If Events Overwhelm You…Try This Solution
If you've talked to me for more than five minutes about events, you've probably asked me some version of these questions: What even is a Fractional Head of Events? Who actually needs one? What stage should a company be at before hiring one? And how is this different from just hiring a contractor, an agency, or a full-time employee?
Fair questions - and ones I get asked constantly. So let's settle it once and for all. Here's the overview, the downlow, the whole deal.
Let’s start with some #realtalk: events aren't just a brand moment. They're one of the most powerful tools in your marketing mix to build trust, drive pipeline, and deepen customer loyalty.
In fact, they're the #1 marketing channel for both ROI and building trust. But they're also high stakes, and without the right strategy, "events" quietly becomes "expensive guesswork."
The solution is a fractional event leader to curate the inputs and guide your decisions so you approach your events with relief rather than risk.
Here's what I’ve observed most companies are missing: a fractional head of events does something no AI, freelancer, or junior planner, producer or ops team member can do.
They curate the overwhelming amount of advice and information out there and actually make the calls:
Which agencies deserve a seat at the table and when to RFP new ones
What your event portfolio strategy should look like split between owned and third party hosted events
Where to spend and where to cut budget
When it's the right moment to host a user conference and what to do before that to build your event muscle as a company
They can tap into relationships and experience built over decades that open doors and get senior attendees in the room. That's not a prompt you can write. That's not a job you can post for $28/hour. That's judgment that comes from years of anecdotal experience.
Gianna’s Gem: You wouldn't hand your CFO position to an intern. Why trust your brand's biggest external moments to anyone but an expert?
What's a Fractional Executive Anyways?
By now, most business leaders know the model. Senior-level experts who plug into your business part-time to fill high-impact roles. Think Fractional CMO, CFO, COO, Head of People. You get C-suite strategy without the full-time cost or the long ramp-up.
As many as 70% of early stage companies now have a fractional team member.
Fractional leaders get brought in when:
You need experienced leadership without adding another headcount
You're scaling fast and need expertise now
You've got a high-priority initiative and need someone to own it
But somehow, events, despite being one of the largest line items in many marketing budgets, often 35% or more, have rarely had a seat at that same strategic table.
That's a mistake. And it's costing companies time, budget, and business.
Enter the Fractional Head of Events:
In 2023, I launched a service I had rarely seen offered: Fractional Head of Events. I built it because I kept observing the same problem. Companies were investing six and seven figures in events without any senior strategic leadership in the mix...and then coming to me to fix everything when they weren’t performing.
Either a junior coordinator was expected to figure it out, or an already-slammed marketing lead was moonlighting as an event expert. There was too much to do, no strategic direction, no way to measure what was working and no brand consistency.
Spoiler: that doesn't work.
A Fractional Head of Events is a senior event executive who joins your team part-time or project-based, bringing decades of lived expertise, executive-level thinking, and a real strategy lens without adding a full-time salary of a C-Suite member and benefits to your org chart.
Why Companies Are Cluing into the Fractional Head of Events
1. Events are your #1 trust and ROI builder. Since 2022, events have ranked as the top-performing marketing channel for both return on investment and building trust with customers (Freeman Trends Report, 2023). If you're investing in them, they need to deliver measurable impact, not just good vibes and instagram photos.
2. The experience gap is real. 70% of live events industry jobs have turned over in the last 3–4 years (Julius Solaris Research, 2024). That means most of the people running your events are new to their company, new to the role, new to events, or all three. A fractional leader brings steady leadership, mentorship, and structure so nothing gets dropped and your brand doesn't take the hit.
3. Strategy and execution/logistics are not the same thing. Anyone can book a ballroom and plan a menu with reasonable success. Aligning your events to pipeline goals, sales cycles, brand experience, and complex brand goals? That takes real expertise. A fractional event leader brings both the vision and the execution.
4. You've got a high-stakes event and zero margin for error. Launching a customer conference, a product launch, an executive dinner? These aren't "learn as you go" moments. A fractional event leader steps in fast, builds the plan, leads the team, and protects the outcome.
5. You're growing, but not ready for a full-time head. Not every org is ready to add a VP or Head of Events. Fractional gets you executive-level leadership, scaled to your stage and budget.
Gianna’s Gem: The value of a fractional leader isn't just strategy on paper it's decades of relationships that get the right people in the room. Anyone can send an invite. Not everyone can get a senior exec to actually show up.
Who Should Be Hiring a Fractional Head of Events?
You'll benefit from one if you're:
A marketing leader drowning in demand gen while also being asked to run events
A founder or CEO who wants to create a major moment for customers, partners, or prospects, but doesn't have the internal bandwidth to pull it off
A lean event team that needs seasoned backup, mentorship, and air cover
A VC- or PE-backed brand that needs to scale experiential quickly and smartly
A company in healthcare, fintech, or SaaS, where compliance, trust, and reputation are mission-critical
A company who is ready to grow their events function but doesn’t know how to build a proper event portfolio, or secure the right agency partners, budget and cross-functional team structure
But Does It Work?
Yes. Here's one example: an ai client brought me on with just one event on their calendar (AWS reInvent) to execute that flawlessly and build out the rest if the year’s event portfolio. During that engagement, we:
Had a 200% ROI from the first event, closing over ten major deals
Improved client retention rates from 75% to 95%
Landed a $100K deal out of one curated customer dinner
Cut waste while elevating the experience for top-tier customers
Grew new logos by 150%
Landed the most premiere lounge space to activate at Google Cloud Next
Launched out own User Conference for 1000 people within 7 months
Got acquired by Google just 9 months after I started there.
Their words, not mine: "This was not just an event. This was an EXPERIENCE that they will never remember, and serves as an extension of how we’ll treat them as a client" Their Chief Growth Officer got it.
So…what’s stopping you?
The Fractional Head of Events model is still new, but it's taking off. Events are too important to be led by someone without experience, and too expensive to get wrong..
Ready to explore? Here's how to get started:
👉 Book a 30-minute discovery call with me: Request here.
👉 Request a discounted Event Audit (limited spots per quarter): Request here.
Things I'm Loving This Week: The Essence Experience
I’m obsessed with an event I attended last week at The Battery called The Essence Experience: The Power of Perspective, a workshop led by Michael Tertes. It was unlike anything I've experienced there before.
I've been a founding member at The Battery for 11 years, and in that time I've been to more events than I can count. It takes a lot to genuinely pull me in these days. This one did, even though I admit I was a bit terrified about what to expect. I was so engaged, so captivated, so deeply moved, that I reached out to Michael directly afterward. We met for coffee at The Battery to keep the conversation going, and it was an absolute delight.
What made this event so different? It wasn’t the budget, or any “sizzle”.
Most "know yourself" work asks us to look inward - to examine our intentions, our efforts, our hopes, the stories we tell ourselves. Michael flips that. He asks: how are we experienced by others, and how do we experience others? And then he holds that question up against our inner beliefs about ourselves - and about each other.
Here's the line that's stayed with me since the workshop:
Every person you've ever met knows something about you that you don't - not because they know you better, but because they know what it's like to be with you.
Most of us spend our lives asking:
Why have I been successful?
What makes me different?
What don't I know about myself that's important to know?
We tend to search for those answers inward. But there's another force shaping every relationship, every conversation, every opportunity we've ever had: the experience other people have of us.
The Essence Experience starts from a different place entirely: what if understanding ourselves begins with how we're experienced by others?
Through a series of thoughtfully designed exercises, we practiced receiving observations with curiosity, noticed the patterns across different people's perspectives, and learned the qualities that have been shaping our lives all along. It was deeply powerful and left me with so many insights and also a newfound curiosity about everyone I encounter.
If this resonates and you'd love to bring this experience to your own organization, let me know - I'd be happy to personally make an introduction to Michael.