will as well, my husband and I. It’s just more complicated.
LJR: Yeah. Well, I think we all have different seasons and the flourishing looks different.
SJ: For sure.
LJR: But I think you, this is, it's a chance for you, who I know has gotten the job and the kind of embeddedness in the community and is helping other people create moments there. It's going to be a different time for you to reflect on what was important to you in your work and how that translates and ended up in different contexts. What are the things that you're excited about for that?
SJ: I was starting to touch on this a little bit earlier that I didn't want to be planning events in real life, right? But I have a lot of industry knowledge. And I like weddings still, which one of my friends joked haven't you married? Everybody that's left to marry yet? Because of course, you know, everyone has moved on and some of my friends are now thinking about their own children's weddings, right? So what was exciting about coming here and working for Wedsly and being offered a position as their strategy officer is I could still have my foot in wedding planning, but I could essentially completely pivot and work for a technology company, which is sort of a full circle back to when I worked as a management consultant, very often installing new systems. And so that's been really nice. And you realize that, whether it's technology company or whether it's an event agency, organizations are made up of people and basically people want to find meaning and connection in whatever they do. And so. I love working with our development team who are in Poland and in Bangladesh. And I love working with a kind of dyed in the wool Swedes, and also some other people on our team who have maybe more of an international focus. And I'm just at a moment where connecting with people on lots of different levels is really important. It feels like it's all coming together in this role.
So jury's still out. I dunno, it's still a startup, right? We're doing another round of funding. So maybe in six months you'll ask me and I'll say, oh, we didn't get our funding. And it's all for naught, but for right now, I'm focused on bringing the brand live in four other European markets by the end of the year. So it's exciting.
I want to be somebody who is not complacent and still trying to challenge myself. I think it's a good thing to model for my children. I mean, my husband's a big runner and a marathoner and anybody who knows me from Dartmouth knows that, I don't know, maybe I ran for the bus. Maybe I ran because I was late to class or something, but now I run because I want to show my children it's important to do things that you're not good at, right? Just because it's something I want to do with them. I mean, even my seven year old can beat me in the mile. It's sort of horrifying.
LJR: Well, so I think if there's one connective tissue in all of these stories, it's really connection that you have really tried to make that certainly for your family, giving them outlets to connect to their peers and to the world. But also these families that have come together, maybe sometimes cross culturally or across religious divides, creating that connection. And for you, it's connecting those experiences that are going to keep you from being complacent and saying, what can I do next that's different, that still brings people together and creates moments for people that make them happy? And it sounds it's a great journey that you're on and we're going to have to see where it goes, because I'm sure it is not going to end with this chapter for certain.
SJ: I don't know. I mean, I'm excited and you know, and the same thing that I always told my clients, you know, when it was, oh, how can you ensure that we have a good wedding? And I said well, you know, pick the right person to marry. I mean, that was always the answer, right? The rest of it is just a party. I definitely feel I picked the right person and my husband is a real partner and, you know, I think many people would have said, wow, you have four kids. I feel like in high school, I would have been voted most likely to eat her young or something. But then I found this person and suddenly everything seemed possible. So four children with him seemed possible. And you know, sure, we can move to another country and restart our life. Seems possible. So I guess that’s it. I’ve wanted to have that connection and I’ve wanted to help people find that connection for themselves and not get too wadded up in wedding planning.
LJR: Yeah, exactly. Well, it sounds like all of that is possible and we’re just so happy that you shared this with us. So thank you so much, Soraya, for being here today.
SJ: Leslie, it was really my pleasure. It’s been so nice chatting with you offline and with the record button pressed.
LJR: That was Soraya O'Brien Jollon who previously ran the New York based SORAYA weddings, gatherings and destinations. you can stiil find her beautiful website at Soraya.NYC. Currently, she is Chief Strategy Officer for Wedsly dot com, a digital wedding planning start-up. She now lives in Stockholm, Sweden with her husband and four children. Wherever you're making your connections and living into your adventures, we hope you continue to spread the word about our podcast. Please follow, rate, and review so that others can find us and keep tuning in with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, for our next episodes of ROADS TAKEN.