Meeting News - January 5, 2009 - (Page 8)

Newsmaker Q + A PCMA Taps Association Pro to Spearhead Its Foundation and stick with it, you really can’t do five of Though people at the helm of the industry’s most them. signiﬁcant ﬁrms are probably among the ﬁeld’s One of my roles here at SmithBucklin is to busiest individuals, they often seem to take on vol- serve as a senior liaison to the hospitality indusunteer leadership positions, on top of their day try; so it’s a good ﬁt. jobs. Michael Payne, the executive vice president And after the work I’ve done with PCMA, of SmithBucklin, the association management moving to the Foundation has been a natural powerhouse, is one of the many examples of that progression. basic rule. After years of service on the What areas do you plan board of the Professional Conto focus on with the vention Management AssociaFoundation? tion (arguably the industry association that, not coincidentally, What I have an interest in works most intensely on the is what can we do to bendevelopment of association eﬁt students. I think there are meeting planners), Payne has more opportunities to give been named the 2009 chairman travel grants to students to of the PCMA Foundation. The come to our conference. handover will take place this Also, we’re looking to bring month, at the association’s scholarships to universities annual meeting, being held this that offer hospitality proyear in New Orleans. grams and degrees. Michael Payne While preparing to take the We need to do a better job Executive Vice President reins, Payne discussed with of making young people SmithBucklin MeetingNews his new gig and understand that the hospitalBy Rayna Katz Q A As the new chairman of the Foundation, will you be introducing any new forms of fundraising? Q A Because of the economy, we’ve been talking about how our fundraising activities are going to go and how creative we’ll need to get. We’re going to do a similar giving initiative in New Orleans, at the annual meeting in January, as we did in Seattle last year, and we’ll have a good feel by March of how we’re doing. If we’re falling short, then we’ll have to ﬁgure out another way. But right now, the four or five things we’re doing are the best possible strategy. How will your work at SmithBucklin inform what you do for PCMA? Q A how his work with associations and in government all led to his most recent appointment. Q A What makes you want to serve in a position of industry leadership? As a ﬁrm, SmithBucklin decided a long time ago that we wanted to get involved with organizations that help the industry. At that time, I was acting as a liaison to the hospitality industry [meaning hotels, CVBs, and other partners], so getting involved with the board of PCMA made a lot of sense. Q A You’ve also served as chairman of PCMA at one time. Why take on these positions at only one organization? Once people get started with PCMA, they stay there because they build relationships and the affiliation provides good educational value. Plus, you have to pick one organization 8 MeetingNews January 5, 2009 ity industry is a career. The more we expose students to that, and encourage them, the better it is for us, because we’re building the next generation. We work with students now—we have a separate program for them at the annual meeting—but I want to do even more for them; we want to be more aggressive in this area. Of course, that’s going to be juxtaposed against the economy; we have money invested and I’m sure some of that has declined. But we’ll set the budget in January, and then start fund-raising, so I can’t state a goal at this point in time. Meanwhile, we have a number of activities already established, in terms of different types of fund-raising vehicles. There’s the Partnership Summit, which we do in June; the Professional Achievement Dinner; Party with A Purpose (held during the annual conference); and a few years ago we, kicked off an individual giving campaign. Those efforts are going to continue. Talking to people on the phone is different from sitting around a table, so that’s a big benefit of my involvement with PCMA to me personally, and for SmithBucklin as a whole, because I run into people there, and if you’ve sat down and had dinner with people, it’s easier to contact them and work on things together. There’s also good discussion around a board table, especially at PCMA, because the board members are thoughtful, inﬂuential people. And our board and foundation meetings often include education, so there’s information that comes from there, too. You worked, earlier in your career, at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and at the Economic Development Administration. How does that inform your work? Q A In terms of SmithBucklin, I manage government relations and do legislative work, so my background is helpful there. That’s how I got here actually, I helped set up that operation. And frankly, any work with associations involves government issues: Legislation is a big part of what associations focus on, so that’s a big part of what I work on with clients. My having worked on [Capitol Hill] is helpful, it provides clients with educational value. H Contact Rayna Katz at rayna.katz@nielsen.com www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - January 5, 2009

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