The first corporate meetings buyer to chair Meeting Professionals International's board of directors in six years took office this month, promising to push the association's new strategic plan of globalization and enhanced communication.
New chairwoman Angie Pfeifer, also assistant vice president of corporate meetings, incentives and travel for Winnipeg-based Investors Group Financial Services, began her one-year term a few weeks before MPI's annual World Education Congress in Montreal begins on July 29.
"My plans are to really make sure that we have clarified and communicated our updated vision to the members. The vision is to build a rich global meetings industry community," Pfeifer said, adding that the mission of the association is to "make our members more successful by building human connections through knowledge and ideas, through relationships and through marketplaces."
The vision is executed by four strategic imperatives: to evolve to a global community, reimagine the business relationships with chapters, elevate the member conversation and experience and build a great organization, Pfeifer said, crediting "new leadership within—with the new CEO" Bruce MacMillan with the development of the updated plan
(Meetings Today, Nov. 6, 2006).Updating the plan began last fall, and it was solidified and approved by the board of directors in February. MPI plans to complete communicating the vision, mission and strategic imperatives by the end of the summer.
"It's been very accelerated with remarkable results in a very short time," she said.
One of the plan's main focuses is putting more power into the hands of the members, Pfeifer said. Five communities have been created to allow members to choose what topics in the industry interest them. The communities are divided into geography (chapters), practice (vertical industry segments), peers, lifestyle and marketplaces.
"We are going engage our members throughout this process in determining what success looks like and what is relevant within each of those communities," Pfeifer said. "These offer different groups or segments so that members who have things in common—be it best practices, be it issues—have a place where they can now engage with other members. They can self-select what is the most important to them based on where they are in their career."
The communities will have opportunities to meet both online and face-to-face, and a major part of this initiative will be rolled out at this month's World Education Congress.
The Montreal WEC will offer a session—"Meeting Industry Town Hall on Climate Change"—co-created by members offering feedback on what the session should look like and what information it should cover.
Members also have a chance to give feedback and talk among themselves through blogs and wikis on MPI's Web site, which "allows members to participate at their convenience, 24 hours a day if need be, which plays well into the fact that we're a global community," Pfeifer said.
So far, the changes have elicited positive responses from members, she said.
"Some of the most senior members who have been in the industry for a very long time and are very experienced have come back to us with, 'This is great, what you're doing. I've never been more confident in what MPI's doing and where we're going than I am today,' " said Pfeifer.
Pfeifer, the first corporate buyer to chair the association since Motorola's Evelyn Laxgang ended her yearlong term in July 2001
(Meetings Today, June 12, 2000), has been in the meetings industry for 17 years and has been involved with MPI since 1994. She previously chaired what is now known as the Global Corporate Circle of Excellence and is starting her fifth year on the board of directors.
"After being involved on the board for three years, I made a decision that MPI has been very good to me," Pfeifer said. "The meetings industry has been very good to me, and a way for me to give to MPI and a way for me to give back to the industry was by getting involved on the board and getting my name in for the chair position."