Kelley Butler Director of Meetings and Events McDonald’s Corporation
Susan Katz Director of Corporate Events and Travel True Value Company
Carolyn Pund, CMP, CMM Senior Manager of Global Meetings and Events Cisco Systems
Kati Quigley, CMP Director of Event Marketing Microsoft Corporation
Lisa Schelle, CMM Director of Global Meetings and Events Nike Inc.
How did you end up in your current position?
Kelley Butler I actually came on staff here at McDonald’s eight years ago. I was a consultant for them at the time. So I came in specifically for the purpose of bringing my event and entertainment background in, which was a discipline they did not have here.
Carolyn Pund My past roles have spanned meeting functions in finance, procurement, travel, corporate meetings, and event marketing. Prior to joining Cisco in ’08, I spent 11 years in event marketing at another high-tech company. I joined Cisco in the travel/meeting organization, and through conversations to build operational efficiencies between complementary job functions, the SMM [strategic meetings management] team joined event marketing and continues to support enterprise-wide meetings and events.
Kati Quigley I have been at Microsoft for almost 10 years now, but I just switched jobs within Microsoft. So for the first nine-and-a-half years I was director of event marketing in the central marketing group, [which] went across all events in the company. I just switched to the worldwide partner group. And so I own and manage the community of partners as it relates to events.
Lisa Schelle I was working in our event marketing/meeting management department,
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which reported up to global brands, and our department supported the entire company plus our affiliates. They did a realignment, because we did support the whole company rather than just global brands. So I changed my role and took the majority of the department under corporate services, which reports up to finance. And then global brands kept a couple of dedicated planners for their group. I am currently the director of global meetings and events, so I went from a department manager under that group and moved the rest of the team over.
Susan Katz It was a recommendation by somebody who I worked with who suggested that I take a look into the opportunity. It was intriguing to me, because I report in through the VP of marketing. And I thought that that was an interesting opportunity to really grow and learn about marketing, and I truly thought it was the appropriate place for what we were doing, because what we were doing is face-to-face marketing.
Have you worked in another sector of meeting planning — association or government, for example?
LS Early in my meeting career I worked for a not-for-profit organization in New York City. It was very different on many fronts, but probably the most different was that it was all at a venue. So the meetings were pretty turnkey. They were [a] foreign-policy [organization], so the role was