Meet Elaine Dillard, Discovery Green Conservancy’s Programming Director

by Susie Hairston

As part of our series introducing our readers to some of our environmental non-profit heroes, I had the privilege of talking to the extremely busy and talented Elaine Dillard, Discovery Green Conservancy’s Programming Director, who coordinates more than 500 free events from small exercise classes to large concerts and community festivals that take place at Discovery Green each year.

I have been fortunate enough to have worked with Elaine for several years now on Green Mountain Energy Earth Day at Discovery Green. Elaine has boundless energy, and the amazing ability to keep a meeting between diverse personalities and agendas on-track and productive. Elaine always has multiple events she is working on at a time, but you wouldn’t know it from her calm persona. Elaine is an amazing combination of talented detail-oriented administrator/organizer and art-loving creative. Elaine is essentially responsible for making sure that all the many organizations and pieces involved in putting together a large event come together seamlessly.

When she is not juggling event logistics, Elaine is out scouting talent for upcoming events — going to art shows and performances.

A native Houstonian, Elaine grew up loving music, art, and travel. From her youngest days, Elaine was passionate about music and art. She was exposed to culture in various places while traveling with her family. Later, while traveling around the world with her fiancé to places like Mexico and Argentina, she immersed herself in the museums and cultural performances in these places.

She is someone who seemed to know early on what mattered to her, and, as she started her working life, immediately got involved in organizing events. She got her start working in event production in San Francisco with Michael Mina, renowned Michelin-starred chef at his restaurant, Aqua. She put on a lot of events at Aqua, then returned to Houston where she started working for Tony Vallone, doing special events for his restaurant.

As women’s reproductive health is important to her, she later moved into mission focused event planning with Planned Parenthood, where she became the director of special events. From there she went on to do fundraising for the Lee & Joe Jamail Skatepark. While organizing the initial fundraiser involving a lot of graffiti artists for the skate park, she met an employee who worked at the Orange Show who told her, “We need you to do this for us” — so she started doing event production for them and some fundraising.

Elaine went on to work for the Orange Show for 15 years prior to coming to Discovery Green as the Program Manager.  Her mentor at the Orange Show was Suzanne Theis, who later became the artistic director for Discovery Green. Theis encouraged Elaine to join the Discovery Green team.  At Discovery Green Elaine works with her team to curate 500 free events a year including cultural and culinary festivals, concerts and large-scale art installations, a dynamic calendar of events that celebrates Houston’s rich cultural diversity.

Going to work for Discovery Green made sense to Elaine both because of her great working relationship with Theis and because Elaine has a passion for community engagement and providing a space to showcase art and musical talent. Discovery Green fit the bill. Elaine told me, “Discovery Green is a great fit for me because it is so community focused — that’s what I’m passionate about — I’m a native Houstonian. Working at an accounting firm would not work for me. Knowing that I could work with artists and performers and give them a stage was important, as was working with mission driven non-profits.”

Elaine is also passionate about sustainability and has worked closely with CEC in the years she has been with Discovery Green to ensure we have a smooth running Zero Waste Earth Day event. 

She first became involved in focusing on sustainability at events in 2016 when she hosted a retreat at her family’s ranch in Brenham for the group planning the Day for Night festival. “My friend Jason Kerr was a chef who had a food truck at Urban Harvest; he told me I should do an event that uses chefs that only use sustainable sources. And so, we started doing the Butcher’s Ball, collaborating with ranches that had a sustainable model and working with organic farmers.” The event was a resounding success, raising money for Urban Harvest. It continued for many years, only ending when Elaine’s family sold the ranch.

Given that her sojourn into sustainability began with a large culinary event, Elaine’s focus in sustainability remains working on reducing the waste produced by these events. Once she started the Butcher’s Ball, she went to conferences to learn more about sustainability in the food space. 

She points out, “Being out in the country makes you more aware of the problems of waste. When I was out on my family’s ranch doing an event, we would have a dumpster there overflowing. In the city you’re not aware of it; in the country you see the trash. You see the grease that was just poured on the ground. When you have property like that, you are really aware that if you pour this over there, and the cow eats it, he’s going to die; or someone drops a cigarette butt on the ground, and your horse eats it, the horse will be harmed.”

When she was at the Orange Show, putting on the Art Car Parade, she realized how much waste a huge event like that produces. She tells me, “I thought: How can we do this differently?”

Top of her list for being more sustainable at Discovery Green is finding more ways to reduce waste at events at the park.

As if she hadn’t gotten enough event planning in during her day job, Elaine has also done event planning on a volunteer basis. In addition to her volunteer work on the Butcher’s Ball, Elaine was on the original board of directors for Space Taker, producing all of their galas. She has also been on the board of Catastrophic Theater, and currently sits on the Board of Directors of Nameless Sound.

In her free time, Elaine loves to travel. “I Iove to go to countries that have good food — culinary tourism.” Some of her favorite places are Madrid, Barcelona, and Majorca in Spain and Oaxaca, Mexico.  “And right here in Houston, I am immersed in the culinary world — I love going and supporting my friends and eating their food.” She also tries to stay in shape by doing yoga and Pilates.

Elaine has two grown children; her son, who used to help her with the Butcher’s Ball, is following in her footsteps doing event production. Her daughter just completed the Disney program in Orlando and is graduating from U of H this spring, about to set off to forge her own path in the world.