TCG Talks: This ongoing series will feature insights, interviews, and news from the TCG team, including incisive updates on timely topics in government relations and association management.
Annamarie T. Grisé, CMP, HMCC
How did you first get started in association and event management?
I got my associates degree in hospitality management, and then my bachelor’s in business management, and during that time I knew that I wanted to work in the hospitality field. I was bartending and waitressing at the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, MA., working full time and going to school full time, and I really enjoyed getting to know different people. I really loved the interactions I had with the guests that were coming into the hotel, so I knew that that was kind of the driver for me.
The Sheraton has a sales department, and I knew that I wanted to work there, coordinating with meeting planners, booking events, conferences, and social gatherings. Unfortunately, they weren’t hiring when I graduated. I ended up going into food sales for a local food distributor that has a branch in Springfield (they’re also nationwide). That taught me a lot about the sales world, which then allowed me to really develop specific skills as far as negotiating, getting to know people, how to really develop leads, prospects, soliciting, and things like that. And then when a position opened up at the Sheraton a few years later in the sales department, I was able to get the job and come in with the skills necessary to succeed in the role.
First, I worked with local corporate negotiated rates, working with companies and getting to know their corporate travelers one-on-one, which was really great for relationship building. It helped me to fill that need to further relationships and get to know people, and really be able to create an experience for guests. I started to work with some different groups for the hotel: a lot of associations, booking their annual meetings and conferences, some different corporate groups, some sports groups. I was promoted to senior sales manager, which also involved a manager-on-duty role where you were manager of the whole hotel and whatever was going on that evening. I was still fairly young, in my mid-20s, and I learned a lot of leadership skills and a lot of crisis management skills very quickly.
In 2014 I left and went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where they have a really unique conference services department. Now instead of selling the hotel, I was selling an entire campus: UMass has a hotel, a conference center, the fields, the residence halls, and the classroom space for summertime groups--a lot of big camps, and a lot of big associations that would require 2000-3000 beds. [Working at UMass] allowed me some time to figure out what I wanted to do next, and one of the goals I’d always had for myself was to earn my CMP, which is a Certified Meeting Professional designation. My boss really encouraged me and supported it, which was wonderful. It is a credential with a very rigorous test governed by the EIC, the Events Industry Council, and one of the partners of the EIC is MPI, Meeting Professionals International, a professional association for people in the meetings world. When I worked at the Sheraton and at UMass I was a member of MPI, and I attended networking and education events and volunteered. When I went to UMass I joined the board at MPI, as I started the route down the CMP path, and I ended up being voted President Elect. I became President of MPI’s CT River Valley Chapter, with a three-year term, which included a year as President Elect, a year as President, and then a year as Immediate Past President.
I earned my CMP in 2016--I had done all of my qualifications for it, taken the test, passed it--it was an incredible moment. I wanted to make the move from being a supplier to being a planner. I love the logistics, I love details, so it fit me very well. I had the opportunity to grow my career and made the move to TCORS in 2017 as an association and event management executive. It was a nice way to transfer my skills from the supplier side, working with meeting planners, and knowing “what are they looking for, what are they asking, how can your vendors work with you?”, to now being a planner, and knowing how to have the conversation from both sides, advocate for the client, and work with suppliers as partners. That's the benefit of going from the field side to the planning side.
What does the day-to-day look like today at TCORS? Has that changed over the past 18 months?
I have two associations that I work with everyday. That includes everything from planning and marketing their events, to doing their social media and e-blasts, to sitting on the committee meetings, working with the board, working with the chapter president, giving them feedback about what committees are doing, what members are saying, handling member inquiries, and some financials. It’s very fluid. Every day is definitely not the same, which is great. I was hosting a client this morning in the office for breakfast and a recap of their event, and then I had to hop on a meeting at 12 o’clock for programs, then I had to drive home to MA, and I’m working on a social media post right now. You’re always doing something different.
As far as with COVID, it didn’t really change the basics of our job. Especially for meetings, people have a need and desire to meet. They need connections. There are a couple of [tenets] that MPI uses: “Meetings mean business,” I love that phrase. “When we meet, we change the world.” MPI has a really great video that shows that a meeting isn’t necessarily sitting in the convention center watching a keynote. A meeting can be a rally, a meeting can be a march, a meeting can be a campaign. It’s so true: when you bring people together things can happen, things can change. That’s what I think I enjoy most about this job and why I love it so much, because I see when I bring people together, no matter whether it’s a nonprofit or a corporate group or an association, ideas come and they flow and connections and networking happen.
When COVID hit, especially with my healthcare clients, they still needed to meet. They’re hospital leaders, healthcare leaders, and so they needed it more than ever. They needed the education, and then they were dealing with something so horrific that they needed the connection to one another. They would go home and they wouldn’t have any way to express what they were experiencing to their families, but then they could together. With the first virtual networking program for one of the associations, we had 40 people on, a lot of them still in their scrubs and masks. It was incredible because you saw that there was still a need for them to come together.
I have two tasks: the two associations and all of their day-to-day, and six event management clients that are solely on the event management side. They rely on fundraisers for large portions of their operating budgets and income, so they still had a need to fundraise. I had three clients who did virtual galas. During the month of March 2020, there were whispers of “What’s going to happen? Do we need to cancel this event? Do we need to postpone? Do we need to reschedule?” So everything got postponed to October of 2020, and then it was like, what now? October of 2020 is still going to be bad, so now we need to go virtual. So now all of the sudden you’re learning how to do virtual programming: everything from Zoom, to working with the productions companies on virtual galas and doing recordings, to scripting and storyboarding. You’re immersed in the virtual event world. I felt like some people in this industry unfortunately did not fare well--but we did very well, because we had the opportunity. Our clients were open to “let’s try this, let’s do this.” I just thought: let me learn to do the best virtual events that I can do. And I really feel like I did that--really using those relationships with those vendors, the suppliers, and working with good people who are willing to help you, learn with you. A lot of us were learning and doing at the same time. I worked with two different production companies on virtual programming. They were such great partnerships with good people, who were in the same boat. Your client needs an annual meeting. Your client needs a trade show. Your client needs a gala. How do we do this in the virtual world? Things never changed other than the fact that it went virtual. Clients still needed to fundraise, and clients still needed to come together for educational and networking purposes.
What were some of the solutions that you and the production companies came up with to reinvent a virtual gala or virtual fundraiser?
With one of my clients--we were weeks away from their 10th Anniversary Gala, which was supposed to be in April 2020. So I talked to the AV company we had contracted for the event and said “Do you think we can stream something?” And he said, “Well actually, how about we do a video?” This was at a time when everyone was locked in their homes, and basically what we did was have them do iPhone videos. Then we storyboarded it out. What are the components of an in-person event? What components do we usually have and what do we absolutely need to have in this virtual gala? We need to have the president of the organization make a couple of remarks. People need to see the faces of the volunteers. It’s an association that serves children, teens, and young adults with autism and their families, to provide social and recreational programming. At the 10th Anniversary Gala we would have heard one of the young adults sing and one of the teenagers speak, so we got on Zoom and recorded them. The organization has very good relationships with two media personalities who have been their emcees and we said to them, “if we give you the scripting, how do you feel about getting on Zoom and recording?” Then the production company, following our storyboard and our script, edited it into the video. The in-person gala would have been 4 hours long, and the speaking program would have been an hour in person. Now you have to smoosh all of that into an hour, because someone is not going to watch something for 4 hours virtually. And you have to keep in mind that everything needs to be bite-size. That was something that I was really big about--making it tolerable for somebody to watch. A board president could speak for ten minutes in person, but virtually, you need to keep it to two minutes. You have to keep it continuous and flowing so that you don’t lose the viewer.
It was important to make it emotional, too. Another event client, which was a hospital, did a virtual fundraiser to benefit their therapeutic riding center. Things had started to ease up a bit, so we were able to take a production team out to the stable, and then with a very specific script and a storyboard, we were able to get incredible footage live at the farm. So this one was really cool because instead of taking iPhone clips and putting them together, it was shot with high-quality production. It told such a beautiful story, and gave a very behind-the-scenes look at the program, which I think really helped show what you were donating to, creating that emotion, and really being able to do something different.
How do you collaborate with clients to conceive and create virtual events?
I love my clients--it’s great when the client trusts you and asks you what you think. You know the things to look for. You know the president of the organization or association or hospital needs to speak. You need to show the participants, if you’re a nonprofit catering to a specific demographic or a specific group. And also, of course, the client is going to have input. Do we want to have our longest running volunteer speak? Or sponsors? That’s the other part of it, too--How do you engage sponsors in a virtual world? Because sponsors rely so much on an in-person logo on signage. So we got really creative with that, like doing logos from the sponsors on social media, and putting them on the third bottom bar of the videos. And there’s a great platform for virtual auctions that we use called GiveSmart. When you have a virtual auction, you can have your sponsor logo throughout the auction items.
I really upleveled my skills last year, and it’s carried over into this year, too. It was really interesting, bringing best practices, ideas, and what we’ve learned and fine tuned, and then the client says what they want to do, to the collaboration.
With the more corporate annual meetings I created something called a “micro-keynote.” Instead of having a keynote who speaks for 60 minutes, we did 25 minutes, then we did a quick Q&A, a panel, a board vote, and a second micro-keynote. And it worked really well. I guess that’s the good thing with virtual. You can try it, and if it doesn’t work, try something else. Or if it works, then you have a good idea to bring to someone else.
What parts of your work are most satisfying? What are the rewards? What are the challenges?
A lot of my clients are continuing clients. I’ve worked with the autism association since I started at TCORS, for 4 years. It’s building the relationships, and knowing how they like things, being able to exceed their expectations, and seeing them get excited. When we have the galas in person, a lot of my clients say “you’re always so calm.” And I say, that’s what I’m here for. I’m here to take away your worry. I’m here to shoulder the burden. I’m here to worry about the issues. For my nonprofit clients: you’re here to generate goodwill, you’re here to thank your constituents, you’re here to raise money for the organization. You are not here to worry about the logistics or if the food is out on time or not, or making sure the volume can be heard in all parts of the ballroom--that’s my worry. I love it when, if there is a problem, they don’t know about it. It was discreetly and quietly handled. It’s the little things--just taking care of it for them.
Covid is horrific, but there are a lot of silver linings. It really made us all level up, and it made us increase our abilities and our skills, bringing programming to clients that maybe never would have been able to go to programming before. With the healthcare associations, a lot of these leaders are very busy hospital executives who wouldn’t have been able to go to a networking event in person, or maybe they attended one education event a year, but now they’re able to go to one every other month, because it’s easier for them to access [virtually]. Or you have a speaker who might not necessarily be able to travel on a particular set of dates, but if they can hop on a Zoom and then you stream it to the attendees who are there in person, as well as a virtual audience, all the sudden you’ve opened up the ability to bring in this incredible speaker who you might not have been able to get otherwise.
Overall, [there are] other challenges--you can almost become too passionate about your clients. You can become too passionate about the events. We are our own worst critics. You’ll see things that no one else sees.
How do you see things moving forward with events, integrating these changes?
I think that hybrid is here to stay. I think that people will continue to offer virtual programming along with doing in-person. Being able to remove some of the barriers to people attending events has shown us that there’s a huge opportunity. People are socially starved, so in-person events are definitely coming back. So what do you do to make them as safe as possible? We’ve got clients that are asking for proof of vaccination, either at the door or in advance. You can do on-site rapid testing. There are so many best practices now, and it’s really great to implement these things to keep events as safe and the participants as healthy as possible.
Annamarie Grisé and Rhone
Do you have any favorite hobbies/tv shows/guilty pleasure snacks?
Anyone who knows me knows that I love my German Shepherd, Rhone. He’s a great dog that loves to work and travel, and is super fun to bring along when I can.
I also love true crime podcasts: anything from Dateline, Criminal, Snapped, Casefile. There’s a really good one called Something Was Wrong. It’s something that helps keep my mind at ease. It allows me to not stress about the day or stress about what I’m working on.
And of course, I also love a really good red wine. Right now, I’m on a Pinot Noir kick. Red wine and true crime go great together!