About Rayvin Gierwatowski…

To learn about my (’26) Individual Major Capstone Project, R.I.P. Lair,
click here.

Hi! I’m Rayvin- I recently graduated from St. Olaf College with a Major in Design for Events and Community Engagement and with two concentrations in International Relations and Business and Management Studies.

During my time at St. Olaf, I had the opportunity to study abroad twice, once in Seville, Spain (with all my coursework in Spanish) and once in Milan, Italy (with *some* of my coursework in Italian).

St. Olaf is home to a one-of-a-kind student venue space, modeled after First Ave in Minneapolis and built in 1999, called the Lion’s Pause. I was extremely fortunate to have the chance to hold the position of Executive Student Leadership: Lion’s Pause Venue Coordinator for two years. In that role, I led the Concert Board, the Marketing team, and Facilities.

I had a lot of freedom and responsibility in this role- and I got to be a part of carrying on traditions (SpringFest and Rock the Hill) and creating new ones (Boiler Room: World Tour) as well as other new types of events (Just Dance, Tiny Desk Concert, etc etc)

St. Olaf is also home to the Individual Major program, where students can- with the approval of a faculty review council- design their own major and capstone project. I thus created Design for Events and Community Engagement, and my capstone is titled R.I.P. Lair.

R.I.P. Lair is a project designed to uplift student creatives through event programming. I held two pop-up concerts featuring entirely student artists in unexpected venues (our on-campus art museum and our on-campus barbershop!). This project was hugely fulfilling, draws on expertise in event-planning, collaboration, design thinking, project management, feedback and metric tracking, digital photo and video design, marketing (print design and social media) and more! You can learn about it here.