Whether it’s a love-filled marriage, a milestone birthday, or successful business venture, 20 years is worth making a fuss over. Cortlandt Manor resident Chereese Jervis- Hill is celebrating two decades of Events To Remember + PR To Remember (ETR + PRTR), both divisions of Events by Chereese, Inc., based in Hastings-on-Hudson.
Jervis-Hill, Founder and President of ETR and PRTR, is marking 20 years of providing award-winning event management, marketing, and public relations services to clients in the tri-state area by sending exclusive celebration boxes to a randomly selected group of 20 clients.
“Because we do parties all the time, we wanted to do something different,” says Jervis-Hill. Inside each celebratory box, there is a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne and a branded crystal champagne flute. “We also included a box of chocolates from Tony’s Chocolonely, which is a company that makes a point of giving the people who grow the cocoa beans a fair wage, because I wanted to make sure that I was supporting an organization that is doing good for people.”
Jervis-Hill started her business in the wake of 9/11, after being laid off from a job as a corporate events manager. “A lot of the conferences I worked on were for national and international companies, many of which didn’t want to have their employees fly after the World Trade Center tragedy,” she says.
She stayed in touch with former clients, so after a few years was able to draw on those connections to open her own business, which focused on conceptualizing, organizing, and managing special events. Among her first clients were D. Bertoline & Sons (a family-run beverage distributor based in Peekskill that was sold last year), Support Connection (a nonprofit breast and ovarian cancer support group) based in Yorktown Heights, and Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco.
About 10 years ago, she extended her services with a public relations division. Her operation handles some 70 events a year, from galas and music festivals to grand openings, team-building events, fundraisers, and more. Local clients include the City of Peekskill and Foundation for the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns.
It was Jervis-Hill’s work with Jefferson Valley Mall in Yorktown Heights that led her down a new path. The mall hired her to host a coffee club for entrepreneurs. “We would meet at the coffee shop at the lower level of the mall every Thursday morning, and we’d discuss different types of issues that people had to deal with in their businesses. It grew and grew, and sometimes we would have over 25 people,” she said.
Next came her podcast, Coffee with Cher. “It’s a 20-minute podcast that’s for and about entrepreneurs,” says Jervis-Hill, that is available on Spotify, Pandora and iHeartRadio.
Among the most exciting projects Jervis-Hill said she worked on was the 120th anniversary in 2022 of the Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester, based in White Plains. “We did a time capsule for them. Covid was still around in full force, so we put a mask in there. We also put in a copy of The New York Times, a menu from the Westchester Country Club in Rye, and my business card. That’s special because I won’t be here when they open up the time capsule in 2075, but my card will be inside!”
Laura Joseph Mogil is a freelance writer and publicist residing in Briarcliff Manor.
Thank you so much 💕