Yaz Quiles is the founder of Pop! By Yaz and the intimate venue experience, Pop! Igloos.
For October, the intersection of Hispanic Heritage Month and National Women's Small Business Month serves as a reminder of the persistence and resilience celebrity Afro Latina event designer and Discovery+ HGTV Table Wars star Yaz Quiles embodied to build a prosperous experiential agency. She is the founder of Pop! By Yaz and the intimate venue experience, Pop! Igloos.
Quiles reaps the dual benefit of identifying as an Afro-Latina and a woman-led business. The U.S. Hispanic demographic climbed to 62.1 million in 2020, a staggering growth of 23% from prior decades. The Spanish-speaking populace surpassed the nation’s 7% general population increase, according to Pew Research. Women entrepreneurs started nearly 49% of the current crop of business in the U.S. in 2021, a 28% increase from 2019, the World Economic Forum reports.
According to her bio, Quiles, an acclaimed brand and event marketer, holds over 20 years of experience in event marketing, design, and production. She has executed high-caliber consumer and employee events and strategic marketing solutions for prominent brands like Verizon, HBO, Dropbox, Tinder, Instagram, MillerCoors, Moët Hennessy, Patron Spirits, Brown-Forman, Roc Nation, The Edrington Group, and Remy-Cointreau.
She also extended her talent to annually deck the halls of the home of Yankee player CC Sabathia. She was also the creative mastermind behind the viral wedding of NBA star Danny Green.
Yaz Quiles designed the wedding for NBA star Danny Green and Blair Alise Bashen.
As the daughter of Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants, her parents held multiple jobs to support their household. Whereas most first-generation Americans would set out to obtain gainful employment as doctors, engineers, lawyers, or accountants, those career paths were not Quiles' areas of interest.
"I was always a creative child," she says, "I got a lot of my entertaining and nurturing spirit from my mom because that's how she showcased her love through food and entertaining others. What I didn't realize is I was honing those skills along with many of the creative arts that I was working in, which merged into my college career."
Quiles knew she wanted to gear towards the entertainment industry but could not articulate her vision entirely because she was not exposed to various career possibilities 20 years ago. She entered college and majored in mass communications, where she was introduced and attracted to advertising and broadcasting.
Yaz Quiles describes herself as an experience curator.
"During this entire time, I was always doing talent and fellowship fashion shows and producing events. But I wasn't using the terminology at the time so that's how it started," she recalls.
Later on, she worked at ESPN and had the opportunity to work on more significant events with radio stations, which opened doors for her to gain experience in promotion eventually leading her to start her agency.
"All that work helped me where you can utilize all those skills and those tools you picked up and bring them to life. So everything from advertising, marketing, promotions, content creation, all those things were developed during that time when I first started working in the agency world, and then from there started my own company," she says, detailing the trajectory of her career.
Before inaugurating her company, Quiles elevated her aptitude by working at a smaller agency for several years. During her tenure, she often found herself as the only woman and person of color in meetings.
"I realized that the conversations we were having at the table about the programs and activations that we were planning were being produced by people who were just not in the community, and I was able to lend that voice for them," she rapidly articulates. "So as an example, if we're working on a spirits brand, and back then it was urban programming, something that happens in New York is very different from what happens in Oakland, Miami, and Memphis; it's just a different tonality and different vibe."
She collaborated with local experts because she knew the importance of capturing the nuanced voice of each regional culture. "Even if you're working on the same brand, program, the way that you bring it into the market, like [to] Miami, is very different than how you do it in Oakland because locally, we speak different languages."
Yaz Quiles is committed to meeting the goals of her clients with every event.
Quiles' keen sense of cultural competency demonstrated how vital her point of view was to the effective marketing of products. Behind the scenes, her clients would request her specifically to work with them on projects, propelling her into owning an agency.
Pop! By Yaz began as Pop Event Planning in 2016, and then she converted her firm to its present title in 2017. She considers herself an individual who implements creative problems solving for particular brands and individual customers. Many clients solicited her Quiles' insights beyond just event planning.
"So it's not as simple as saying, I do events, I never say it that way. It's never just experiential; it's how do we creatively solve the problem for this particular brand, which may look like a promotion, launch party, or tour; it could be almost anything. When I look at the work I've done, it's all over the place, but the point is human connection and bringing the experiences to life."
Her expertise has led her to work with the upper echelon of celebrities, namely players from the New York Yankees and Grammy award-winning artists, including Mary J. Blige, Pedro Capó, T.I, and Robin Thicke, to name a few. From a brand perspective, she's marketed top-tier wines and spirits portfolios and partnered with companies in Silicon Valley.
"The fortunate thing about the work that I do is that a lot comes from word of mouth," she admits. "While I have posted on Instagram and the website, a lot of it is internal, and I can't even post a lot of the stuff that I'm working on because it's confidential or for employees and culture. But I think that's a testament to the trust factor in the clients I work with."
One of Quiles' dream clients that she hopes to work with in the future is none other than the media mogul herself, Oprah Winfrey. She's had the pleasure of joining forces with businesswoman, writer, and television personality, Martha Stewart as part of the HGTV television show.
"[Martha] is so intentional with the decisions that she makes. When you look at her behind the scenes, besides being a mogul, having the right team members, she always ties back her belief system and values," she earnestly says during our Zoom call. "When you look at all of the projects that she's working on, whether it's the magazine or television shows, there's a commonality with everything she does, and it always feels like Martha. That's something I want to ensure I do with the next projects going forward."
Yaz Quiles has thrown events for prominent brands in wine and spirits, entertainment, tech, and ... [+]
Quiles is patterning herself after Stewart by producing a retail line that includes tabletops and entertainment decor. "We've already gotten some calls about potential brand collaborations, but ultimately, just like Martha, I want to make sure that we are aligned with that product. What does it look like? What are its values for it? That's important to me. I don't want to have a line for the sake of having a line. I am also very intentional on the projects that I work on."
As an event planner and the owner of a lifestyle brand, she loves her occupation, which shows in her dedication and commitment to bringing people's visions to life. Quiles' schedule is hectic and she has to begin her day at six o'clock in the morning and go to bed at midnight to communicate with her clients on both the East and West Coasts. Other times, events can consume a total of 24 hours, "I once did this global celebration for Dropbox, where we had all the markets they're in globally, and it was when they did their IPO. We were in San Francisco, and it was a 16-hour event because we were marking each market we were in every hour, so it was just like a long day. No one in the company knew except a handful of people, and it was done in under three weeks."
She manages a low overhead by hiring independent contractors to work on a project-by-project basis, which has kept her financially afloat during the pandemic. Her employment structure is instrumental in providing her clients with the right team members whose skill sets correlate seamlessly with the proposed event. She also evaluates the emotional connection to each occasion to ensure everyone is compatible with the end goals.
Before she starts planning a project, she will ask her client to define "what does a win look like" for them. Some will tell her that their focus is not on the number of people that will show up for their event but on the type of patrons that will attend.
"As an example, we want to invite 100 people, but we want 50 of those people to purchase a bottle. Then understanding the culture, not only of the brand but also the people we are activating against," she further explains how she navigates the tech world; engineers interact with events in a very tactile manner.
"I've created rooms that are quiet spaces or spaces where they are working with their hands, so understanding those things is important. I like to spend time with each client to understand what it is they're looking for because it's not like a one size fits all," she adds.
When asked about the importance of being a woman-certified minority-owned business and what her presence means for future event planners of color, she responds that highlighting representation is vital.
"It feels so simple in nature, but as you listen to the stories in our community, you realize how important it is for you to see someone else doing it so you can say, 'hey, I can do it as well.' The other thing that's come out more now, especially with all the movements happening, is diversity sewn into my company's DNA and fabric. I found that when you reach into the community and whoever the audience you're speaking to, you have to speak their language. I like to have people on my team who speak all those languages, so when we come to the table with ideas, we think about small, tiny nuances that make a difference. How you speak to someone Panamanian is very different from someone who's Puerto Ricans, Dominican, etc. Those things matter for people who truly like making a connection," she explains.
Quiles wants to see her company become a global entity and to see her products sold in retail outlets across the world in hopes of showcasing what diverse families can do at home and how they celebrate life. She wants her customers to see her products as sustainable and use them in their everyday lives. However, she does not want people to purchase her product solely because she created it as a woman of color.
She wants clients to recognize her business and her work as having merit rather than seeing her firm as means to check off an affirmative action box, "I hope to be part of that process. I feel like I have been part of that process."
