Kari Aragon
Co-Founder & CEO
Kari is the second of six siblings, which is how a person learns early that a gift is really a way of paying attention. She spent more than twenty years as a paralegal; a criminal justice degree from Rutgers and two decades of work where the details are the whole job. All through it she kept gifting: for friends, for family, and for the events she worked on alongside her older sister Sarah. Occasions Box began when she brought the idea to Sarah and asked her to build it with her. Today she runs operations, logistics and client experience: the recipient lists, the ship dates, the hundred small confirmations a client never sees. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their two daughters, and she would rather tell you a date is not possible than promise one she cannot hold.
Sarah De Jesus
Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer
Sarah is Kari's older sister, and the reason an Occasions Box looks the way it does. She founded Dreamers Joy Events & Design in 2010 and spent nine years designing weddings and luxury events, freelancing alongside established planners in the wedding industry, with a business administration degree from Felician and a fashion marketing degree from Berkeley College behind the work. She stepped back from events to start a family, and Occasions Box grew out of that; the creative half of the work moved straight into the boxes: what goes in one, and how it feels when the lid comes off. She sources from small independent makers in small batches, and builds every box backwards from a single question: what will the person opening it actually keep? These days she is designing events again. She lives in Bergen County, New Jersey, with her husband and their two boys.
