The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center (NOENMCC) recently announced that Michael J. Sawaya, its President and CEO, has been honored as “CEO of the Year” by Biz New Orleans. The publication annually recognizes the 500 most influential leaders in the regional business community and from that list chooses the Executives of the Year.

Sawaya’s meticulous planning and execution have yielded significant economic benefits and growth prospects — both immediate and long term — for the NOENMCC and the New Orleans region. Since 2018, he pushed forward several major advancements, from advocating for the facility’s $557 million Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), prioritizing nationally recognized sustainability initiatives that lead to a LEED Gold certification, guiding the development of a new $1 billion mixed use development and opening up opportunities to small, emerging and disadvantage businesses.
 
The CIP is critical to bringing the 1983-designed facility up to modern day standards and addressing critical infrastructure issues like replacing a 40-acre roof. Over $180 million of the $557 million CIP is complete or underway including the renovation of all the 140 meeting rooms, corridors and public spaces that also incorporate elements of New Orleans culture into the facility. 

Beyond the NOENMCC’s internal achievements, the new riverfront neighbor, the River District, is beginning to take shape. Sawaya’s collaborative approach with the River District Neighborhood Investors, LLC (RDNI) helped to navigate the complex approval processes. Alongside elected officials and city representatives, RDNI and the Convention Center celebrated the beginning of critical infrastructure work with a groundbreaking ceremony on November 29, 2023. Once complete, the new River District will be a new neighborhood and hub of commerce and entertainment and be a transformative asset for the New Orleans region and the state of Louisiana.
 
“This recognition is a testament to Michael’s exceptional leadership, strategic vision and unwavering commitment to driving the Convention Center to new and greater successes which is critical to the economies of both New Orleans and the State of Louisiana,” said Jerry Reyes, President of the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority, the governing board of the Convention Center. “He has been key in steering the Center through challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ida while shepherding our transformative $557 million improvement plan that will position New Orleans to be more competitive for years to come.”
 
With clear vision and passion, Sawaya is leading the NOENMCC into a bright future, with advance bookings now confirmed through 2040.

Meet Minneapolis recently named Christy Loy as the organization’s next Senior Vice President of Destination Sales. Currently the general manager of the Canopy by Hilton Minneapolis Mill District, she will replace Brent Foerster who is retiring from Meet Minneapolis after 10 years in the role. Loy will officially join the Meet Minneapolis team on Feb. 1.

Christy Loy, Senior Vice President of Destination Sales for Meet Minneapolis

“Christy’s extensive background in the hospitality industry, particularly in hotel management and sales, aligns perfectly with the key responsibilities of this role,” said Meet Minneapolis President and CEO Melvin Tennant. “She will be instrumental in developing innovative sales strategies and expanding key relationships, ensuring that our tourism industry continues to thrive and grow.”

“As a local travel and hospitality leader, a city resident and a Minneapolis evangelist, I am intimately attuned to the critical role our destination sales efforts play in our tourism ecosystem,” stated Loy. “I am excited to contribute to the sales, development and strategic planning of Meet Minneapolis to drive revenue growth and expand market share by telling our bold and diverse story. For me, it’s a mission not a job.” 

In addition to her current role at the Canopy by Hilton Minneapolis Mill District, Loy’s long tenure in the hotel industry includes past general manager roles with Minneapolis hotels such as W Minneapolis – The Foshay and Le Meridien Chambers. Prior to that, she served as the multi-site general manager for dual lifestyle hotel brands Aloft & Element Boston Seaport. In all, Loy has spent more than 20 years in the hotel industry.

Locally, Loy has deep connections with the tourism and hospitality community through roles leading the Greater Minneapolis Hotel Association and serving as the Secretary/Treasurer of the board of Meet Minneapolis.

“A national search firm was utilized, and a selection committee of current board members and key stakeholders viewed her hotel leadership experience and drive for building organizational culture and inclusion as significant factors in selecting Christy,” added Tennant. “Her passion and expertise align with our mission to drive economic and social prosperity for our city by attracting visitors, meetings, and events. I am excited to have Christy join an already stellar team.”

“I know experiences make memories. People do business with people they like. And Minneapolis is still an undiscovered treasure for many people in the world,” said Loy. “I look forward to working with the Meet Minneapolis team to bring even more meetings and events, large conventions and key sporting events to our city – and to be the destination of choice for tens of millions of travelers in the years to come.”

To allow for a seamless transition of this key leadership role, Foerster will continue with the organization through March 1.

Effective this year, what was IAVM’s Graduate Institute has been rebranded Leadership Institute (LI) and will open enrollment to experienced venue leaders, whether they attended Venue Management School (VMS) or did not.

Registration is now open to IAVM members for VMS and Leadership Institute, which will be held June 8-13 at Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa. Nonmembers can apply beginning Jan. 16.

Since the curriculum is all about leadership, and because it is of value to any IAVM member in a leadership role, the name change is simply logical, said Kim Bedier, CVE, SVP and GM, Honda Center/ocV!BE, Anaheim, CA, and Dean of IAVM’s Leadership Institute.

“It was never a graduate year that requires the prerequisite of VMS. You could go to VMS and never go to GI. The curriculum is different enough and has a different enough focus that, whether you’ve gone to those first two years or not, you still get a full experience and get a ton out of it,” Bedier said.

VMS 2022 students at the Opening Reception

Besides that, and “as we are want to do,” it seemed wise to do a little R&Ding (robbing and duplicating) from IAVM’s counterpart, Venue Management Australia (VMA), which named its comparable school Leadership Institute. Several VMS instructors, including Bedier, have taught there the last few years and saw the curriculum as about and for senior leaders who have experience and ideas to contribute while they learn.

While years one and two of VMS are about the basics of venue management, often for young and middle managers, and not usually for people who have been in the profession for a long time, Leadership Institute is for senior managers with at least five years of experience dealing with those skills being taught. “LI is for people who want to take the next step in leadership at venues,” Bedier said.

“We wanted to let IAVM members know, ‘if you are out there and you’re a more senior venue manager, you’ve been in this profession for awhile, and maybe you didn’t go to VMS, you should consider the Leadership Institute.’ It is somewhere they can interact with peers, learn more about themselves and enhance their ability to lead in venues.”

Applicants must be actively employed in the venue industry, working in a venue/working for a company that manages venues or working for an Allied company whose primary service provision is to venues. They must be an IAVM member (or sign up during the registration process), and be Senior Manager (a position that supervises others and has input into strategy) or above at their venue or company. CVE or CVP certification is preferred.

She also noted that LI is different from IAVM’s Senior Executive Symposium (SES), which is a two-year commitment (versus one for LI) and more general in its leadership skills (versus venue specific). A fairly common progression would be VMS, LI, SES, with several years in between to polish and develop the skills learned, Bedier has observed.

LI is never larger than 30 students and averages about 25, making for a very intensive week of getting to know your classmates and “solidifying professional and personal bonds like crazy,” Bedier said. It is a smaller class than either year of VMS and there are pre-class assignments, work that instructors later use in class. There is a lot of small group and partner study and students learn as much, possibly more, from fellow students as they do from the instructors facilitating the school, she said. Bedier has been teaching at VMS and LI for 20 years.

Faculty take time to commemorate another successful year of VMS with a selfie

Asked what he would say to encourage applicants to attend, Steve MacKenzie, CVE, Chief Innovation Officer, Momentus Technologies and an instructor at VMS/LI, replied: “I would go to one of our internal leaders who I felt would benefit from this program and tell them that this program is an opportunity to do a deep dive into subjects they need to know about being a leader in the venue world. There is no other educational offering available that will provide such specific learnings in this area AND that is delivered by experts who still work in this industry. They will come out of it with a massively better understanding of many topics that will make them a better leader, and they’ll build a network of extremely tight confidantes for life that they can rely on to discuss and bounce ideas off of.” 

Those who have already attended Graduate Institute “could come back but they wouldn’t be very surprised,” Bedier added, since the curriculum has not changed. It is focused primarily on human resources. Both MacKenzie and Bedier see this as a one-time experience.

Attendance at two years of VMS, while not required, is still a legitimate enrollment qualification, she added. For those who have not attended VMS, five-plus years at a senior management level is required, “because that way you can contribute to topic discussions. If you haven’t managed at that level, you can’t really contribute.”

It was a confluence of occurrences — contract expiration, expansion project completion, a successful opening year, and turning 68 in April —that prompted Jeffrey A. (Jeff)  Blosser, president and chief executive officer of the Seattle Convention Center (SCC), to announce his retirement effective May 31.

“The timing feels good,” Blosser told Venue Professional. “I’ll be around the first five months [of 2024] to help with the transition.”

Jeff Blosser. SCC – Photo by Alabastro Photography.

An active member of IAVM since 1982 and having helmed the Seattle venue for 12 years, following John Christison, Blosser has seen the center through many changes. The most recent was completion of the 570,290 sq. ft. Summit building, which boasts 248,450 sq. ft of exhibit space, and when combined with the existing 434,988 sq. ft Arch building (205,700 sq. ft. of exhibit space), means 450,000 plus sq. ft. of exhibit space for SCC and the ability to attract new business.

“The issue is not to be bigger. What we do best is the 3,000-person convention, and now, we can do it twice, one moving in and showing, one moving out,” Blosser said. “It’s about making sure we have the right number of events and right number of people. The convention business is heads in beds and generating the tax, but we did $43 million in revenues in the building last year, and we will do more next year.”

SCC is run by the Washington State Convention Center Public Facilities District (PFD), which is responsible for its own debt — land purchasing, bonding and financing — as well as operating expenses. “It’s a different organization now with the new building,” Blosser said. SCC is now a $2-billion venue.

He surmised the SCC’s Board of Directors’ Search Committee, which has just begun to meet, could split his job into two parts – the PFD side of financing and politics, and separately, operations. However, it’s a process, and he has no idea what they will ultimately do.

Crediting 42 years of networking at IAVM with a lot of his career trajectory, Blosser said, “For me, IAVM has always been about the ability to get help from somebody or give somebody help. You can pick up the phone and call any building in the country, and they answer the phone and help out. While buildings may be competitive, we are more about making sure the building operations are as solid as they can be.”

His career has been heavily influenced by IAVM heavyweights like Tom Mobley, Peggy Daidakis, Dan Graveline, Frank Poe, and Roger Dixon, “who was the first one who hired me. But I could talk to anyone – John Adams, Dick Shaff, and they’d give you information. The biggest scenario for improving my capabilities in this industry has been those connections, the camraderie and the professionalism of the association.”

He gave back on the Convention Center Committee for six or seven years, helping work on white papers on booking and relationships with CVB’s. He was on the IAVM Board, repping convention centers for two terms, and he was involved in the Industry Council – lobbying to solve issues around the industry – for five or six years. Blosser received the Lifetime Achievement Award from IAVM’s Convention Center Sector in 2019.

Jeff Blosser. SCC

“It is important for our industry to have a bigger say on things that we can activate or are being acted on to us. We’re in a good spot today with more lobbying efforts at all levels — states, cities and nationally.” Blosser is particularly impressed with the safety and security efforts and IAVM’s Director of Safety & Security Mark Herrera’s collaborations and educational outreach. “It’s a different organization in a lot of ways,” he believes.

With the help of “the best team in the country,” including VP and AGM Linda Willanger, Blosser has seen a lot of changes at SCC. Getting through COVID, more detrimental to our industry than anything he can remember, was a turning point.

He has also been a leader in sustainability issues, proud that SCC’s new Summit building is LEED Platinum, as is his prior haunt, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, which he helped open in 1989, then expanded, before leaving for Seattle in 2011. “I cut my teeth on sustainability issues. We continue to stress that. I think the Pacific Northwest is ahead of everybody.”

Blosser started his career in what was called District 2 (now Region 2), when he worked for the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center, then the downtown convention center, and then both state buildings as GM. He grew up in Southeast Ohio, attending Ohio University.

“I was relatively young back then. Watching the dynamics [of IAVM gatherings] was pretty fun,” he recalled. “It’s been a great ride. I’ve enjoyed all the relationships with people in this industry – suppliers, food service companies (Randy Ziegler comes to mind with Fine Host), Aramark. Smart Cities, Edlens. This business is so much fun. I won’t miss the hours, but I will definitely miss all of the people. I couldn’t have done anything better than what I did.”

Blosser plans to stay in Seattle and chase six grandkids, spend more time with family, and improve his handicap, basically “doing nothing” for six months. “I can do what I want, when I want. You can’t beat this place [Seattle] in the summertime.

Applications are now open for the 2024 Education & Service and Venue Excellence Awards.  These awards will be presented during VenueConnect in Portland, OR.  The deadline to submit applications is March 29, 2024.  The application process is extensive, and we encourage venues and organizations to create an “award team” to complete the application process as well as gather photos, etc.  Detailed instructions are found within the application itself.  We invite you to nominate an IAVM member or member venue that has exceeded expectations and risen above the rest. 

Education & Service Award

The IAVM Education & Service Award recognizes member involvement through community outreach, education opportunities, mentorships, and internships that demonstrate excellence within our industry as well as giving back to the community. Some examples that have been shared include: active in high school programs and career development; offering internships for local college students within the company/venue; mentoring through community outreach or within a university setting; educational offerings to staff within the company/venue; community involvement with youth and young adults.

IAVM takes pride in its members that excel in providing their communities with an enjoyable space for all types of events and educational opportunities. Professional members, university faculty, allied companies as well as retired members are encouraged to apply. The IAVM Education & Service Award is given annually to no more than two companies/universities/venues and one individual who meets the criteria outlined below.

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Venue Excellence Award

The Venue Excellence Award recognizes five IAVM venues of any type within the membership which demonstrate excellence in the management and operation of public assembly venues. This includes but is not limited to amphitheaters, arenas, auditoriums, complexes, convention centers, exhibit halls, fair/festival grounds, performing arts centers, racetracks, stadiums & university venues. IAVM takes pride in its members and member venues that excel in providing their communities with a safe and enjoyable space for all types of events and educational opportunities.

Any venue publicly or privately owned and operated, that has demonstrated excellence within the last calendar year and has at least one current employee who is an IAVM member in good standing may apply. Venues are eligible to win multiple VEAs; however, previous winners are eligible to apply in the third year following their most recent award. As an example, a venue that wins in 2024 may apply for the 2027 award.

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