BC Business
Owner
AGE: 28
COMPANY: Fluent Productions and The Event Planner Academy
The story: Cristina Samper Pearl is a child of the world: born in Minnesota to Colombian parents, she was raised in Sweden and Abbotsford while making regular visits to Colombia. So when the Vancouver-based entrepreneur founded her event-planning company, Fluent Productions, in 2012, she put her cross-cultural experiences, three spoken languages (English, Spanish and French) and three passports (Canada, the U.S. and Colombia) to good use. Her company plans and hosts weddings and corporate events at destinations around the world—from Paris to Mexico City to New York—for clients that include Airbnb Inc., Shangri-La International Hotels Inc., Lexus and Topshop. Samper Pearl learned event planning with a diploma from Vancouver Community College but credits her growing success to people skills: “It really is just relationship building, but being genuine and strategic.” She looks to pass on some of those smarts with her online training company, the Event Planner Academy, which she launched at the end of 2014.
Markers of success: Samper Pearl started her company as a solo affair, but within six months she hired an associate to take on some of the growing workload. The year after that, in 2014, she hired another four associates. Not only has she doubled her income every year since inception, she’s been able to increase her rates and be more selective about who she takes on as clients.
PHOTO: JONETSU STUDIOS