Most event companies in NYC are built for the city. They know the venues, the vendors, the borough-by-borough logistics. But 23 Layers, the Meatpacking District-based production and design agency, has spent years proving that a New York foundation does not have to mean a New York ceiling.
The agency, founded by CEO Jessica Boskoff in 2011, has produced events at Cannes Lions in France, events in Australia, and across multiple U.S. markets — all while maintaining the kind of detail-forward approach that its corporate clients expect at home. That combination of local credibility and international execution has made 23 Layers one of the more distinctive corporate event planners in the New York market.
Cannes Lions, the global advertising and communications festival held annually on the French Riviera, is among the most high-pressure event environments in the world. Brands compete for visibility among the industry’s most discerning audiences, and the margin for logistical error is thin. For 23 Layers, the annual presence at Cannes has become a proving ground for what the agency describes as its full-service model: concept creation, design, fabrication, and execution handled in-house, with vendors treated as genuine collaborators rather than subcontractors.
“Our vendors are an extension of our team,” Boskoff has noted. “We’re constantly learning from their expertise, and finding ways for collaboration, which is key in helping us stay ahead of the curve as we anticipate our clients’ needs.” That philosophy, applied on an international stage, requires both trust and precision — two qualities that are difficult to manufacture and impossible to fake when the stakes are high.
Back in New York, the agency’s project list reflects an equally wide-ranging appetite. 23 Layers has produced conferences, product launches, brand activations, and experiential marketing events for clients, including tech companies, beauty brands, media organizations, and retail businesses. The Attentive Mobile Thread Conference, which the agency produced in a 30,000-square-foot building, won BizBash’s award for Best Corporate Event Concept. The event required transforming an entire building into a fully designed, high-production environment on an accelerated timeline — a project type that tests every skill a corporate event planner in New York-based firms can offer.
What connects the Cannes work to the New York work is the consistency of method. For 23 Layers, the geography of an event changes; the internal process does not. The agency begins every engagement by understanding the client’s brand narrative, then builds outward from that foundation into physical and experiential design. That consistency allows the team to operate credibly across vastly different contexts without losing the coherence that makes events feel intentional rather than improvised.
The agency’s all-women team has also become a point of note within the broader conversation about representation in the events industry. 23 Layers is a female-owned and operated agency, and Boskoff has spoken publicly about the value of building teams where people are positioned to succeed based on their specific strengths. “Managing people effectively, putting them in positions to succeed, hiring people that are very good at what they do — those are all important factors when building a successful team,” she has said.
For brands searching for event companies in NYC with genuine global capacity, the question is often whether a boutique firm can deliver the same reliability as a larger operation at scale. The answer 23 Layers offers is structural: by combining producers and designers under one roof and maintaining a selective client load, the agency can bring the same level of attention to a product activation in Cannes as it does to a conference in Manhattan.
That model has attracted a consistent roster of major clients and produced a track record of awards that span both concept and execution categories. More to the point, it has produced clients who return — a reliable indicator, in any service business, that the work holds up.
For companies weighing their options among corporate event planners in New York, 23 Layers makes a clear argument: that a firm rooted in New York, built around design and production excellence, can operate anywhere in the world without the work suffering for the distance.
