Inside Job: Mariela Spillari ’10 loves a parade

Cue the confetti. As a senior event manager with the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, Mariela Spillari ’10 helps organize the famed Rose Bowl Parade — a New Year’s Day tradition featuring floral floats, equestrian groups and marching bands. The Guatemala-born alumna was raised in New York, inspired by the tenacity of her mother, a house cleaner, and the optimism of her father, a restaurant worker. After graduation, she returned to organize events for Macy’s, including the iconic Thanksgiving Day Parade. She also produced the 2019 LA Pride Parade.

Townie Spirit Pasadena is such a tight-knit community; the parade has almost a townie heart to it — but on a large scale of course. Tere is an incredible energy as people start coming in the week leading up to the parade and the Rose Bowl Game: fans of the teams that are playing, horse lovers who are there to see the equestrian units, marching bands from all over the world. It’s not just a parade, it’s an entire week of events.

Band Fan For the Rose Parade, the bands are my favorite part of everything because the stories they come in with are really incredible. Some are from developing countries and they start fundraising a year and a half in advance to get here. Tis year, we helped support a foat for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Tere were 100 marchers in sufragette costumes — really impactful!

Penchant for Planning I became passionate about planning events at Bentley, through the Campus Activities Board. All the late-night organizing for Spring Day was tiring, but I enjoyed getting really close to my classmates. I met Stephanie Logan [Class of 2005] who worked in Partnership Marketing for the Macy’s Tanksgiving Day Parade, and someone said, “You would probably like what she does.” Tey were right! She became my frst manager.

Test Flight Te Macy’s parade balloons are test-fown in South Dakota to see if all the details are accurate. It’s very private and closed to the media. One year, with a SpongeBob balloon, I turned to my boss and said, “I think his left pupil is a little of, and his tie doesn’t look right.” And he was like, “Sure, sure.” Ten the designers walked in and said the exact same thing. I looked at my boss like, “I told you!” Tose small moments helped build confdence in my career.

Uptown Energy On parade day, we worked with the foat captains to get all the foat escorts into costume. We’d say, “Oh, this gentleman isn’t going to ft into the stick of butter, so he has to be a piece of toast.” It’s cool to be down by Macy’s, where the parade ends, but I always suggest people go uptown; the atmosphere there is just unparalleled.

From the Heart With the Pride Parade, there’s more diversity among participants and I aim to stay educated on how I refer to or address everyone I interact with. It’s just an added layer that seldom applies to events with Macy’s or the Rose Parade! One of the volunteer managers once said, “At the very end of the day, you must be kind, because this could be the only day someone experiences kindness their whole year.” I still get emotional thinking about that.