In mid-July, a group of five driven Entertainment Business Management students, calling themselves Head Over Heals, put on Catwalk for Cure – an evening of fashion, music, good spirits (in more ways than one) and fundraising for Rethink Breast Cancer.

Held at the Roundhouse in Vancouver, hosted by Kim Cathers (of Project Runway Canada), featuring numerous local designers, and headlined by the vocal talents of Carly Rae Jepsen, among others, the event was a rousing success – a good time and a successful fundraising effort.

For teammates Jennifer Becker, Kalee Harris, Kendra Naka, Anita Schipper, and Erin Gilchrist, the event was a culmination… and a relief. Kendra and Jennifer took time out of their hectic schedules – they only just wrapped up their classes, and officially graduate later this week – to answer some post-Catwalk questions.

First of all, congrats on the successful event! How does it feel now that it’s over?

Kendra: I’m happy and relieved about the success of the event, and it feels somewhat surreal to be finished. It was four months of walking, talking, and breathing Catwalk, and now it’s all over!

Jennifer: I feel like it went great for a first-time event. I also have this overwhelming feeling of pride for everyone who was involved with helping put this event together. I’m also just really happy that we were able to show the school what the EBM program can do.

Earlier, Erin explained why you chose the Rethink Breast Cancer cause – “We decided to raise money for a cause that more than likely will affect one of us in our lives.” But could you explain why you settled on a live event for the project? Is it something you hope to be doing professionally?

Kendra: Well, the event initially began as a project for our Event Planning course, but we were wanting to do so much with it that we had to make the decision to push it back and make it our final project instead. I don’t see myself as a professional event planner, but it’s definitely something I’ve been doing on the side for the past five years in some form or another.

Jennifer: I think being involved in charity work in our community is something that we’d all done at some point before coming to VFS. To me, live events are not just limited to putting on a concert or movie screening. While I don’t see myself making a career out of the production of live events, I know whatever industry I go into, I’m committed to contributing in some way to live events and charity work.

So, our readers might not know what really goes into making an event like this happen. It’s not exactly like planning a run-of-the-mill party, is it? What would you say to them? What’s involved in the planning?

Kendra: I would tell them that it’s a lot of spreadsheets, numbers, communication, and coffee. There’s a lot of brainstorming and delegating. We spent hours deciding on “the vision”. After that, it came down to who’s calling who. We made endless phone calls, and sent email after email. It takes some serious organization and resourcefulness on so many levels. Just when we thought we had everything covered, something else would come up. This happened all the way up to the day of. I say, have fun, and take your risk management seriously!

Jennifer: I think the biggest thing that goes into planning an event is the ability to get along with your co-producers and knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. You have to really know how they work and how you work with them.

I think any event you take on comes with a lot of stress, so it’s really easy to become overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done. When you trust your teammates you know how to handle that stress and distribute the responsibilities based on who thrives in certain areas.

For instance, we knew that Kalee’s strength was in the organizing the coordination of events and meetings, so she just naturally slipped into that role. Because we had worked together on different projects throughout the year, we were pretty familiar with our working style and strengths. So I would say to someone who wants to put on live events, really know your co-producers and have a good relationship with them both on and off the project.

Was there a moment leading up to Catwalk for Cure – or even during – where you suddenly thought, “Uh-oh, what have we done?”

Kendra: As crazy as it may sound, I was pretty confident throughout. I wouldn’t have taken on an event like this if I thought we’d fail. We knew who we were working with, and we knew what we were getting ourselves into. I made a few jokes throughout the planning period, but only to keep things light.

Jennifer: One that really comes to mind is the day of the event when we were dealing with the food and the bar. We had a menu in place and prepped as much as we could to limit what needed to be made during the day. Everything started fine, and then suddenly we needed everyone who had a car that day to run and pick up additional supplies and transport everything to the Roundhouse. Suddenly, all plans for food preparation went out the door.

While on one trip to Anita’s apartment, I accidentally locked my keys in my car with all the supplies lined up on the sidewalk waiting to be loaded in. We had to flag down a tow-truck to get the car unlocked while Anita and I had to inform passers-by we weren’t having a sidewalk sale, just waiting to get back into the car.

How did you overcome these kinds of challenges?

Jennifer: We had some amazing EBM classmates really step up to the plate and volunteer their time and energy. A couple of classmates had put on a smaller event a few months ago and understood the stress we were going through. They jumped into the kitchen and basically kicked us out and told us not to worry about that area.

We had a couple of other friends and classmates volunteer to work as bartenders or they had friends who worked as bartenders downtown and called them for help.

Without that last minute help, the evening would have been a hundred times more stressful than it was. We were really thankful for their help before and after the event.

Here’s where you get to shout out to the people from outside of your team who might have contributed to this. Go!

Kendra: Oh, wow, this list could go on forever!

I’d thank Rethink for being supportive throughout the process and helping out from afar. Just within VFS, I would definitely give a shout-out to Colby Fackler and Sasha Iwanick for mentoring us and being super supportive. Our various classmates – Ryan Hoye, Danny Fitzgerald, Kat Lane, Colleen Reyes - and the entire EBM08 class, helped out in a huge way, along with Jeff Yu.

Jennifer: I’m sure whatever list we put together we’ll miss someone who helped us out. It really did take a village to make this event go as smoothly as possible. I would first like to thank the entire EBM07 and 08 students and staff. They had to listen to us discuss and pitch this event for four months and did so with out complaint… for the most part…

Kendra: Then there’s our MC, Kim Cathers, and our talent, Carly Rae Jepsen, DJ iHenson, FlowEthics, Julia and her Piano, and Cookies & Cream. The boutiques and models were great! The hair and makeup volunteers helped us out in a big way, not to mention all of our great sponsors and photographers.

Everyone who was involved and everyone who showed up that night was phenomenal.

L-R: Jennifer Becker, Erin Gilchrist, Kalee Harris, Kendra Naka, Anita Schipper. Photo by Kris Krug.