Building an Enduring Organization Requires a Strong Foundation

LAS VEGAS—IMEX America 2022 at Mandalay Bay offers tons of top-notch programming, presenters and guests.

Monday’s “Ladies’ Choice: Women in Business Development,” part of the She Means Business program, brought together great women professional leaders, including Lia Cheung of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas; Sonia Fong of Louisville Tourism; Cheryl Hatcher of Meeting Professionals International; Katri Laurimaa, also of MPI; Kimberly Napolitano of Hilton; and Courtney Stanley of Courtney Stanley Consulting.

There were many takeaways from the program. One that fits the focus of Tuesday Tutor is the role mentors, partners and other industry colleagues played in helping to support and challenge the members of the panel. Good mentor-protege relationships provide benefits in both directions. In this program, the focus specifically addressed working to advance women in the area of business development and how it can play a role in increasing access to male-dominated sectors of the workforce.

Such interactions are a further extension of the way professionals need to collaborate in the face of changing times and crisis situations. Attend Safe, for example, operates in partnerships seeking to provide services tailored to both the needs of our business partners and, since so many of those partners are in the events space, managing the risks merely from operating in a world with a highly contagious illness and coping with ever-evolving protocols and guidance.

We learn from our partners experience in their plans and needs, our partners learn from our experience mitigating COVID-19 risk since the darkest days of the pandemic. Together we’re stronger than each operating alone. Together we can create plans to succeed in a challenging environment.

We’ve learned a lot during this coronavirus journey with every new situation it has thrown at our team. As a result, we’re always preparing for the next twist, the next turn, the next development, so that when they arrive, we and our partners are prepared.

The latest example: For weeks, Attend Safe discussed the threat of the coronavirus omicron BA.2.75.2 variant being a growing concern in India that eventually could threaten the U.S. Now it’s in Los Angeles, just four hours or so down the road from our meeting site. Thankfully, it’s a situation Attend Safe expected, so when we work with our partners, we’ll already have answers to many of their questions.

We attend to their concerns, so they can attend to life.