Behind the Scenes - Story Series #8

You know you are meeting with someone important when you have to wait outside to be buzzed in because they have a fancy app to keep the place safe. So there I waited in downtown Chico, having just sent my “I’m here!” text to Heather, absorbing the warm heat of the summer sun. Once she found me and I found her, she let me into her office. Heather Ugie has worked with ChicoSTART for a number of years. A small organization doing big things. ChicoSTART is focused on helping entrepreneurs get off the ground with their businesses. The organization is made up of 2 amazing women, Heather being one and Eva Shepherd-Nicoll being the other, they are supported by a number of interns, mostly sourced through Chico State who stay about a year and learn about business and build their resumes. Heather showed me around the office a little, I met smiling people, one giddy dog, and some state-of-the-art office technology. Heather escorted me to the conference room and there and we spent the first 20 minutes of our interview catching up. Heather and I have known each other for almost as long as I can remember. Heather worked with my mom Katie Simmons at the Chico Chamber of Commerce for 7 years. We had seen it all. I grew up behind the scenes of the events that my mom and Heather planned and as our conversation progressed I got to learn even more about Heather’s event planning path. 

When Heather was younger she watched her mom who worked for IBM planning conferences. And as it did for me, the events and conferences bug infected her. She went to Chico State and while there did the Community Commercial program, which involved some volunteer work. Her advisor from college has a co-working space at ChicoSTART, a full circle and very Chico moment. After all of these years, they are still running in the same circles. She also completed an internship in college at a destination management company called Safaris. As an intern, Heather did everything… which included dressing up as a cable car. She learned a lot about how many hats event planners have to wear which comes into play in her job today. She knew that right after college she may not get the exact position she wanted. She did two years as an administrative assistant. Her next step was the highlight of her career, she landed the ideal job she wanted. She worked at the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, now called SF Travel. It was a rather large organization with two distinct segments, services and sales. Their goal was to attract and host conference planners and traveling individuals from around the world. Heather worked to service meeting planners as they were planning their conference in SF. This company has an admin side and they also conducted PR, visitor assistance, and conventions. All of this and the rest of her career shaped Heather for the position she is in now. 

Heather tackles a lot at ChicoSTART, including marketing and communication, strategy, and intern management. She guides the interns through projects such as social media and ChicoSTART’s newsletter. She also helps put together workshops for small business owners, including ChicoSTART’s headline event, GrowTECH FEST. Held annually in Chico displaying and cultivating the newest in technology and business ingenuity. This year’s will be November 6, 2024, at the Sierra Nevada Big Room! 

It wasn’t a straight path from SF to ChicoSTART. One of the hardest parts of Heather’s career was the decision to leave the workforce for a period when her daughter was born. It was around 2000 and such things as remote work and Zoom weren’t around yet. It wouldn’t be practical for her to work part-time so she focused her energy and time on raising her daughter. In 2005 she and her husband left the Bay Area, bound to return to Chico. While her daughter was in school Heather met another mom who was a wedding planner and Heather, though she swore she would never plan weddings, saw it as an opportunity to rejoin the workforce and to give her something to do. She also spent a lot of her time volunteering. After wedding planning, she joined the team at the Chico Chamber of Commerce where she spent almost 10 years planning events for small businesses in the community of Chico. 

Aside from her career itself making her who she is, she attributes much of her personality and career path to the example she wants to set for her daughter. Heather wants her daughter to see her working and being a mom, that she works hard, and that she can do both. Heather’s next comment I can attest to and agree that it makes her not only who she is but makes her wonderful. “I take myself seriously when I need to and sometimes I don’t” Heather is incredibly authentic and genuine and knows sometimes the best way out of a tough situation is to laugh through it and through watching her and my mom at the Chico Chamber and witnessing their tough times I can agree that they both know the power of being yourself and knowing the world isn’t always perfect and neither are you. 

Another lesson from raising her daughter that Heather has come to live by is, “Take the positive out of everything”. As we’ve established and everyone knows, life isn’t easy, career decisions aren’t easy, and there are even plenty of days in the perfect job that aren’t easy. Heather has learned that no matter how hard it can get, there is always something good that happens and it is important that we identify and hold on to those things. “The older generation, we just pulled up our pants and handled it, but with mental health awareness nowadays it's easier to talk about”. Heather watched her daughter go through college and that was hugely stressful, she would always ask her, “How are you feeling 1 to 10” or “What was the best part of your day”. This helped them both understand the challenges of the day but focus on what was good and what was bright. 

Some of life’s challenges come from not only the nature of life but also the nature of being a woman in the workplace. Heather like me has been in mostly female workplaces, I suggested and we agreed that is a pattern in event planning. Heather says that she didn’t necessarily gravitate towards such workplaces, it just turned out that way. The 90s were a different time though, she does not have any negative experiences to note but back then such inconveniences like being inappropriately hit on were more commonplace. Heather did warn me though and explained that women can be demeaning too, it’s not just men, many women conform to the unequal power structure of society and bring down other women. 

Heather had a bundle of skill advice that sort of paved and tied together our whole conversation. She recommends simply being authentic, ambitious (without stepping on toes), and self-aware. Heather was authentic when it came to following what she really wanted to do when her daughter was born, and she was ambitious when she went out for the jobs she wanted and rejoined the workforce, she has also been self-aware when it came to being humble enough to do anything the job takes, like dressing up as a cable car or laughing at her mistakes. This is something she sees presenting itself differently in different generations. Ambition and self-awareness are dangerous without each other but it can be hard to find a balance. The younger generations lean more on the ambition without the self-awareness side and some older generations lack in the other direction and understand where they stand and aren’t as ready to change it. 

Another difficult skill that Heather has honed in throughout her career and flourishes in her current position is communication. And communication about communication. It seems simple but its often overlooked. For a team to communicate together, like Heather’s interns, or even a management team, they have to understand how each individual communicates normally. Some people can’t function if their tasks aren’t written on post-it notes on their desktop, right in their periphery, others operate from email, and if it wasn’t sent in writing a week ago, it’s not happening. Others can’t work with a cluttered email and would prefer a text if it can be resolved immediately. Such communication styles are different and can be adapted to in a team environment so everyone is working at their best. It is also important to be aware of how direct and indirect people are, sometimes something can come across as harsh but knowing that is just how someone emails can help with miscommunications. Communication is also a conveyor of trust. When you have remote workers, communication is the link between them and the workplace. With remote work becoming more commonplace Heather, like many people finds it hard to sign off of work. For this reason, she finds it really important to clearly communicate and set boundaries while away from work, like no texting after work hours or while on vacation and avoiding working on weekends (occasionally, especially in event planning this is impossible and Heather is aware and doesn’t mind that). “The world isn’t going to end” A text can feel urgent but it doesn’t usually end in disaster. 

Heather has grown, explored, and learned throughout her career. She has also planned some amazing events and today she taught us about some of the skills she holds close and how we can hope to find our own paths and stay true to ourselves and our passions. I hope you enjoyed reading and learning about this amazing woman, join me in the month of August for another great story series.