By Selena Haynes • Photos (Submitted) Courtesy The Sun and The Moon Media
TN Event Designs is a lighting, draping and custom build company for live events that was founded by Brandy and Sarah Ashley. Both transplants to the Nashville area, neither are strangers to hard work. Sarah, a purebred Texan through and through, was born and raised about an hour East of Dallas on a cattle farm and horse ranch. She graduated high school at 16 and started learning the lighting world while working on over-the-road tours with artists. She has lived in Nashville off and on for 10 years and has helped build several of the lighting companies here in Nashville. Brandy, originally from West Virginia, has a Bachelor’s degree in healthcare management and ten years of nursing under her belt. After visiting a friend in Nashville, six years later she too chose to call it home. With their combined experience and drive, Brandy and Sarah decided to go out on a limb and become the first female-owned production company in town.
We spoke with Brandy and Sarah about working together, building a business and expanding that business to help bring events back to Middle Tennessee.
How is it working with each other?
Most days working together is a dream, other days we are human. However a great deal of the time it is perfect for us. We are able to learn and grow as a result of our intimate connection we know that when there is a growing opportunity the other will voice it from a place of love and in the appropriate setting. In addition, we travel constantly — our joint passion alongside work. If we didn’t work together and had to answer to traditional job schedules we wouldn’t be able to explore the world as we do! All that said, we LOVE working together.
How long has TN Events been in business?
TN Event Designs officially launched the day after we returned from our honeymoon in July 2018. While Sarah has been in the industry for 12 years and Brandy has had management experience for 10 years, we are a new company allowing new thoughts ideas and creativity in a complacent environment.
Tell us a little bit about TN Events and TN Health.
TN Event Designs is a lighting, draping and custom build production company for live events in the Nashville area and nationwide. We specialize in weddings, corporate events, conventions and festivals of all sizes. We are 100% female-owned and LGBTBE Certified.
TN Event Health is a nurse-led COVID specialty team for the event world with a mission to reopen the event world, safely. Our intention is to help protect your guests, reassure your clients and reduce cancellations. We offer contact tracing, temperature screenings and on-site rapid testing backed with medical-grade sanitation of your space throughout your event.
What motivated you to begin your business?
For years, Sarah spent blood, sweat and tears creating and building other men’s dreams at a small hourly wage. When they, Brandy was baffled that Sarah hadn’t ventured on her own. With Brandy’s business background and Sarah’s knowledge of the industry — and an aging body, it was time to build our own dream. Sarah craved new ideas and implored her bosses to try new things to no avail. Now, the dreaming and delivery of the craziest ideas are limitless.
What are your hopes and expectations for the LGBTQ+ community in Tennessee from a personal and professional perspective?
GET MORE ACTIVE. Be brave. Get out there. Take a chance on yourself. Let’s make our community normalized owners as opposed to minority-owned. Let’s be the majority and conquer the world together while building each other up!
What do each of you do to recharge and tackle each day?
Once a month, we make it a priority to hop in the Jeep and travel. We are minimalist and sleep out of the Jeep. We may go one hour or we may drive across the country. It doesn’t matter. Our travel time we value and truly recharges us until the next trip. When we get exhausted from the long days, we plan our next trip and start looking to that. We also spend time being active to blow off steam. Brandy is a diehard hot yoga lover and spends as much time at Santosha Yoga studio as she can.
What led to TN Event Designs growing to include TN Event Health?
As many know, the entertainment industry was completely devastated by COVID-19. TN Event Designs grew eager to open the industry back up safely. When COVID first hit, we saw every contract we had either cancel or postpone.
Brandy, a nurse of ten years with a bachelor’s in healthcare management, was sent on a deployment to New Orleans (a ‘hot zone’) to work in a pop-in tent. It was there that she was trained by the government for rapid response to COVID-19. It was there that she learned the extreme importance of contact tracing and the different screenings.
Upon coming back to Nashville, through brainstorming between Brandy, Sarah and a friend, we figured out a way to merge both careers. Enter TN Event Health, sister company now to TN Event Designs. TN Event Health offers temperature screening, contact tracing and medical-grade sanitation. Each event is staffed with a COVID trained nurse who then follows each attendee for two weeks and monitors their health. Our mission is to protect your guests, reassure your clients and reduce event cancellations.
Our process is simple but effective. Before being assessed by a COVID specialist nurse, attendees will fill out a custom branded questionnaire and safety waiver by scanning a QR code enabling a fast, contactless event check-in. During the event all high touch areas are sanitized with medical-grade cleaner, masks and sanitizer are provided when needed and TN Event Health can act as an authority to enforce mask mandates. Post-event, you will have a nurse that traces the health of all of your attendees for two weeks, should anyone show symptoms we will offer medical advice on how to proceed while keeping medical communications confidential. We provide you with the ability to host events, safely.
We dream of a day that COVID is a part of the past and we are back to building beautiful production designs but until that day happens, TN Event Health will be here to make life a little safer.
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