From Classroom to Career: Event Education That Works with Carrie Davenport and Candace Fitch

Candace Fitch:

We have to, like everywhere, justify our use of resources and the need for this program to people who, like you've said, don't understand that events is the biggest thing. And so you're sitting in a room of people who are like, "Well, not everybody wants to be a wedding planner." And I'm like, "How many professional conferences did you go to this year?" And they're all like, "Oh, we got to one every semester and we spent our whole summer traveling to them." And I'm like, "Who do you think plants them? We need these people."

Alyssa Peltier:

Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences well, that takes a village, and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you're listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Hello everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? I'll be this week's host. My name is Alyssa and I am super excited to have you join us for this week's very special episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. I am joined by my co-host Rachel Andrews, and we've got a really special show with some personal undertones to it. We'll get into that in just a second, but with two very fantastic guests that I am excited to introduce to you all right now.

So first up we have Carrie Davenport, who is a multifaceted professional in the events industry, known for her expertise as an event planner. She's also a speaker, a leadership mentor, and a writer as well. Currently, she is a lead event manager for the industry engagement team at Altria. 

Second, we are joined by Candace Fitch, a renowned professor at Virginia Tech who has worked for several years on a variety of hospitality industry positions in food and beverage. She's also had experience in sales and event planning throughout her career as well. She graduated from New England Law in 2004 and began her career as an attorney, shockingly enough, focusing on hospitality clients and engaging hospitality employees and students about risk and legal issues. Candace, wow, that sounds super exciting.

Candace Fitch:

I don't know about exciting, but I always say I'm the hospitality mutt in the department.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yeah, well, there's an event for every field, right? So these interests have spanned into academia as well, now working through event management and also bringing some of that legal and risk expertise into the hospitality wherewithal. So with that, I just want to nod, since both Rachel and myself are grads from the Virginia Tech, not program [inaudible 00:02:40] here that we're going to talk about today, but from Virginia Tech University, it's a really special episode for us.

Rachel Andrews:

I just want to give Carrie one more nod. She is on the board for Virginia Tech Hospitality Tourism program. So we thought it would be really interesting to bring together the mix of this and higher ed here. So I'm really excited for you both join. So welcome to our podcast.

Candace Fitch:

Thank you for having us.

Carrie Davenport:

Thank you.

Alyssa Peltier:

All right, Candace, I'm going to start with you. Admittedly, I graduated from the Graphic Design program at Virginia Tech. I don't even know what it's called anymore, Visual Communications and Design. I was not in the hospitality, tourism and management track, and nor was Rachel, is that right Rach?

Rachel Andrews:

I was a communications marketing major, but I planned a ton of events at Tech.

Alyssa Peltier:

So from my understanding, there's been a lot of movement since both Rachel and I graduated many months ago. We won't talk about the years on that, but we'd love to level set for our listeners on where the HTM program is at Virginia Tech and how it's evolved over your tenure at the institution.

Candace Fitch:

So I've been here eight years. I was brought in eight years ago to work in the Event Management class. It was one class at that time of 25 students, and they wanted to develop and grow at least the class, and there was thoughts of it growing into a minor, and that happened fairly quickly. I started with that one class of 25 and the next year it was two sections of the class, and it kept growing, and then we started applying for it to be a minor.

Virginia Tech changed their general education program to they call a Pathways Program. The idea was to try and get students to take courses all across campus and be more well-rounded students. 

And so we became a Pathways class and then the minor is a Pathways minor. So we get students from all across campus. I just finished up a class, the capstone class that they use to finish their minor. And most all of the students in there were from the communication school, so we get a lot from your program and we love that. So it's really helped us expand the program across campus also with people knowing. I had a meeting with a group of students last night and one of them said, "You need to market this better because I loved this minor and no one knows about it, and everybody I talk to about it is like, 'Oh my gosh, that sounds so cool. How do I sign up for that?'"

Rachel Andrews:

It starts [inaudible 00:05:00] the workforce too. I think what you're doing is very, very great and marketing it would be huge because when I was there and when Alyssa was there, same with Carrie I think, I just looked at the HTM major and I thought, "I don't really want to work in hotels," and I don't think students, and maybe you're doing a better job with this, but I don't think students know how big the events world is. They think weddings, they think social parties, but they don't think the business element of it, and quite frankly, and I loved my time at Virginia Tech, I thought what I did with my major, I took a hodgepodge of PR, marketing, psychology and then coupled with the extracurricular things that I did and made that into a events career. But I wish I would've learned more about contracts, and wish I would've learned more about budgeting, and things that really fit into the event professional world, but-

Candace Fitch:

Well, hopefully that's exactly what I'm doing here because that's exactly what I do. And all across campus, this minor is now the second-biggest minor on campus, so we're getting there.

Rachel Andrews:

That's awesome for workforce, especially with so many Gen Z and folks coming in, I think the status by 2030 is 30 or 40% is going to be Gen Z, Millennials in our workforce. So it's so important what you're doing.

Alyssa Peltier:

Carrie, I'd love to hear a little bit more about the collaboration and the curriculum development. I know you sit uniquely on the board and so you have this industry profession experience that's influencing the direction of the curriculum development. So can you tell us a little bit more about that dynamic and how that comes to life?

Carrie Davenport:

Sure, and hi everybody. I definitely was a Tech grad. I'm a Hokie through and through. I did not take any classes in the HTM program, which I fully regret now, but again, I didn't know much about it. I was a psych major. I was lucky enough to get tapped a few years ago by another alum and board member to join the board. And I'll just really walk through what we do for the students on the board, really quickly. We help with several things, one being fundraising. So throughout the year we try to utilize our influence to help fundraise for the department and for the students in the department, for field trips and other things related to the hospitality and tourism management arena. We also work in mentorship, internships, and thirdly, we work for access for the students. So if you think about resources, jobs, again, internships, that sort of thing.

Now that we're looking at having this, while we do have this new major, which I'm really excited about, a few of us on the planning side have been asked to come together as a little bit of a task force to review the current curriculum and think about what the students will need in the future. Rachel, to your point, in business, and Candace, I know you do a lot in legal, so how we can utilize those things to help shape this holistic meeting planner right out of the gate, who understands logistic but also the business side of things. So I think that's my role in a nutshell with HTM Board. It's far beyond that as well, as we look towards the future for these students.

Rachel Andrews:

I think that's great that they have a board that is in the field, giving back like that because, Candace, as you've probably alluded to, there's so much that changes day to day in the industry. You can have someone get the CMP, but there's always things changing in terms, especially with technology, especially with any trends coming out, and I feel like it's just rapid fire for you. How do you prepare the students for that and keep your curriculum relevant?

Candace Fitch:

Like Carrie said, we use our board heavily. We rely on them to help us get feedback from the industry. They fill out surveys, and so we rely on their expertise. We also have a number of guest speakers. Most every class, all of my colleagues teach here, we try and bring in industry guest speakers to go over things and talk about their career path, how they got started, what they deal with on a daily basis, what might impact the industry, how we're recovering from COVID, so we're still talking about that. So all of the things we use guest speakers. I know in my classes I make them do current events, so they're finding things in the news, and online, and all around to see how the industry looks in the world, and the things that you don't think are hospitality-related, very much are. And so trying to get them to look at the news and listen to things a little more critically with how it could impact them and their industry.

Alyssa Peltier:

Candace, you tell us a little bit more about, I know we talked about this in our prep calls for this, but I believe you called it the capstone project for the students, what that looks like. I know that was really a true real life application that they're basically running an event, end to end.

Candace Fitch:

Absolutely. So the students come into the capstone, they finish the minor and they'll be finishing the major with a capstone class. It's an Event and Experience Management workshop we call it, and they have to come in, and plan, and actually have an event happen in the 16 weeks they're in class. And I give them pretty much free will. They can do whatever they want. So some students come in and do sporting events. We've had a pickleball tournament this semester. We had a one-mile fun run this semester. And so they do sporting events. They do creative things like paint and sips. They've had concerts at local bars here. Some of the venues, the small local venues here have been really supportive of our program and working with students to have events to bring more business to them, because they see the benefit of this also.

They go out and find sponsors. They find sponsors that donate gift cards for prizes for the tournaments or any contest they're having. And a lot of them actually do some fundraising. So I've had some events over the years where you have to bring something to donate to Micah's Backpack or a woman's shelter. This semester, the students of the one-mile fun run raised $80 for the USO. One group had, they painted pumpkins and they had dogs from the local animal shelter so that you could see the dogs, and pet the dogs, and paint pumpkins outside. It was a beautiful day. They raised $1,100 for the local animal shelter.

They're learning, they're actually executing an event. The one-mile fun run had to get a permit for the road closures, so they go through absolutely everything and they always give feedback that it's really helpful to see how everything they've learned over the years in the minor comes together and actually works in the workplace. And I tell them, "Then you have something you can go and talk about in interviews too. You've actually done these things. It's not a theoretical idea of what you could do. You've actually done it," and so they seem pretty proud of that and they should be.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yeah. Carrie, let's talk to you on the real world readiness of all of this. Wow, that was a mouthful. I don't know how [inaudible 00:11:53] out, but have you worked with students that have not necessarily been through Virginia Tech's program, but similar, right? We know that this is not an anomaly. There are many that exist in the university space. Do you see a lot of value in that hands-on experience managing your own programs moving forward?

Carrie Davenport:

Yeah, absolutely. I've had many internship programs and interns over the year come in and get really applicable real world experience, and I myself took an internship in the event sector, even though I wasn't in events, at Virginia Tech because I was told that that was something that I needed to get a leg up on the competition as I was going into the job market. So for me, that was the most beneficial thing that I could have done. I worked at the Jefferson Center Foundation in Roanoke, and that was my internship, and I learned things about CRMs, and databases, and iMIS, and memberships, and I doubt that I would've learned in the path that I was taking. So really, really applicable. I also, as Candace was saying, I get to guest speak for some of the programs and events for Tech.

So I'm getting in there and I get to learn firsthand what students know about events, what their perception about event management is. And to your point, Rachel, it's a lot about, oh, I know about wedding planning. I'm not interested, do I go into hotels? And I get an opportunity to say, "Hey, you're missing the whole association management piece, the whole corporate management piece, the special events, concerts, sporting events side of it." And it's incredible to see their faces light up like, wow, I didn't realize that there was anything outside of hotel management and just wedding planning. So for me, that personal touch means everything, again, that is that accessibility into the real world, and what I do, and bridging that gap between people that are interested in HTM and actually becoming an event manager in the future.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yeah, I think there's a ridiculous amount of diversity and skills within this career that is so oftentimes just bucketed as event planner, right? There's so much skilling that is involved, and honestly, it changes every day. Especially us living in the technology space, we see this as a challenge from a lot of our customers because there is a need for specificity in... The contracts management might be one role at one organization. Oftentimes, I work with some of our largest global brands, so the deeper you can go on one thing, the better. Sometimes you get really good with the technology pieces, sometimes you get really good with the production pieces. I know Rachel's team has subject matter experts in production, so having a program and a curriculum that really embraces you and shows you the diversity of what's possible in a career, I just really think sets you up for longevity in the role and not just thinking that it's a one-size-fits-all thing. We've used the stereotype of the wedding planner, but that's of but one type, right? And just commentary, I know that's not a question. Rach, were you going to say something?

Rachel Andrews:

Yeah, I just was going to say kudos to you all because we like to say at Cvent, I don't know if other people say this, but events are the biggest industry you've never heard of. And I think that you all are doing your best to rebrand that and bring that to the forefront of, where it starts is with the students, and if they don't know that that world is out there, they don't understand that landscape, then how are they ever supposed to come into this field? So kudos to you for that, first of all, and I was just going to piggyback on what Alyssa said with the different roles. We have event technologists on our team. We have a strategic audience generation event marketers. My friends that are in the industry, I have someone that all they do is market sporting events and they're account managers for sporting venues, or they're at a higher level doing VIP events for CEOs. And so there's just so many different avenues I think you can go down.

I was also laughing, and this is a shameless plug, but for my team, I just did the math, I probably hired in my 14 years at Cvent, I probably hired 30 interns and I would say probably over 1/3 of them have been from Virginia Tech. And that's just awesome for... It may have been a little nepotism of me slightly [inaudible 00:16:07] looking at their resumes and saying, "Oh, they're in the HTM program, let's definitely go with them," but I think that there are so many. If you're in those programs and some of the universities, like Virginia Tech are doing it really well, that's just awesome.

Alyssa Peltier:

Candace, can you talk a little bit about, I know we talked slightly about the maturity of the function, and the curriculum, and how events manifest themselves in academia. Can you talk about how this has evolved since you've been at Virginia Tech and perhaps comment on what you see going on elsewhere? I don't know if you have that vantage point, but the development of these curriculums outside of just the Virginia Tech establishment.

Candace Fitch:

Yeah, it's been really interesting and fun to be in it in the grassroots. My background is hospitality and tourism management. It's all I've ever done. I went to Johnson & Wales for culinary. I went to Cornell for hotel management. So I've always done this, but to be in a program that's just starting out is actually really exciting. Frustrating at times, but exciting.

In every university, a lot of bureaucracy, you have to go through committee approvals and it has to be approved all the way up the line. And we have to, like everywhere, justify our use of resources and the need for this program to people who, like you've said, don't understand that events is the biggest thing. And so you're sitting in a room of people who are like, "Well, not everybody wants to be a wedding planner." And I'm like, "How many professional conferences did you go to this year?" And they're all like, "Oh, we got to one every semester, and we spent our whole summer traveling to them." And I'm like, "Who do you think plants them? We need these people." And so that's been really fun, and it's interesting to try and keep on top of trends and figure out where our program's going to go because we're so new.

I know one frustration I've had is we have the minor in place and now it's going to be a major, but the classes aren't that much different. And I feel like we really need to be developing new classes to add, to make it a really meaty major that can compete with all the others that are already well-known in the industry. And so we're working on that and that's where we're using Carrie, and our board members, and our industry partners to say, "We have a real opportunity here to really grow new classes that are relevant right now. We don't have to change them. We're developing what you need today and what you're going to need tomorrow." And I think that gives us a leg up a little bit on some of our competitors because they have classes they've had for years and they're just tweaking what happens in those classes. But we have an opportunity to really create new and relevant classes for the industry, and they might be very different than they were 10 years ago.

Alyssa Peltier:

So true. Carrie, so I'd like to hear where you see some of those gaps. Where are we trying to make headway?

Carrie Davenport:

I won't say gaps, I'll say challenges, right? Just like Candace said, it just sounds better. As we are an evolving profession, we need to look at more AI. As we are still business we need to look at, and Candace does a great job of this, the financial piece, logistics piece and the legal piece. So it's taking some of that and tying it together, but also figuring out what the future is going to look like for event management as a business in general, from the association side, from the corporate side, from all of the other pieces. And sometimes it's really hard to sell what isn't easy to define.

I just read a study, I want to say it was PCMA, and they said that for meeting planners, there were 300 different titles submitted. So we're having an identity crisis, I [inaudible 00:19:46] events, right? Some people are planners, coordinators, specialists, directors of education, on the marketing side. We fall under so many different departments in the real world that it's hard to sometimes get a grasp on what the core curriculum should be. So I think that's our challenge right now, and as a task force working on the major, it's hard because each of us has our own lane that we're in. One of us is heavy in the AV, the other is a hotel event manager. I'm corporate, we have associations and we each want our own thing.

Rachel Andrews:

It's like where do we career path if the industry itself doesn't even know what the career paths are?

Carrie Davenport:

Exactly. If there's this big perception, it's hard to sell what we do, because people are like, "Oh, it's just this. It's just events."

Rachel Andrews:

That's like us making our own path, I think in some ways, because we as event professionals are scrappy. We get stuff done. We're leaders. We're project managers. We have, in some cases, made our own path through this, but I think with the university's help, I think we can organize it better, but I love what you said, because it's a problem still. And I've been in the industry two decades. Even on my team, I was trying to do the hierarchy of the actual title names and what is an event manager here is really senior, but an event manager in the UK could be right out of college.

Alyssa Peltier:

Yeah. I think what I'm getting at from what you guys are all saying is celebrate the vastness. Celebrate how big this thing is as opposed to being reduced to something. I don't want to say, "So small," but it isn't just one thing, right? It's all of this, and when it's all of this, that means it's a really big deal and it justifies all of this conversation, certainly all of this investment in developing curriculum, and growing, and retaining career professionals in this way. Okay, so last question for everyone, and Rachel, I'm going to ask you too, because you also are bringing up talent in this sphere. What advice would you give to students coming into the workforce? So Candace, I'll start with you as you're working day to day, day in and day out with students.

Candace Fitch:

Entering the workforce, I say, keep your head down and your attitude up. We get a lot of students now who are interested in this lovely idea of work-life balance and they're like, "Well, I don't want to be a wedding planner, because I don't want to work weekends, and I don't want to work nights, and I don't want to work..." And I'm like, "Okay, you don't have to." There are event planners, government event planners, the Society of Government Meeting Professionals is one of the largest associations for us. They do government work. So, like we were just saying about the vastness, one thing for me that attracted me to hospitality, and that I have loved throughout my career is if I don't like what I'm doing today, tomorrow I could be in a whole new trajectory in the same industry. And I like to think that I'm an example to show the students that.

I started as a chef. I was a meeting planner. I was a conference salesperson. I've done all these things in private clubs, hotels, restaurants. You can work anywhere and do anything you want, and if you decide that's not what you want to do, there's another path for you still in hospitality. And so just get in there, and start looking around, and decide what you like and don't like about certain things.

A lot of students will come to me and say, "The only job I can find is in a hotel and I don't really want to work in a hotel." And I'm like, "Okay, get in there, and do your very best, and figure out what you don't like about it, because sometimes knowing what you don't like is more important than knowing what you do, because it will correct your path. And so you think you're going in and you find there are things you don't like, because everybody, in every single job, has parts of it they don't like. And figure out what that is and how important that is to you, and then course correct, but there's still room for you in hospitality as we've mentioned. IT, finance, risk management, HR. Whatever you want to do, we have space for you in hospitality and we can teach you how to get there."

Carrie Davenport:

I'll say, stay curious, ask questions. I was terrified to ask questions when I first started in this industry. And you're going to learn a lot in school, but you still need to ask questions, find your peers, find your champions. So find people who are willing to be your mentor, and work for you, and open doors, and provide you with resources. I think that was the biggest help to my career, was finding the right champions and mentors to help guide my path and introduce me to things that I didn't even know existed, like PCMA and MPI, and all of the other groups that exist out there. And for the students, get involved right now. There are so many student programs under EIC, PCMA, MPI, I'm sure we'll drop all these acronyms in the show notes, make sure that you get involved at this level and your network is going to be really, really beneficial for helping you move where you move in the future and throughout your career. So that's it for me.

Candace Fitch:

Carrie's, so right on that. And a mentor or a coach doesn't have to be a formal... We had some event planners speaking on a panel and one of them said, "I asked somebody to be my mentor, and they were like, 'Well, I don't know how to be a mentor. I don't know how to do that. I don't know what that means. That sounds so formal.'" And she was like, "Can I ask you questions about what you do every day?" And he was like, "Sure." And she's like, "That's all I want. That's a mentor to me." And so if you find somebody who's doing something you think you might be interested in, ask them to go for a cup of coffee, or lunch, or something and pick their brain. What do they like? What do they do every day? What do they not like? What about their job appeals to them? Because sometimes that's how you find out, and that's all a mentor is just someone who's guiding you a little bit in your career path.

Rachel Andrews:

You guys said all of mine, but I'm going to break it down a little bit further I think, just to round it out. And I have another guest on the podcast. I got the HokieBird with me. I realized that he sits right next to me. The bird sits right over here, so then you couldn't see him. But for the listeners, I have a HokieBird stuffed animal. I guess my takeaway for the workforce, I have people that ask me to go to coffee all the time just to help pick brains. My experience is probably not unique, right? I went into PR right after I graduated, thinking it would be more in the event space, but it really wasn't.

One of the things I would recommend is, and why I think your program is so important to get the hands-on experience, is you should learn if you like it or not, because you can go down this whole path and then get to planning something and then the stress is too much for you. So start small, volunteer for an event or two, hopefully by the point you've graduated college, you should know if you like it or not at a smaller scale, right? So that's it. Getting your hands dirty a little bit through either volunteering or planning your own smaller events would be one.

Number two would be I did a lot of interviewing. I asked people in the events industry to chat with me. I interviewed people at AV companies. I interviewed people at... And these were friends of friends that I had either met throughout college or professors introduced me to them. I interviewed people in TV production. I interviewed people at Jack Morton, which is an experiential marketing agency, and I just learned what they do day to day. And a lot of it was business driven, which scared me because I didn't go to the business school. I didn't learn econ. I didn't learn how to do budgets, but luckily I had great mentors on the job that taught me how to do those things. But in those interviews I learned little pieces of the different industries and I thought, "This isn't what I want to do. This is what I want to do." And mostly it was just to get my foot in the door in the job market because it is hard to do that initially, right?

Luckily with internships and things like that, that also helps you as well get that experience before you graduate, in internships, so you can narrow that down. And then what Carrie said, the connections. I joined MPI way too late. I joined it probably 10 years after I should have. I should have joined it when I graduated college, or PCMA, or ASAE, or all of these acronym soups that we are presenting you with, like SGMP. There's so many that are out there, if you just google, meeting professional or production manager associations, there's an association for everyone. If they have a local chapter, it just helps you meet people and then you can get jobs through meeting people. That's a big thing. And then the last thing would be certifications.

I think there's things like an event tech that you can get that are free like, shameless plug, Cvent, Cvent certification is free and you can get yourself certified. You can get AI certifications, which will help you in your events role. If you want to pay a little bit of money, you can go through those associations we just mentioned, like PCMA and MPI, that have CMP, CEM, CMM. There's another acronym soup for you, but there's a ton of certification you can get out there and learn, and then really get your teeth sunk into the industry, that I would recommend. So just kind of summarized a lot of what you just said, but those would be my top four things.

Alyssa Peltier:

I'll throw one out there too, and it's a double click into one that you just said, Rachel, but I encourage people to really understand the business of events. And by that I mean the business that you're supporting. So whether it's an association, or a higher education, or it isn't a corporation, understanding the why behind the event is really important. And it oftentimes becomes secondary when there's a laundry list of to-do things that are on your day-to-day planning task sheet, right? And the why behind it sometimes gets lost. And we do see professionals, even much later in their careers, struggling to justify not just the events, but also their role at the organization, right?

So getting really tight with the business conversation, the business language, I really think will help uplevel you as an individual, but also the career as a whole. And that's something that I lean into every day, really speaking that language of, we call it the C-suite, but certainly there's the same thing on the... I mean, not the hospitality, the association side of the house. Nonprofits have their same language and it really helps to grow and to evolve within the role itself.

Candace Fitch:

Yes, I get students all the time that are like, "Well, I didn't think this involved budgeting. I'm not good at math and I don't want to do budgeting." And I said, "Even if you want to be a wedding planner, the couple only has so much money. You have to know where it's going. What pot are they going to... In order to understand that, you have to understand why they're doing this." And students look at me and say, "Well, to get married." And I'm like, "You can go to the courthouse for $50 and get married, but $30,000 on a Saturday seems really significant to me." And you have to be able to tell them where that money's going, and you have to know where it's going because you need to understand why they're spending this money on something like this. It doesn't matter what area of events you're doing it in. It's a business, and you have to understand that.

Alyssa Peltier:

I think that's a perfect way to wrap this episode this week. I do want to thank Candace and Carrie both for joining us. It's been a lovely conversation. And last, it's really hard to believe, but this is actually our final episode of 2024. I can't believe we're already at the end of the year. I would love to wish all of our listeners a really happy, and healthy, and safe holiday season, and we'll be back in the new year with our 2025 hot trends episode, which we're really excited to record. That will launch January 8th. With that, see you next year.

Candace Fitch:

Thank you.

Alyssa Peltier:

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews:

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers, just like you, discover great events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia:

Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes content, updates and some extra doses of inspiration.

Rachel Andrews:

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Felicia:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.