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Meet Melissa Jurcan, Seafair

By Sarah Dominguez

For most of us in the Puget Sound region, summer is never too far from our minds, even in the gloomiest winter months. For Melissa Jurcan, however, summer is a year-round state of mind. The West Seattle resident is director of sales, marketing and communications for Seafair-Seattle’s 65-year-old, eight-weeks- long summer festival.

After planning events for Qwest Field and the University of Phoenix Stadium (home to the Arizona Cardinals), as well as a stint in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, Jurcan returned to her beloved hometown to help breathe new life into Seafair and usher in a new generation of the festival. “It was a challenge I was looking forward to,” Jurcan says. “I wanted to work on a brand that I already had such deep affinity for and help bring it into a new era.”

Four years later, Jurcan oversees all the sales and marketing aspects of Seafair: managing sponsorships, digital marketing campaigns, press events and more. Job title aside, Jurcan is passionate about helping people celebrate life by creating moments and bringing them together. This year’s energetic branding campaign hopes to accomplish just that for more than two million people.

As an International Special Events Society (ISES) member that serves on the organization’s international board of governors, Jurcan was also on a team of advocates successfully bidding to host this summer’s ISES Live conference in Seattle, which was no easy task. “This is our chance to come together as an industry to show professionals from all over the globe why Seattle is a premier event destination,” she says. “Given that we all plan events for a living, this is going to be all about creativity and collaboration. It really invigorates me.”

This year’s Seafair will welcome back the U.S. Navy Blue Angels and Seafair Fleet Week, hydroplane races, milk carton derby, and other longtime favorites with new energy. Seafair Weekend (Aug. 2-4), for example, will expand to feature wine tasting, food trucks, a cooking stage and late Saturday night hours that will end in a concert and fireworks show. “It’s all really magical to me,” Jurcan says. “That’s the best way to describe it: magic.”

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