Lauren Grafer Schweibold believes that every event tells a story.
“It’s not just putting florals and tablecloths together,” she said. “It’s about getting to know the clients and what makes them tick.”
Even before founding Greenwich-based Madison Events in 2016, she had gotten to know the ticking of celebrities, Fortune 500 CEOs and other movers and shakers for personal events, conferences, weddings and entertainment outings. She described her business as 50% corporate, 50% social and 100% referrals. And just as individual clients may care about each of the essentials of an event – location/venue, food, décor, music/entertainment, photography/video and possibly party favors/swag bags – to varying degrees, there is also a difference between a corporate event and a strictly social one.
“The corporate clients know what they want,” Schweibold said of the small and midsize companies that employ her, although every once in a while they let down their hair with a quirky bit of entertainment that delights her. “With the social clients, it’s more of a creative process,” one that may incorporate the trend of late-night fun food like pigs in a blanket, sliders and French fries. (Goodbye, passed hors d’oeuvres and full dinners; hello, small plates as well as late-evening treats.)
Whether it’s a meeting of the board or a wedding anniversary, Schweibold said you must always be on your toes, as for a recent 40th birthday party in which a dancer knocked over the cake, destroying it. Champagne, sparklers and passed desserts to the rescue.
Schweibold said she is “blessed” — a word that threads our interview — to have had a hobby that turned into a full-time career. (She stages some 30 events a year.)
“I always loved doing events,” added the native Long Islander. “I always loved coordinating everything.”
She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications, with a minor in psychology, from Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania, the only Augustinian-run university in the United States that today is best-known for being the alma mater of Pope Leo XIV.
“I got so many texts the day (his election) was announced. There was a lot of Villanova pride.”
Minoring in psychology turned out to be good preparation for working with clients, she said. For nearly 15 years she lived in New York City, working in event planning and development in the finance and nonprofit sectors. Schweibold began her career at Bear Stearns, where she planned the firm’s largest, highest-profile conferences and executive events, and followed that up at the Manhattan-based investment banking firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) before transitioning to the nonprofit world as philanthropy event director at the Humane Society of the United States (now the Humane World for Animals) in Washington, D.C.
Indeed, she remains active in the nonprofit world, working with the Greenwich-based Bruce Museum and Breast Cancer Alliance, among other organizations, and sitting on the advisory board of Stamford’s Reach Prep, designed to give high-achieving, underserved students a leg up.
But perhaps the cause closest to Schweibold — who said she would love to do an event for fellow animal lover Ellen DeGeneres — is the SPCA Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, which she has partnered with since 2023 to save dogs that would otherwise have little chance of finding a home. For every event she does, Schweibold makes a donation that covers the cost of transporting the dogs from the South to forever homes up North. (Learn more here.)
Schweibold’s own home in Greenwich, to which she moved in 2016, consists of husband Andrew Schweibold, managing partner of Delos Capital; three young children; and pooches Oreo, an Australian Shepherd; and Lillie, a Hound mix.
“We are not not-busy,” she said laughing but added, “we love what we do and are blessed to have the opportunity to do what we’re good at.”
