(Elizabeth Haenle, Co-founder and President of SAGE worldwide is interviewed by City Weekend.)

In the fall of 2012, event planner Elizabeth Haenle was putting the finishing touches on the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse’s first Western-style wedding for a Chinese couple.

She designed many of the details, including the ringbearer’s attire and pillow. She even oversaw the lighting of 500 candles, the most that had ever been lit at one time in the historic setting. “We were able to really help coordinate their special event from beginning to end,” Haenle says. But it’s not just social events Haenle plans.

Through SAGE Worldwide, the company she founded, Haenle is active in planning global events in far corners of the world, from Beijing, to London, to Sydney, to her former home of Washington, D.C.

“Sage organizes corporate and other special events and helps identify and coordinate the best speakers for those events,” Haenle says. “My husband and I both greatly believe the world wants to better understand China, and much of that understanding can be best developed through dialogue. We think providing the best content, the best speakers, the best people who have a great deal of experience on China, is the best way to enhance that understanding.”

Even before she arrived in Beijing, Haenle was no stranger to planning large-scale events. Haenle had planned and executed more than 500 events during her time as social secretary for the vice president of the United States, coordinated activities for the International Olympic Committee during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and organized professional and social events for former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin.

Haenle grew up around entertaining. In her small town of 8,000 in the American South, her grandmother stood out as an entrepreneur and a local politician. “But she also knew how to throw a mean dinner party,” Haenle laughs. “Between her and my mother, they owned more sets of china than I can count on four hands.”

Every Sunday, her grandmother set a formal table for a large luncheon for family and friends. Haenle paid attention. When she attended the all-girls school Meredith College, Haenle’s schedule included classes not only for her major in political science, but also for picking out china and being a good hostess. She found she loved political science, but she loved entertaining, too.

Her first post-college jobs were combinations of the two. She first orchestrated events for the International Olympic Committee, then worked as a scheduler for several local and national political campaigns, including those of presidential candidates Richard Lugar and Bob Dole. Finally, she landed in Washington, D.C. as a senior scheduler for a U.S. congressman, which led to her two-year post with Barbara Franklin.

Franklin, a “personal mentor” for Haenle, traveled to China frequently and helped manage U.S.-China commercial relations under former President George H. W. Bush. Haenle’s time working for her was often spent planning trips to China and helping on research projects, which planted seeds for her interest in the country. Those seeds would only continue to flourish.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s team then recruited Haenle, where she worked as social secretary and residence manager for eight years. Through work, she traveled to New York to meet the pope and held a luncheon for China’s then-president Hu Jintao. (She served bison, a leaner-than-beef option that showcases Cheney’s home state, Wyoming.)

While in D.C., she met her future husband Paul Haenle, who then worked on the president’s national security council and is now director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Although she traveled to China once for work and once for fun with Paul, Haenle had never made it to Beijing until she moved here in 2010, six months pregnant with her son, Thomas.

Although she leads two companies, Haenle puts her family first. She eats breakfast with her 3-year-old son every morning, the family regularly eats dinner together and they try very hard to read stories together before they tuck Thomas into bed. “We’re very careful to carve out time on the weekends,” Haenle adds. Every week, Sunday night means pizza and a movie.

“At the end of the day, I really want to be known for being equally adept as a professional working woman, a mom and a wife, whose family has benefitted from all I bring to the table,” Haenle says. Knowing Haenle, it would be a beautifully set table, too.

Originally by Brittney Wong, Source: Feb 12, 2014, Wonder Woman, City Weekend