Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Candace Thome. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Candace, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Enlightened was founded as a sister company to my previously exisiting nonprofit Swim Brayv.

Swim Brayv is a donation based 501c3 that utalizes merfolk mascots to edu-tain humans on water safety. My little brother, Brayv, passed away from drowning. In my grief, I learned drowning is a top cause of death; which most people dont know.

So the Swim Brayv outreach program was born! It is a beautiful, but costly traveling, educational program to operate. As all our services are provided to the public free of charge. Meaning Swim Brayv relys soley on donations… and I did not go to college for fundraising. Nor was I the best at asking for help. Lol

My solution to keep Swim Brayv operating in order to continue helping save lives:

Enlightened Edutainment

Enlightened for short, is a experiential marketing production & management firm. Specializing in aligning brands to the right talent, events & filmed productions for thier brand projects. Enlightened is based in Las Vegas, but we help clients all throughout the globe.

Events include but not limited to: conventions, sporting events, fundraisers, corporate parties, festivals & more.

For filmed engagements we specialize in producing commercials, music videos for artists, and video or photoshoots for brand productions.

Talent on roster includes a variety from: mermaids, to choreographers & dancers, to spokesmodels & brand ambassadors, acting talent, camera crews, fire performers photographers, more.

Our consultants can help plan, execute & follow up on all elements of your experiential needs.

Enlightened is set up where a percentage of all the company’s mgmnt fees are donated to my charity Swim Brayv.

Get Enlightened and help contribute to saving lives.

Candace
Managing Partner

Candace, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up as a professional brand ambassador and spokesmodel. I was working in the entertainment industry as talent by the time I was very young. Everything from extra work, to dancing, hair modeling and everything in between.

In my early twenties I moved to Vegas and decided to start specializing in marketing. My experience with experiential marketing and helping brands promote their platforms and products was very beneficial experienec for me during this time. I worked for a leading nightlife company, in their marketing department. Helping plan large productions both filmed and events. Aligning top brands & talent with the hottest upcoming events.

Vegas is also where I met my business partners over a decade ago. Megan whom specializes in legal, and handles more of our back-end business needs. My other partner Nichet handles most the operations dept. While I head our marketing dept. We also have a roster of amazing talent that we contract with for our clients specialty needs.

Together we are a diverse & experienced women & minority owned production mangement firm; that specializes in experiencial marketing tactics.

#GetEnlightened

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Before Enlightened Edutainment was founded, I was focusing on my 501c3 nonprofit Swim Brayv foundation.

Swim Brayv foundation is a charity that utilizes mermaid & mermen mascots to educate the public on water and swim safety. I founded this nonprofit back in 2016 after my youngest sibling Brayv passed away from drowning.

In my grief, I did a ton of research, and I learned that drowning is the leading cause of death for kids 1 to 4 and the 2nd leading cause of accidental death for kids under 15. It blew my mind that drowning was such a large problem in the world. Yet there was no government funding dedicated to a outreach program notifying the community about the issue of drowning.

Thus Swim Brayv was born and our merfolk mascots began deploying to events all over the states for our water safety outreach program. The idea was well received, and the nonprofits request for appearances began to grow much quicker than the donations that were coming in. Meaning we could not afford to fund the outreach program to educate the public, to the scale at which we were being requested to appear.

Losing my brother was hard enough, and I didn’t want anyone else to feel that kind of grief. So I felt awful having to reject appearances…especially knowing that it could likely save a life.

However, fundraising was not my strong suit. As I did not go to school for nonprofit development, and quite honestly I’m not very good at asking for help in general. I needed to figure out a better & more consistent way to fundraise. Which is where I got the idea to start a B corp!

So… I spoke to some of my friends who I had been working with as collaborators, and I asked them if they would be open to starting a experiential marketing firm! One that specialized in marketing consulting, much like we all did already, but in a unique and creative way. I pitched them the idea that this experiential marketing firm would be different than the rest because it would focus on uplifting social issues such as drowning prevention.

Thankfully, they loved the idea of using their work skills to help uplift and support charities such as Swim Brayv. And that is how Enlightened Edutainment was conceptualized.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The biggest pivot for our business was in 2020 when the world shut down. As experiential marketing specialists, who primarily focus on consulting for our clients events. Such as conferences, festivals, fundraisers and more…

We had to get creative and decided to turn our experiential focus to the online world. Navigating a unique experiential marketing program that allowed our clients to still educate & entertain customers online. So they could still promote thier business during a global pandemic.

We were able to secure a certified covid compliance officer with the city of LA on our board of advisors. That enabled us to stay operating as an essential business, and most of our clients were essential businesses as well. It was still necessary to market our businesses during a very trying time. However we wanted to remain as responsible and ethical for our contractors and clients alike. So this unique approach allowed us to simultaneously pivot, and stay operating, during a time where many businesses were not as fruitful.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.EnlightenedEdutainment.com
• Instagram: Www.instagram.com/EnlightenedEdutainment
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candace-thome-1546a598

Image Credits
Enlightened Edutainment (all images)