I’ve worked in global event planning for 15+ years - AMA

I’ve spent the last 15+ years working in global event planning, both on the agency side and in-house - supporting all sizes of corporate programs. I recently transitioned to meeting and event venue sourcing and executive travel support for organizations.

Over the years I’ve planned and have been the lead for everything from $20k leadership boot camps to 12,000 person citywide conferences. Budgets have ranged up to about $4M across programs including:

• executive retreats
• board meetings
• incentive trips
• customer and user conferences
• top tier annual sponsorship packages
• sports hospitality and customer experiences
• tradeshows
• leadership meetings and internal events

Some of these came together with only a few months of lead time, so I’ve seen a lot of the behind the scenes challenges that go into making events happen. I've also had my hand in dynamic budget breakdowns and planning, on the fly decisions, last minute scrambles, and lots of celebratory champagne.

I know many executive assistants end up owning pieces of meetings, offsites, and executive travel on top of everything else already on your plate. I’m doing this in hopes of sharing some perspective and answering questions from both an event planning and venue sourcing lens.

Here to knowledge share so feel free to AMA!