Dee Rivera doesn't call herself a PR person. She calls herself a curator.

Dee Rivera, CEO of DCG Media Group and Executive Producer of Times Square Fashion Week®. She and Propel Earth are co-hosting both events below this week.

She has spent eighteen active years telling other people's stories for a living, and this week she is running two rooms of her own, back to back, on consecutive days. I asked her for the story. Here it is.

Then read the rest, because the reason she is running two events in one week instead of one is below.

Curator, not publicist

Ask Dee Rivera what she does and she will correct you before you finish the question.

"We don't like to call ourselves a PR company, even though we are a PR company. We like to call ourselves curators for thought leaders, entrepreneurs and CEOs who want to take it to the next level."

She has been doing it, by her own count, for about thirty years, eighteen of them active, out of DCG Media Group, with reach into New York, Miami, Palm Beach, LA and Milan. The mechanism she described to a room of founders on one of Propel's own thought-leadership calls this year is not mysterious: a press release once a month distributed through a wire service, articles written under a founder's own name and pushed into LinkedIn groups where the right buyer or investor is already sitting, and a strategic case for why a founder should be treated as press-worthy in the first place. "I've helped a lot of startup tech companies, founders, that nobody knew about. We got them a couple of articles, they got on TV, and they actually received funding."

She has written her own version of that advice down twice. Knocking Down Walls in Heels is out now on Amazon. A second business book is next, and a children's book is in the works alongside it. Ask why the titles keep returning to shoes and she will tell you it is deliberate. A stand-in for showing up dressed for the room you have not been invited into yet.

To be the first

After she read the draft of this piece, Dee sent back her own account of how she got here. Her motto, and the thread through all of it, is three words: to be the first.

Long before diversity was a mainstream conversation in fashion, she saw an audience of Latino designers and entrepreneurs nobody was serving. She built LATINISTA for them, trademarked it, grew it into a magazine, a platform and a runway show, and partnered with IMAN Cosmetics on its first beauty line for Latinas. That is where she started working alongside CFDA designer Cesar Galindo, who she still calls her brother from another mother.

By her account, she launched Hamptons Fashion Week in 2019 with, in her words, no investors and no sugar daddies. Just her, the idea and her media partners, at the Bridgehampton Historic Museum. She says she put on the first Times Square Fashion Week the following year, in 2020, with nearly every fashion event in the world cancelled, backed by the Manhattan Borough President's office. By her count, the 2023 edition drew more than 10,000 people. Hamptons Swim Week came after that.

Not all of it went smoothly. She writes plainly that some past partners did not keep their promises and left her team cleaning up, and that she is now, her phrase, extremely picky about who she works with. That is worth knowing if you are applying for one of the spots below. She is choosing.

"Never wait for permission or an invite to the seat at the table to build your dream."

Times Square Fashion Week®, the event Dee founded and now produces with Propel Earth as co-host.

What she is actually producing this week

The two events are structured almost like a diptych of her own advice: Monday is the thought-leadership side, Tuesday is the spectacle side, and she is personally on stage for both.

Monday, The AI Shift. Three panels at M Social Hotel Times Square, doors at 4pm for a mix and mingle, panels from 5:30. The first is on AI and the future of business. The second is on AI in health. The third is hers: fashion, faith and AI, built around the question she keeps coming back to in her own copy for the event. Can a brand use AI and still keep the human relationships and trust that make it worth following in the first place.

Tuesday, Times Square Fashion Week. Doors at noon at Father Duffy Square. The runway currently has four designers confirmed: Sunskaara and House of Perna on ready-to-wear, Julissa Designs on faith-based ready-to-wear, and Mario B closing the show in couture. Before any of that, Cat Schuller's Cosplay Runway opens the program alongside a three-minute film for the Social Justice Network's Comic Books for Justice initiative, which has NYC detention-center youth designing a piece for the runway themselves. Jean Shafiroff hosts part of the program, and Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright and the Manhattan Borough President's office present the awards. Billboards light at nine, the after party follows at half past.

Both events sit inside the same production calendar Dee is running personally. She told her own team she would be on site at 8am for load-in, and the request list for tickets, VIPs and press closed six days out from the show, because a run of show this size does not survive being assembled the week of.

The part you can actually use

The instinct worth stealing is not the press release cadence. It is what she tells founders who cannot afford to hire her: do it yourself, but do it like a curator, not like someone begging for attention. Pick the one thing you are actually good at explaining, say it the same way every time, and put it in front of the specific rooms where the right person is already standing. A LinkedIn group, not a broadcast. One editor, not a hundred.

So run this version of it this week. Write the one sentence that explains what you do, the way you would say it to someone who has thirty seconds. Post it in one place you know your buyer already reads, not everywhere at once. Curators do not blast. They place.

Monday and Tuesday

MONDAY 14 SEPTEMBER · M SOCIAL HOTEL TIMES SQUARE, THE TENT

4:00 PM mix and mingle, 5:30 PM panels begin. Panelist $1,000, exhibitor $1,500, both $2,500. Every package includes a dedicated press release and event photography; the combined package adds a dedicated editorial article and an on-site interview.

Reply with the word SHIFT and I will send you the full sponsor and panelist packages, or RSVP directly below.

TUESDAY 15 SEPTEMBER · FATHER DUFFY SQUARE, TIMES SQUARE

Noon doors, 5pm awards, 6 to 8pm runway, 9pm billboard showcase, after party from 9:30. Code PROPEL takes 20% off every ticket tier.

WHERE EVERY FACT IN THIS PIECE CAME FROM. Dee's own words on curating versus publicity, her years in business, and her book titles come from a recorded Propel thought-leadership call earlier this year, corrected against the written account she sent on 7 September after reading the draft. The LATINISTA, Hamptons Fashion Week and Times Square Fashion Week origin story, including the 2019 and 2020 founding years and the 10,000 figure for 2023, is her own account and is printed as hers, not independently confirmed. The Monday panel structure, moderators and package pricing come directly from DCG Media Group's own event materials, sent this week. The Tuesday run of show, confirmed designers and nonprofit partnership come from Dee's written production recap to the full team. Ticket pricing for Tuesday is read from the live Eventbrite checkout, not the event description, which has disagreed with the checkout on other numbers before. Dee's own materials have used two different counts for how many annual editions Times Square Fashion Week has run, and a 2020 founding year does not clearly match either one; this piece still does not print an edition number until that is reconciled.

Want to be featured in the next one?

This is what a founder feature looks like. Researched properly, written properly, published, and yours to use anywhere you like.

If you want the next one to be about you, email me at stephen@propel.earth with one line on what you are building and what you need. I read every one of these myself.

New here? This is Propel Earth.

A network of founders, investors and operators, most of them in New York. We run rooms every week, we place engineers, and we match people to what they need by hand. Aurora Wenters told us what she needed when she registered for Demo Day, we matched her before the doors opened, and she closed $100,000 a month later. That is the whole thesis: most of what makes a company work is who you happen to be standing next to, so we stop leaving it to chance.

Best,

Stephen Michael, Chief Executive Officer, Propel Earth
516-307-6380 | stephen@propel.earth

IF YOU MISSED THE LAST FEW

Shawn Kaplan sells everything except the runway.Eight formats, seven price tiers, and twenty covers at Cipriani on Wednesday.
4 Can't Miss Events for NYFW.The four rooms Propel is co-hosting this fashion week, in one place.
How to get inside New York Fashion Week without an invitation.Times Square on the 15th, and the code that takes 20% off.

THE PRIVATE NETWORK Three introductions a month, to someone who can pay you, hire you, or move your company forward. Made by hand, from what you told me on your card. Free entry to every room I run. $200 a month, and the first 25 members hold that rate for as long as they stay. Join the Private Network

Not sure yet? Take fifteen minutes with me and tell me what you need. If I do not think I can route it, I will say so rather than take the money.

KNOW SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE IN HERE

Forward this to them, or send them the front door, where the card, the map and the Private Network all sit one click apart.