The Hiawatha Staff
Candice Blackstone-Larson, Executive Director
I have always had a few passions in my life that have continuously intertwined throughout my lifetime. My love for music. My love for event production. My love for travel, the outdoors and community. Hiawatha is all of that rolled into one.
My husband Jeff (a Marquette native) and myself (a Pacific Northwestern) moved to the UP in late 2012 and I found my love for the Hiawatha Music Festival that first summer here. My husband had gone to the festival when he was younger and from the first moment of taking our young daughter that first year and volunteering a few shifts, I was hooked. We finally started camping at the Festival, and I started inviting more and more friends (new and old) that hadn’t been before to come and experience this amazing weekend. Over the next couple years I continued to volunteer more in different areas at the festival and then started helping out pre-festival by connecting with local businesses to participate in the Festival’s Program Ads.
As an event planner to my core with a severe case of Wanderlust at all times, I wanted to contribute my skills to something I believed in. After growing up in a small town in Cottage Grove, Oregon I migrated to Sunny Southern California for college and continued to stay there spending many years in the Entertainment & Action Sports Industry helping to organize award shows like the Grammy Awards, American Music Awards, the Super Bowl Halftime Show to X Games, the US Open and an international skateboarding competition in South Africa. Those experiences gratefully took me all over the world, but in 2012 I found a place to call home in Marquette, Michigan. Stumbling across Hiawatha only a few weeks after moving here seemed to be in my stars.
There is such community in Hiawatha and it is such an incredible experience. It is history. It is family. It is friendships made over the years. It is something that I have been craving in my life and something that I want my children to be a part of for years to come. I’m so thankful to be a part of this organization and I want it to be sustainable for generations down the road. Music, through experiences, holds such power for people. I want everyone to be able to experience this very incredible family.
Sarah Gimpl, Social Media & Creative Content Manager
Sarah moved to Marquette in 2020 to attend Northern Michigan University to pursue a degree in Environmental Studies & Sustainability and Art & Design. She grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota and always had a love for the music scene, especially that of traditional and Celtic folk music.
For the past 2.5 years, Sarah has worked as a Marketing Assistant through Invent@NMU where the learned the ins and outs of content creation and social media management.
Also through NMU, she is co-president of the Northern Michigan Arts Discovery student organization, or NoMAD. This has given her first-hand experience in planning and putting on music events for hundreds of people while working with an awesome team of students.
In her free time, if she has some, Sarah runs a dog walking business around town and also enjoys thrifting, being by the lake, and gardening with her partner, Will.