MPI Ushering In New Chair

Confident that the most trying times for the industry and association alike are in the past, Meeting Professionals International will further implement its new strategic plan, guiding education, marketing and fundraising activities according to its tenets, said the incoming chairwoman of MPI's board.

Theresa Breining, president of San Diego-based independent meetings management firm Concepts Worldwide, will succeed current chairman George Aguel, a Disney sales executive, at MPI's annual World Education Congress next month in San Francisco. Breining, who will serve a one-year term, takes the helm of an organization undergoing significant changes. In addition to the loss of former association head Ed Griffin, who resigned April 30 after 12 years as CEO, a position MPI at press time had yet to fill, the association in February approved its first strategic plan.

The three-prong approach focuses heavily on qualitatively and quantitatively proving the benefits of meetings, and the people who plan and manage them, to organizational senior management and will color all of MPI's education and fundraising efforts, Breining said. "The focus of my term is the implementation of the strategic plan," she said. "It will allow the industry and MPI to reach the next level, as long as we make sure it becomes relevant.

"We want to reach the people who are senior decision makers in an organization, CEOs, CFOs, chief marketing officers," Breining continued. "They may not understand they can use meetings in a more strategic way, as they're perceived now as something that may be necessary and may be not. We want to show how effective meetings can be."

Hand in hand with that goal is the plan's tenet to offer planners education and tools "to help their organizations see meetings as a more strategic element of their business," Breining said. "Focusing on meeting logistics is important and necessary, but planners must learn skills in areas like marketing and finance to help bring meetings up." The ammunition for these goals must include research. "Not anecdotal evidence, but figures that prove the value of meetings, including research done outside of MPI," she said.

The association in June released a study conducted with event marketing firm George P. Johnson Co. that shows 47 percent of corporations this year will increase their use of meetings as a marketing medium. Beyond that study, much of MPI's research is in the planning stages.

Funding research will be less of a problem than in years past. The MPI Foundation, the association's fundraising and research-conducting arm, nearly has reached its goal of $3 million, Breining said, after several years of difficulty raising money in a recessionary climate.

MPI also will conduct 30 percent more educational workshops and seminars at the San Francisco WEC than it did at the 2002 WEC in Toronto. "We kicked it up significantly, as our members wanted more and richer education," she said. Attendance for the show is 30 percent ahead of last year's pace. The 2002 Toronto WEC drew about 2,900 people.

The association, though, does not yet have a permanent president and CEO, and Breining, who chairs the search committee, would not offer any timetable for when a new executive would be hired. "We knew this would be a tough search," she said. "We have to find the right person." MPI Foundation executive vice president David DuBois presently leads MPI on an interim basis. Breining complimented DuBois and the association's staff: "The concern that when a leader leaves everything comes to a screeching halt has not been the case at all."