A heartfelt reflection on how motherhood transformed a career-driven event planner's understanding of purpose, revealing that celebration is ultimately about pouring love into people across generations.
Her Story
About Jade
Jade Zeno has built her career around something she genuinely loves: creating meaningful experiences, developing people, and turning ideas into moments that make an impact. She pursued this path after exploring other avenues such as musical therapy, recognizing events as a calling to connect people and create meaningful celebrations, even in challenging times.
She earned a certification in international event planning and a project management certification to build systems for delivering client experiences, and she also holds a degree in psychology that aids in navigating diverse personalities and stakeholders.
But becoming a mother gave that work an even deeper purpose.
During maternity leave, Jade experienced the power of being deeply loved and realized that life is about more than completing the next task on a to do list. She returned to her career with the same ambition, but a renewed calling to pour into people, lead with intention, and make her work mean something beyond the results.
With more than nine years of experience across event planning, project management, experiential marketing, and multi state operations, Jade believes people are at the heart of every successful project. She loves bringing visions to life, building teams, creating experiences, and helping others recognize what they are capable of.
Her mission is to create with purpose, lead with love, and leave people and places better than she found them. Jade hopes her journey reminds other women that success is not only about what you accomplish. It is also about who you impact along the way.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jade
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to the people who have poured into me, the courage to keep growing, and my willingness to find purpose even when the plan changes. My loving husband has been my biggest cheerleader, constantly encouraging me to believe in myself and keep going. I also lean deeply on prayer, asking God for the strength, wisdom, and direction to serve others through the gift He has placed in my heart. I have been blessed with people who saw potential in me, challenged me, loved me, and gave me room to become. Because of that, I try to pour the same into others. I do not measure success only by titles, projects, or results. I measure it by whether I am growing, walking in purpose, using my gifts well, and treating every client, partner, employees, etc. like family in the sense of making sure I show up with my absolute best for them.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Give people grace when they do or say things they may be hurtful, especially when emotions are high. Your character should always be bigger than the situation. Do not take things personally and stay focused on the work you were called to do. I have learned that leadership is not about reacting to every moment. It is about knowing who you are, leading with integrity, and never allowing someone else’s actions to determine the kind of person or leader you choose to be.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Do not try to fit your purpose or calling into a box. Let it grow, lean into it, pray over it, let it build, protect it, and nourish it. You are not crazy for wanting to be in this field; stick with it and it will all work out.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest opportunities I see is remembering the human experience behind the work. With technology, automation, and AI changing how quickly we can plan, communicate, and execute, efficiency is becoming easier to achieve. But connection still requires intention. In events and project leadership, people want to feel seen, heard, and part of something meaningful. I believe the leaders who can embrace innovation without losing the human element will create the greatest impact. My goal is to use better tools to create more space for what technology cannot replace: creativity, empathy, relationships, and genuine human connection.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Faith, family, purpose, integrity, and service are at the center of how I live and lead. My faith keeps me grounded in why I have been given my gifts, and my family reminds me who I am beyond any title or accomplishment. I value doing what is right even when no one is watching, treating people with love and respect, and being intentional about how I use my time and talents. Whether I am leading a team, creating an experience, serving my community, being a wife and mother, or simply encouraging someone who needs it, I want my life and work to reflect the same thing: lead with love, serve with purpose, and leave people better than I found them by pouring positivity into them and being a safe space for people.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Jade
The Love That Gave My Ambition Direction: Motherhood, Purpose, and a Career Centered Around Moments Worth Celebrating
How Motherhood Transformed My Career Into a Purpose-Driven Mission to Celebrate People
I have always loved a reason to celebrate.
Big or small, there is something about bringing people together that has always filled my heart. Birthdays, weddings, graduations, community gatherings, accomplishments, new beginnings, or simply another year of life. I love the moment when people pause everything else and acknowledge, "This matters."
Long before I knew event planning would become such a significant part of my career, I loved what celebrations represented.
- They make us stop.
- They make us gather.
- They make us remember.
- They give us permission to be fully present in moments that might otherwise pass us by.
As my faith has grown, I have realized that this spirit of celebration is woven throughout Scripture. God continually calls His people to gather, remember, rejoice, feast, and mark meaningful moments.
"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24
Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is "a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance."
Even Jesus performed His first miracle at a wedding celebration.
The more I have grown personally, professionally, and spiritually, the more I have wondered if my love for celebrating people was never random at all.
Maybe it was always part of my calling.
A Beautiful Career Built Around Moments That Matter
What started as something I naturally loved eventually became work I could hardly believe I was blessed enough to do.
Over the years, I have planned events at the city level, coordinated weddings, supported nonprofit and community experiences, traveled across cities and states to activate and execute events, built teams, developed people, managed complex operations, and watched ideas become experiences that people would carry home as memories.
I loved it.
I loved the creativity, the strategy, the movement, the people, the problem-solving, and even the controlled chaos that sometimes comes with bringing a vision to life.
But for a long time, I thought my gift was execution.
Give me the vision, and I could figure out how to make it happen.
Then I became a mother.
And motherhood helped me understand that maybe the deepest part of my gift was never execution.
It was love.
A Love I Fully Understood
I lost my mother when I was six years old.
I have always known that she loved me. But there is a difference between knowing that someone loved you and suddenly understanding just how deeply they must have loved you.
Becoming a mother gave me that understanding.
Maternity leave gave me something my ambitious, constantly moving life did not always give me enough of.
Time to pause.
There I was with this beautiful little person who had completely rearranged my heart.
- Every giggle.
- Every cuddle.
- Every cry.
- Every tiny milestone.
I was overwhelmed by how much I loved her.
Sometimes I would simply look at my daughter and cry because I could not understand how my heart could hold that much love for another human being.
- She had not accomplished anything.
- She did not have to impress me.
- She did not have to make me proud.
- She did not have to earn any part of my love.
She simply existed.
And I loved her completely.
Then something beautiful happened.
I started thinking about my mom.
I thought about how she chose my name. How there were baby showers celebrating that I was coming. How she prepared for me before she ever knew who I would become.
She imagined me before she met me. She made room for me. She celebrated me before I had accomplished a single thing.
Simply because I was hers.
And suddenly, I understood.
The love I was pouring into my daughter was the same kind of love that had once been poured into me.
That realization brought me to tears.
Love Lives and Inspires
Motherhood gave me a new way to experience my mom.
I see her in the way I comfort my daughter.
I feel her when I celebrate another milestone that probably seems tiny to everyone else but feels enormous to me.
I think about her when I pray over my daughter, wonder who she will become, or find myself doing something instinctively maternal and think, "Maybe this came from her."
Of course, there are moments when I wish she were physically here.
- I wish she could hold her grandbaby.
- I wish I could call her with questions.
- I wish she could see the mother I have become.
But motherhood also gave me something incredibly healing.
It showed me that love can continue through generations.
Her lessons, her strength, her laughter, and the love she poured into me did not disappear.
Some of it lives in me.
And now I get to pour it into my daughter.
Isn't that something?
Love can travel through generations.
The little girl who was once loved by her mother grew up and became a mother herself. And now that love gets another place to go.
That realization changed me.
Returned With the Same Ambition and a Greater Sense of Purpose
When maternity leave ended, I did not want less from my career.
- I still wanted to grow.
- I still wanted bigger opportunities, challenging projects, new cities, incredible events, leadership, strong teams, and rooms I had not entered yet.
Motherhood did not make me less ambitious.
If anything, it made me more intentional about my ambition.
Because after experiencing love at that depth, I started asking myself:
What am I doing with everything that has been poured into me?
I realized that life could not simply be about completing the next task on my to-do list.
I did not want to spend my career simply proving how much I could accomplish.
I wanted to pour into people.
Suddenly, the career I had already built made even more sense.
Celebrating Is My Calling
I started seeing my work differently.
A wedding is not simply a timeline that needs to run correctly. Two people are standing in front of the people they love and choosing a life together.
A birthday is not simply another event requiring decorations and food. Someone received another year of life.
A nonprofit event is not simply an activation. People are gathering around something they believe matters.
A community event is not simply attendance numbers. Neighbors who may never otherwise meet are sharing an experience together.
And even my teams became different to me.
They were not simply people needed to execute a project. They were people I had an opportunity to encourage, develop, challenge, support, and pour into.
That was when something clicked.
Maybe I had spent years thinking I was called to events because I was good at planning them.
Maybe I was called to this work because I genuinely love giving people a reason to celebrate.
Taking My God-Given Gift Seriously
When I look back at my career, I am amazed by where saying yes to this gift has taken me.
- I have gotten to serve cities.
- I have gotten to witness couples begin marriages.
- I have supported nonprofit and community missions.
- I have traveled across states and cities simply because someone trusted me to show up and bring an experience to life.
- I have built teams.
- I have developed people.
- I have walked into empty spaces and watched them become places filled with conversation, laughter, connection, and memories.
None of that happened because I had a perfect roadmap.
At some point, I simply decided to bet on myself and take what God placed in my heart seriously.
And I continue to pray for the strength, wisdom, and direction to serve well through that gift.
My husband has been my biggest cheerleader throughout that journey, constantly reminding me to keep believing in what I am capable of.
My daughter gave that ambition a deeper why.
And my mother, in a way I never expected, helped me understand the love I want at the center of it all.
People-Centered Purpose
I still love a beautifully executed event.
- I love the details.
- I love the timelines.
- I love strategy.
- I love watching everything come together.
But those things are tools.
The people are the purpose.
- I want the people I lead to become leaders themselves.
- I want my clients to feel cared for.
- I want people attending an experience I helped create to feel something.
- I want my daughter to see a woman who trusted God, loved deeply, believed in what He placed inside of her, and had the courage to use it.
And wherever my career takes me next, I want the same love that was poured into me to find its way into the people I encounter.
Worth Celebrating
Life moves quickly.
- Birthdays become graduations.
- Engagements become weddings.
- Babies become children.
- Families become communities.
And ordinary days quietly become the memories we wish we could experience one more time.
Maybe that is why I have such a deep connection to celebration.
Celebrating says:
- I see you.
- I am grateful for you.
- This moment matters.
- We were here.
And perhaps that is also why becoming a mother gave my career so much clarity.
My mother's love did not end with her.
I felt it again when I became a mother.
Now I get to pour that love into my daughter, my family, the people I lead, the communities I serve, and the experiences I create.
I am still ambitious.
I still want bigger rooms, greater responsibility, meaningful projects, more cities, more people to develop, and more experiences to create.
But now I know where I want all that ambition to lead.
- Toward people.
- Toward purpose.
- Toward service.
- Toward creating moments that remind us to stop long enough to appreciate this beautiful life God has given us.
Motherhood did not change my ambition.
It gave my ambition direction.
And somewhere between being my mother's little girl and becoming my daughter's mother, I realized something that now sits at the heart of how I want to live and work:
Love does not disappear.
It gets passed on.
And that is worth celebrating.
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