Director, Events and Programs

• May 2022 - Present

Director, Meetings and Convention

• Sep 2020 - Apr 2022

Manager, Travel and Events, AMER

• Nov 2017 - Sep 2020

• Active member of the organization’s Crisis Management Team activated in January 2020 to manage the impact of COVID-19. Led the creation of an event cancellation process in coordination with Legal, Finance, and Risk Management teams. Provided weekly coaching to global event planners relative to force majeure, negotiation opportunities, and vendor relationship management. Negotiated savings of $4.7 million during the cancellation of more than 40 events worldwide. • Member of the management team for a global events team comprised of 19 members in Charlottesville, London, Hong Kong, and Mumbai. Engage in process and policy updates, ongoing team education, performance management, and strategic vendor management. Introduced event industry standards to update internal processes and improve consistency. • Manage internal client relationships and provide strategic guidance, budget management, risk mitigation, and hands-on support for many of the 200+ plus global events per year. • Manage two to four internal staff with matrix management of an additional two staff members. Created the intern onboarding and project plan for annual summer intern, ensuring a substantive learning experience for the interns. • Co-lead with Director of Global Events on all event risk management processes. Regularly participate in risk assessments of meeting locations and events, creation of contingency plans for emergency scenarios, creation of Emergency Action Plans for all events with more than 100 attendees, and risk management training exercises for the full global events team. • Member of the organization’s Diversity & Inclusion Council. Formalized the creation of an employee resource group focused on physical and mental health beginning in FY21 by leading employee volunteers through an empathy mapping exercise and creation of a mission statement. Submitted a formal action plan to the Leadership Team for approval. Show less

Director, Event Services

• Feb 2016 - Nov 2017

• Managed staffing assignments for 25 full-time employees, managing corporate profit margins, client service standards, and team continuity. Manage four staff and oversee the assignment of professional development leads for the remaining staff. • Analyzed $4 million corporate budget for DC event services department to include accruals and variances from projected time billing while simultaneously managing conference budgets up to five clients averaging $1 million each. • Managed medical conferences with tradeshows of up to 50,000 square feet and up to 1400 attendees. • Managed series of four annual workshops for 12-35 people, lasting two weeks to one month, requiring high level of service including travel and hotel arrangements, visa assistance, interpretation and other meeting logistics. One to two workshops annually occur in a developing nation, bringing additional logistical and security requirements. • Directed final review and approval of all convention center and hotel contracts for the department, managing updates to proprietary hotel contract. Manage vendor relationships ranging from hotels and cities to audio visual and decorators. Show less

Director, Conferences & Events

• Dec 2012 - Feb 2015

• Introduced a structured planning process, moving department toward proactive planning. • Managed marketing consultant, outreach to members, expenses and revenue to re-energize MFA’s legacy conference, successfully moving from less than 500 attendees in 2013 to 700+ in 2014, with a 166% increase in net revenue. • Managed exhibit and sponsorship sales and worked with COO to create annual packages, streamlining much of the sponsorship paperwork for our largest members and sponsors. • Recommended strategic process to revitalize conference content and re-engage industry leaders in support of conferences, and successfully created an advisory committee for annual compliance event in FY14 and was approved to apply the same structure to all conferences for FY15. • Led initiative to rebrand conferences by updating logos, creating a new website, partnering with new and improved technology vendors and partnering with a marketing firm to strengthen media trade quality and tracking. • Managed creation of and tracking to departmental budget in excess of $2.5million. Show less

Director of Events

• Mar 2011 - Dec 2012

Tasked to increase department professionalism, realign staff roles, improve process efficiencies, reduce expenses and study ROI of current event offerings. Accomplishments • Instituted a structured planning process, allowing department to move from reactive to proactive planning. • Negotiated changes to vendor contracts and selection processes, reducing conference expenses by 15% while increasing quality of the onsite experience. • Managed team of four event planning staff, introduced mentoring and education opportunities, improved both professionalism and morale while restructuring department. • Successfully executed events, including the largest attended and most profitable National Conference, realizing over 2,000 attendees and $3.1 million in net revenue (110% of the net revenue goal). • Improved budget projections to reduce overestimated expenses and underestimated revenues to allow organization to better project annual net revenues. • Credited by staff with creating “the most organized, relaxed, rewarding, encouraging and efficient event cycle [we] have worked through.” Show less

Director of Conferences

• Apr 2010 - Feb 2011

Hired to re-energize association meetings and improve staff and volunteer processes. Accomplishments • Improved analysis of meeting ROI and created a reporting process to more easily track successes and challenges. • Reduced meeting expenses to improve net revenue and renegotiated existing vendor contracts to gain more favorable terms for the association. • Created best practice processes to prevent duplication of effort within a small staff. • Worked with Marketing Team to redesign meeting look and improve printed pieces used in conferences. Show less

Senior Manager, Meetings and Events

• Jan 2006 - Apr 2010

Managed national and global meetings for government organizations as well as associations. Directly supervised three staff. Recognized internally as a leader on a variety of educational topics such as trends in the meetings industry, contract negotiations and utilizing industry resources. Accomplishments • Simultaneously managed the critical dates and organizational goals of seven distinct client organizations and up to 20 meetings per year, ranging from 30 to 4,500 attendees and budgets of $20,000 to $1.2 million. • Supervised all logistics and six staff for an association’s annual four-day, 4,500 attendee tradeshow with 100,000sf exhibit space. Reduced expenses by 35% to accommodate a decrease in exhibit revenue. • Directed the team for the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities that, for the first time in the association’s history, entirely sold out the exhibit hall. Improved meeting revenue more than 300% based on exhibit and sponsorship sales as well as decreased expenses and the introduction of best practices to improve project management. • A lead team member of the 2007-2009 U.S. Department of State HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meetings, held in Rwanda, Uganda and Namibia, respectively. Managed short timelines, such as five months to organize the 2007 meeting for 1600 attendees in Kigali, Rwanda, where there are 300 hotel rooms and meeting space for 500. Worked with team to arrange 100 accommodation venues, 28 bus routes and three separate meeting venues. • Improved an abstract review process for the annual HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting which allowed a more thorough review of the 1600 abstracts by 200 worldwide program reviewers. Reduced staff hours for abstract assignments by half, which allowed reviewers extra time to complete their reviews. Also streamlined the registration process for the 400 accepted abstract presenters to improve pre-meeting collection of presentations. Show less

National Convention Sales Manager

• Oct 2002 - Jan 2006

Represented City of Phoenix, specifically assigned to the Midwest region and national religious markets. Worked with industry-renowned meeting planners from Chicago medical associations. Managed logistics of all client events, ranging from flying 30 planners to Phoenix for a familiarization tour to booking ten educational events with eight partner vendors for meeting planners in Chicago over four days. Accomplishments • Increased room night bookings in FY 2004/2005 25% over prior year bookings by increasing outreach and improving follow up to requests. • Established relationships with member properties and national sales representatives from the major hotel chains and learned firsthand the importance of strong vendor relationships in negotiating meeting concessions. Show less

Operations Manager

• 2001 - 2002

Meeting Planner

• Sep 1998 - Jan 2001