I suppose I’ve always been drawn to planning, operations and logistics, and regularly took on projects that involved planning large events. I was an admissions counselor right out of college and planned one of our large recruitment days each year.
When I found myself looking for a job in Washington, D.C, one of my contacts from my admissions days introduced me to my mentor, Louisa Hollman. Louisa was an independent planner working on a contract whose scope was getting big enough to recommend a full-time position to the organization. They hired me based on her recommendation, and I planned three large banquet events in that role. Eager to move on to something more complex and to be in the education world again, I applied for a senior coordinator role at CASE, my current organization, and have been here since.
I felt so fortunate to be able to meet a personal hero, Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy. He was a keynote speaker for our annual Summit conference and I have been following his career and admiring the way he approaches education for a long time.
I work with an amazing team at CASE, and our volunteers are top notch. I want to create a pipeline for finding, training and rewarding volunteer speakers and facilitators that sets the standard for associations like ours. We engage more than 3,000 volunteer speakers around the world annually, and with our ambitious membership growth goals, it’s going to be even more important that we have a way and means to provide them with the resources they need to be successful.
My biggest challenge is keeping up with the trends and demands of learners and attendees from year to year and keeping our meetings fresh and interesting. At CASE, the North America team plans 56 events each year. It can be hard to get above the churn and implement experimental ideas that will move our events forward. MPI is helpful here, because with so many chapter events and the webinar content on the MPI site, we’re able to regularly network with other planners and suppliers to share and learn.
The meeting industry has at once humbled me and made me more confident. There are so many amazing meeting professionals I’ve met over the years. I’m often struck by their dedication and the expertise that they bring to the field and their organizations. It’s such a warm and caring industry, but also very much a business. Over the years I have strived to learn as much as I can so that I can also be one of those informed voices.
My mentors in this industry have been more than I could possibly name, but I think often of the person who got me into this mess, Louisa Hollman. She approaches her job with the perfect mix of seriousness and levity, and I work to lead by her example. This is a high-stress and high-stakes career. If you can’t laugh at yourself or some of the crazy circumstances you find yourself in, you’ll be a lot less happy.
My first supervisor at CASE, Mary-Kathleen Todd, is one of the smartest, calmest and most diplomatic people I’ve had the pleasure to learn from. Her confidence in me and our partnership in my first years at CASE have been instrumental in my own success. I joined MPI in 2007 at her urging, as she was on the MPI Potomac Chapter board at the time. She encouraged me to join a committee and I met some really terrific colleagues on the Women’s Leadership Committee. I moved up to co-chair of marketing, and eventually served my term as board director for education. I have really gotten a solid education through MPI and the connections I’ve made.
