Anna Nicholson, Senior Event Manager, Yahoo
Anna Nicholson likes to feel challenged and excited about her work, and while her first job as an event marketer at a health care startup taught her a lot about executing b-to-b and b-to-e events, she needed more. Enter: Yahoo and what she calls “the best team on the planet.” Nicholson took a leap of faith and followed her big-city dreams to eventually become a senior event manager at Yahoo in Chicago.
Now, with all of her industry experience, she’s mentoring the next generation, as part of the Experiential in Color Mentorship Program, while building up a portfolio of events and activations at Yahoo. In this “Event Peeps” podcast episode, Nicholson discusses the value of mentorship in her own career and why it’s important to give back, as well as how betting on yourself and doing things that “scare the heck” out of you can uncover unexpected opportunities.
Plus, as Yahoo launches its Cannes Lions 2026 activation, the Yahoo Explorers Society, which focuses on Yahoo Scout, the company’s new AI-powered search engine, she takes EM inside its biggest-ever SXSW activation, the Yahoo Scout Inn, which first integrated the AI tool both on the backend and in the consumer experience. Pinterest Predicts trends, nostalgia-fueled programs and post-event grounding tactics are also hot topics in this conversation.
“Anxiety can spread, but calmness can spread, too. So, in both life and work, things happen and things come up that are out of our control, but what we can control is how we react and respond and show up in those moments,” Nicholson says. “Being in a high-pressure situation, people feed off of energy, and instead of adding to the chaos, I really do aim to be that light and bring that calmness, and it can change how things unfold.”
