Kelsey Kruel: Founder of MIXTO

MIXTO is a socially and environmentally-conscious event planning and community engagement company.  Their focus is on providing clients and partners with inclusive, accessible, and sustainable event planning services, and working alongside the community to uplift other like-minded businesses and organizations.  

MIXTO is committed to partnering with vendors who are local, small-business owners, Black, Indigenous, people of color, women, people with disabilities, and/or part of the LGBT+ community. MUSE sat down with KELSEY KRUEL, the founder of MIXTO to learn more about this brand new venture.

Hi Kelsey.   What inspired you to create MIXTO?

I've been working in nonprofits for a long time, and it's hard work, but it is rewarding.  As I get a little older, and I learn more about the world, I continue to be drawn to sustainability. The more I practice it in my personal life, the more I want to share it with others. Through my nonprofit work, I felt like I was always planning events or planning something. It felt like fun homework, I loved it. I wanted to bring my worlds together, and help folks make their events more inclusive, more sustainable, more accessible. So MIXTO was born out of that.

In my research I noticed that a lot of event planners market towards the same kinds of people.  But I think people deserve to have whatever event they want to have, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, who they love. And it’s extremely important for me to work with diverse clients, vendors, and community activists.  

What are some kinds of things that you're excited about doing? 

It energizes me to partner with like-minded folks. I'm excited to work with vendors who are on the margins. People's identities sometimes prevent them from being seen, especially in a creative space.  With MIXTO, we have the ability to showcase amazing talents, creators, and artists who may otherwise not have the exposure. 

We did a stylized photo shoot recently. We put feelers out for vendors who were just starting out, or people of color, or women owned businesses.  We got a lot of responses quickly, and we worked with all these people at the shoot. We had artists/stylists who are proud people of color and/or part of the local LGBTQ community. One of them had just finished her beauty school training. And she was looking to get herself out there, and I’m like, “Come on, let's go. Let's do it.” And she did an amazing job. Some of our photographers were also up and coming folks. One of the women had just graduated college.  You have to start somewhere, and being able to help people who are just starting out is a gift. 

If we have the ability to lift others, then why wouldn't we? I'm excited about building this network of vendors who are amazing at what they do, but may not have the chance to be seen anywhere else. We’re excited to provide opportunities they may not be able to get through no fault of their own.

There needs to be some intentionality when it comes to being inclusive, sustainable, and creating events that are accessible. If we’re intentional about seeking these things, it will become the norm moving forward. Normalizing using inclusive language, and specifically asking for all types of people to be there. Invite them personally, create something where folks know that they're welcome. People assume that, “Oh, there's an event happening, so everybody will come if they want to,” but that's not necessarily the case. 

I helped create a registration form for a summer camp packet. And, originally, it said something like, mother's name, father's name that implied gender male and female. Instead I wanted to figure out a way to include everyone, and realize that not everybody has the same situation, or the same circumstances, or has a mom and a dad.

With some effort and intentionality, there are definitely ways to make things more inclusive and less binary. And having something like a registration form, that's inclusive, like that automatically sends a message to folks, and they get it. “I'm safe here.”  And it may seem kind of small, but I think for lots of communities, it's a big deal.

On LinkedIn, they have a new section where you can put your pronouns, I think that's great. But I think if people don't understand why that's there, it doesn't have the same impact. So there has to be a balance between including it, and being able to explain it to people who haven’t encountered this or who don’t understand it yet.

In order to be inclusive, we need to be self aware. We need to know what our biases are. And we need to know how to work through them, because everybody has implicit bias, everyone.

Can you describe what a dream event would like?

I have been dreaming of planning a dream event for someone else. This starts by having a community fundraiser, or something. And then a deserving person or deserving couple would be nominated, and then we put the money that we raised towards an event or a wedding for them.  I would love, love, love to do something like that. I think it would be really fun to give back like that.

I love your website.  Can you tell us about the design concept?

I have this incredible, graphic design minded friend who I've known since kindergarten, and I just love her. And we worked together choosing a color palette. And a general look and feel for it. We even wanted our website to be accessible to folks. So like, we were very intentional about the colors, the font, and the language. If somebody is using assistive technology to navigate our website, they could do it easily. We're hoping to eventually translate our website into Spanish. 

And then as far as events go, it’s something similar.  I want things to be clean, simple, and easy to access.  I want what’s best for an audience, or for attendees, and for the environment, you know. So I want to mesh those together.  We want to make things look good, but also easy to read or hear, or see.  

I don't have all the answers.  I know that moving forward, we’re not gonna be perfect, but we’ll do as much as we can. My energy, as an event planner, and as the founder of MIXTO, will be about our standard of making things as accessible and as inclusive as we can.