Meet Liene

The official bio:

Liene Stevens, the founder of Splendid Communications, is an author, speaker and expert on the intersection of business and social behavior for the wedding and lifestyle industries.

Specializing in the consumer psychology of engaged couples, affluents and millennials, Liene is obsessed with figuring out what makes people tick and why they make the decisions they do.

With her finger on the pulse of global trends and a background in intercultural psychology, Liene has consulted clients on six of the seven continents. She has personally trained hundreds of wedding and lifestyle professionals and works behind the scenes with some of the industry's most influential brands, helping them increase profits so that they can remain innovators in their respective fields.

Liene is the author of the book, Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Marketing Your Wedding Business in Today’s World. She is also the publisher of Think Splendid, the most widely read blog on the business of weddings and events.

Liene’s expertise has been featured in over 100 media outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, Mashable, and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, Special Events magazine named her one of “12 Young Professionals to Watch.”


The unofficial bio:

While I love what I do, I don't believe that my work or being an entrepreneur defines who I am. My magazine subscriptions include Martha Stewart Weddings (for work), The Economist (for fun -- yes, I am a nerd and I made my peace with it long ago) and I get my US Weekly and celeb gossip fix when I go in for pedicures. My favorite show is Parks and Rec and my fingers are crossed that Hulu will one day offer the entire series of Friends and The West Wing on their site. I hate TV programs that focus on humiliating people (I'm looking at you, Bachelor Pad and Jersey Shore), but love the reality shows that celebrate a person's creativity (Project Runway, Top Chef).

I've been known to set my kitchen on fire and have only recently begun to enjoy cooking as a creative outlet. I'm a vegetarian and my motto when it comes to food is "the spicier, the better."

I'm a political junkie and my interest in foreign policy stems from living and working overseas in poverty-stricken communities. These experiences had a profound impact on my worldview and they were also where I learned how to teach in an accessible, easy to understand manner.

I am passionate about women finding and using their voice as a force for good. I believe that girls everywhere are valuable and that femininity is an asset, not a liability. I don't have any brothers and growing up I was never let off the hook because of my gender. Consequently, I can use power tools just as well as I can give myself a manicure. It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that there are women who cannot do both because their families taught a difference between "girl chores" and "boy chores." I have little patience for this type of thinking.

I firmly believe that the companies that focus on creating real value instead of perceived value will be the ones that stick around for the long haul. I also believe that businesses can and should market ethically and that they can be successful in doing so. I reject the concept of "faking it 'til you make it" as well as the idea that you have to project an image online that is different than who you are offline. I also believe that you do not have to exploit the things that should be held most sacred, such as relationships or faith, in order to get ahead in business.

Things I love: the art of entertaining and its power to make people feel valued and accepted, thoughtful conversation, exploring faraway places, the beach, good books, good nail polish, dark beverages, a glass of champagne, fresh flowers, hole in the wall restaurants, a beautifully wrapped gift (giving and receiving), big cities, the ability to walk down any street in Manhattan and hear a dozen different languages in a span of ten minutes.

Things I do not love: cynicism, racism, sexism, made up drama, lemmings, false kindness, insincerity, greed, poor grammar, silk plants, unchallenged assumptions.

A few of my core values:
*People have a right to live fully, not just merely.
*If design didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, snowflakes would be ugly.
*Each of us has the capacity to do good and literally change the world -- in our lifetime.
*Consistent acts of kindness are far better than random acts of kindness.

Photo by averyhouse