Leave it to Genesis Women’s Shelter CEO Jan Langbein to find an unusual spot to hold an event. For the invite-only 2019 Genesis Annual Luncheon VIP party on Thursday, May 9, she did it once again. It was the Design District’s Karpidas Gallery. For some guests, it was an adventure just finding the 6,000-square-foot former warehouse that had been retrofitted to house the Karpidas Family Collection. Unlike other galleries, this one had no signage out front. The only sign of the party was the Pinky’s Valets hustling to take and fetch cars.
But once past the two-story tall curved columns, guests like Honorary Co-Chairs Robyn and Don Conlon, Jan and Fred Hegi, Jane Carl, Rozy Kintzinger, Elsa Norwood with John Parish, Ken Marshall and Nikki Webb entered the open-air courtyard for check in and then headed to the gallery where works of arts were on display but not open to the public.
While the very private Karpadis family was “out of town,” the Genesis major donors had gathered for the presentation of the 2019 Jane Doe Award to Cynt Marshall and the 2019 HeRO Award to HeRO Founder Crayton Webb.
As an added treat, luncheon keynote speaker Terry Crews and his wife Rebecca King-Crews joined the crowd, and Terry gave a hint of what his talk at the next day’s luncheon would be — “the most dangerous place in the world for a woman should not be in her own home.”