Chen Castaño

IMPACT INTERNATIONAL: UK/EURO HONORS

Chen Castaño

Managing Director, Planet Events

Living Life More Intensely

Chen Castaño is usually in a good mood. She describes herself as “a positive person; I love my job and the people I work with.” But even she cannot help but worry “about what is going to happen next year,” adding that Q4 was “a trimester, in which I perhaps got more stressed out closing the proposals for the coming year,” than usual.

The managing director of Planet Events, which Live Nation acquired in early 2019, has made the most of the past year, highlighting the Spanish leg of Marc Anthony’s “Pa’lla Voy” tour, which sold more than 250,000 tickets across 11 dates. She says, “I am lucky enough to have a wonderful team, who are very involved. They are great professionals, and they know how to distinguish between an opportunity and a situation that is beyond everyone’s control. I want to give them a lot of credit.”

“Working as a team and not screwing each other” is part of Castaño’s business philosophy. She also practices honesty in all things, “because it lets me sleep peacefully and that keeps me young,” she adds laughing.

Castaño expects two types of concertgoers to emerge out of the current socio-economic crisis unfolding in Europe: The conservatives, who’ll save the money they’d usually spend on tickets until the situation resolves itself, and those she describes as the “carpe diem camp,” who’d love nothing more than to go out on the spur of the moment but may not be able to afford it. In summary, she says, “We are facing a complicated situation.”

While Castaño doesn’t struggle to maintain a healthy mindset, she praises Live Nation’s new vertical added to its employee benefits suite, which gives staff access to free sessions from licensed therapists and coaches every year. She did take away some personal findings from the past three years, though, namely “that life has to be lived even more intensely than it was before, and it has always been very intense. I don’t want to waste time on nonsense.”