CMPs Among 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry

According to Successful Meetings, these luminaries were "chosen because they have either contributed to the business of meetings, made is easier for meeting professionals to do their jobs, helped raise awareness of the industry, or, through their actions, have had a significant impact on the industry."

Industry Associations

Martha Sheridan, President and CEO of the Providence/Warwick CVB and Chair of Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI)
Sheridan is not only one of the few women to head a CVB, but one of the very few to be elected to lead the board for DMAI. So far on her watch, the organization has completed a research study called "Generation Next," which predicts what the destination marketing organization (DMO) of tomorrow will look like. Under Sheridan, DMAI has launched a new database of core performance metrics that will help DMOs benchmark themselves against the rest of the industry. Called Destination Arena, the new database currently features nine months of data from more than 100 DMOs in 13 countries. By the end of 2014, DMAI hopes the database will have tripled in size.

Shawna Suckow, Founder and President of Senior Planners Industry Network (SPIN)
Suckow has run SPIN for six years now, and she continues to use the organization as a platform to offer a variety of forums for meeting planners at the highest level. Her most recent innovation is The Hive Network, a private community that connects veteran suppliers with meeting planners for education and networking.

Karen Kotowski, CEO of the Convention Industry Council (CIC)
It's been a busy year for the head of the CIC, beginning with the February release of an updated "Economic Significance of Meetings to the U.S. Economy" study, showing that 1.83 million meetings were held in the U.S., attended by 225 million delegates and contributing more that $115 billion to the GDP. Kotowski has also signed off on the CIC's latest initiative: creating a working group to take a hard look at the issue of room-block poaching.

Planners

David Peckinpaugh, President of Maritz Travel Company; Co-Chair of Meetings Mean Business Coalition (MMBC)
As president of Maritz Travel Company for the past three years, Peckinpaugh has overseen the company's expansion by increasing its global and experiential design capabilities, notably by acquiring Experient two years ago. This year, the company increased its global focus by adding three global general managers to its team and continued to incorporate science into workplace engagement with the Maritz Institute. As co-chair of the MMBC, he has worked to ensure the industry is operating by the same playbook. This has included the launch this year of an online industry toolkit as well as a free MMBC app that speaks to the economic value of meetings.

Industry Advocates

Pat Schaumann, Director of Professional Development, Healthcare Sector, for MPI
As the founder of the International Medical Meeting Professionals Association and director of the MPI Healthcare Meeting Compliance Certificate (HMCC), Schaumann anticipated the future confusion around the Sunshine Act – and she set out to help solve it. Schaumann is the author of Breaking the Code to Healthcare Compliance, a health policy resource book for meeting professionals, physicians, and manufacturers that addresses the impact of the National Physician Payment Transparency Program: Open Payments (formally the Physician Payments Sunshine Act) on the industry. Schaumann is the first recipient of the International Destination Management Professional of the Year award by ADME International and was most recently named "One of the 25 Most Influential Women in Business" by the St. Louis Business Journal.

Congratulations, CMPs! To read more about these influential CMPs and to see the entire list, please visit Successful Meetings.

The Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) is a
program of the Convention Industry Council

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