It’s a pretty important two-year tenure for the Portland Rose Festival Foundation president right now, and the board of directors has an excellent person in the position in Jeremy Emerson.

The Rainier native and Portland State University graduate is co-owner and chief creative officer at Portland marketing company Saffire. It’s just what the Rose Festival needs right now: Somebody with expertise in brand, events and companies and solid understanding of financial matters, and somebody who loves the city and Rose Festival.

Emerson, 50, who succeeded Contesa Diaz-Nicolaidis as board president, said the festival has undergone some internal cost-cutting and tweaks to the organization with the hope of improving on the $1.1 million budget deficit from 2024. Marilyn Clint, the Rose Festival CEO, said the nonprofit trimmed about $800,000 from the budget.

“We had a financial task force sit down and, ‘We’ve got a bleak picture, we gotta figure out how to cut the budget and not lose things core to who we are,’” he said.

Emerson hears about the same financial woes from other events, as “I’ve been involved in that world for 20 years.” He plans to provide “really open and honest, raw answers, because it’s something I see 780 clients across the country having to deal with. It’s not unique to the Rose Festival at all.”

Emerson added: “The things I think we know at Saffire, what we’re doing to keep clients happy, are a lot of what the Rose Festival needs. It’d be a great time for me to step up. Everybody looks to me and our company and, ‘What works everywhere else?’ There are a lot of things we can be doing. Right now the Rose Festival finds itself on the precipice of, ‘What are we going to be when we grow up?’ Eyes wide open, big challenge for sure.”

The Rose Festival is a tradition and important to the community. There has to be “alternative funding methodologies,” beyond members/close followers and corporate sponsorships, he said.

Clint said it’s a great time for Emerson to be involved in Rose Festival leadership. He’s the 37th Rose Festival Foundation president that has served during Clint’s 50 years with the Rose Festival.

“Isn’t it interesting how aligned he is?” Clint said, referring to Emerson’s strengths and Rose Festival’s needs.

“He’s truly the first one out of 37 who came from the event industry. You need to have somebody with his background. He’s a designer, artist.” Emerson has been doing pro bono work designing ads, logos and more.

Emerson grew up in Rainier, graduating in 1994, and attended Portland State University, earning a fine arts/graphic design degree.

He enjoyed attending PSU, living in downtown and “I dove into everything,” including clubs and leadership/ambassador roles.

Saffire (saffire.com) was an extension of his experiences at Portland State. Way back when it was about teaching people something as basic as learning to use the internet. Nowadays it’s multi-pronged, including building a platform for companies to self-manage ticketing and websites.

Former Rose Festival CEO Jeff Curtis once told Emerson that the Rose Festival would “never” be Saffire’s client, but Curtis encouraged Emerson to join the board of directors nine years ago.

Emerson was a fan of the Rose Festival growing up, now he wants to continue to help the nonprofit and festival.

It sounds like he’ll be a big help.