Today, Eric is delighted to welcome Melva LaJoy Legrand as his guest.
Melva is an icon in our industry, having built an impressive career that spans the US, France, and Europe, earning numerous recognitions along the way.
In this episode, she shares her journey and discusses the honors she received within the industry, offering inspiration and insights for solopreneurs and small business owners.
Her Journey
Melva began her career as a teacher, but her creative spark kept pulling her in a different direction. A volunteering stint at a radio station one summer introduced her to concerts, festivals, and events, and she discovered her true calling. With the unwavering support of her parents, she stepped into event planning, starting at the bottom, and soaking up every lesson she learned along the way. With the help of her mentors, she managed to overcome her fear, learn about leadership, and shape her emotional intelligence. With perseverance, faith, and resilience, Melva built her own business, LaJoy Creative, weaving together her professional achievements and her personal trials.
Her Early Career
Melva describes her early years as a “preparation season”, where she embraced every small task with humility, absorbing lessons from behind the scenes. That shaped her professional values, helping her decide the kind of leader she wanted to become.
Mentorship and Growth
Melva had several mentors who were all central to her development. One of her mentors encouraged her toward a leadership position at a major festival, creating a breakthrough moment where she discovered her own capacity to lead. This experience highlighted the importance of humility, teachability, and persistence in building effective mentor relationships.
Building Confidence and Starting Over
Melva restarted her business in 2019 during a deeply challenging period while caring for her ailing father. His encouragement gave her the courage to relaunch her business, and she also received additional confirmation from her mentors and unexpected encounters, fueling her belief that her business was her purpose.
Overcoming Trauma and Anchoring in Faith
As a survivor of abuse and trauma, Melva knows that therapy, faith, support groups, and resilience are an essential part of the healing process. Her faith and clarity about her values have shaped her leadership and business decisions, ensuring she only accepts work that aligns with her principles.
Awards and Recognition
Melva has received numerous honors, including recognition for organizing survivor-focused events, being named a Top Female Founder 500, and winning Silver for International Event Agency of the Year. Those awards affirm her parents’ belief that the world would always make room for her. She also takes pride in recent collaborations, including honoring cultural icons at a major beauty and artistry event.
Cultural Perspective: US vs France
Living between the US and France has given Melva unique insight into the work-life balance. She contrasts the American culture of overwork with the French emphasis on rest and leisure. While she acknowledges higher US salaries, she credits her best creative breakthroughs to the mental clarity she gained during her time abroad.
Bio: Melva LaJoy Legrand
As a C-Suite business leader, entrepreneur, and public speaker, Melva LaJoy Legrand has dedicated over 20 years of experience in education and event production to helping individuals and companies elevate their missions, rooted in social justice, educational access, climate change, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. She has worked closely with executive leaders to create organizational cultures that support overall wellness, encourage feedback, value empathy, and authenticity within their leadership teams. As the Founder/CEO of LaJoy Creative (fka LaJoy Plans), an event planning firm launched in 2007, Melva has been recognized as a trailblazer in her industry, recently joining the list of Inc.’s 2025 Female Founders 500, receiving a spot on SUCCESS Magazine’s 2024 Women of Influence, and a 2024 Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award. For her Events Industry work, Melva has received the 2024 International Event Agency of the Year and the 2024 Women to Watch in Meetings. Recognized nationally for her thought leadership, Melva is a 10x award-winning CEO who has used her social impact to grace the stages of international conferences throughout Germany and France, as well as being a 2x speaker at IMEX America (2024, 2023), IBTM Americas (2022), and four cities for BizBash’s Connect Conference (2022). In 2023, she launched her YouTube video subscription series, Mondays with Melva, writing, producing, and starring in two seasons and eight episodes, dedicated to business leadership and career advice. Melva has been featured in Forbes, The Washingtonian, Black Enterprise’s Sisters Inc., Authority Magazine, and The Black Wall Street Times, speaking to the issues surrounding the gender pay gap, empathetic leadership, redefining what success looks like for mature women, navigating career changes, being an ally for Black women in the workplace, and building a legacy business through impact. Having relaunched her business in 2019 only to lose 98% of it during the COVID pandemic, Melva embraced the pivot and re-established her business offerings to build her company to where it currently stands: achieving footprints in 42 states, working with budgets in excess of $1.5 Million, and hosting notable attendees such as Grammy Award- winning artist, Ciara; Inaugural National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda C. Gorman; Netflix co-founder and Executive Chairman, Reed Hastings; civil rights icon, author, and founder of The National Memorial of Peace and Justice, Bryan Stevenson; along with former and current US Secretaries of Education, Dr. John B. King Jr. and Dr. Miguel Cardona. Because of her ability to adapt, sustain, and grow LaJoy Plans, Melva made another shift in 2025, rebranding her agency to LaJoy Creative, which represents a range of new creative services beyond the event production world.
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