Global Meeting Leaders’ Summit
June 3-4, 2019
MGM National Harbor, MD
Global Meeting Leaders’ Summit 2019 – Speakers
Dan O’Donoghue
Head of UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), North America & the Caribbean.
Operating in this role since Oct. 2018, Dan is based at the British Consulate General in New York. Dan leads UKVI work in this part of the region, focussing on delivery, managing commercial and bilateral relationships, comms and engagement, service innovation and risk management.
Prior to this role, Dan has served as Regional Business Manager (UKVI), Entry Clearance Manager (UKBA), Deputy Management Officer (FCO), and Entry Clearance Officer (UK Visas) at the British Consulate General New York.
Dan is probably best known for his work in winning accreditation to the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) standard for New York – the first visa team globally to achieve it. Dan went on to lead the central CSE initiative, bringing the global UK visa operation to accreditation in 2015. Dan is married with two young children.
Amanda K. Cecil, PhD, CMP
Senior Vice President, GBTA Professional Development and WINiT & Professor, Indiana University School of Health and Human Sciences, Department of Tourism, Event and Sport Management
Dr. Amanda Cecil is in her 16th year on the Indiana University’s Tourism, Event, and Sport Management faculty. As a Professor, she teaches courses in event management and international travel and tourism. She also serves in the role of Senior Vice President of Professional Development for the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). In this leadership role, she manages the global strategy for the education, training, and certification. She has served as a consultant to GBTA since 2008, developing curriculum for numerous courses and uncovering new ways to deliver relevant career-focused content to travel and meeting professionals.
Her research interest involves linking business travel and tourism trends to the convention/meeting market. Additionally, Dr. Cecil has scholarly interests in the development of competency-based curriculum models and the impact of experiential learning. She has consulting experience in instructional design for educational programs in customer service, business travel management, strategic meeting management, sports travel management, and event management. Dr. Cecil serves as the managing editor for the Journal of Convention & Event Tourism.
She was awarded the 2012 PCMA Foundation’s Educator Honoree, 2012 “Member of the Year” RISE Award from MPI, 2011 Indiana Trustees’ Teaching Award, 2010 MPI Chairwoman’s Award for her leadership in developing the Meeting and Business Event Competency Standard (MBECS), the 2010 MPI Indiana Chapter President’s Award, the 2006 PCMA “Educator of the Year,” and named to the Indiana Chapter of MPI’s Hall of Fame in 2008.
Kevin Iwamoto, GLP, GTP
Senior Vice President, GoldSpring Consulting
Kevin is a globally recognized industry influencer and subject matter expert in corporate travel, procurement, GDPR and strategic meetings management (SMM). He is also former President & CEO of the Board of Directors for the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). He has served on numerous association boards, most recently as a Board member for the US Council for the MPI Foundation.
Kevin has won almost every major industry award in both business travel and the meetings and events industries. In July 2018, he was just named for the third time in five years one of the Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry 2018 from Successful Meetings magazine. He was just named one of the Top 500 People in Events under Strategy & Leadership category by BizBash. Other recent accolades include the 2016 MPI Rise Award for Meetings Industry Leadership, the Changemakers Award for MeetingsNet where he was also featured on the June magazine cover, BTN travel manager of the year and Top 25 Most Influential Executives, GBTA’s President’s Award & GBTA’s rarely awarded Industry Icon Award (he is only one of eight recipients).
He writes a popular award-winning industry blog (Gold Magellan Award for Best Industry Blog from Travel Weekly), published though Meetings & Conventions on-line.
He has two published books to his credit, Strategic Meetings Management: From Theory to Practice published in April 2011 and most recently, Your Personal Brand, Your Power Tool to Build Career Integrity, published in October of 2016. Both are available via Amazon.
Before joining GoldSpring Consulting, Kevin retired from Lanyon in 2016 where he was VP of Industry Strategy. Prior to Lanyon he was senior global category manager in the Hewlett-Packard Global Travel & SMM Team. He has also served as a senior account manager with the Walt Disney Company.
Global Meeting Leaders’ Summit 2019 – Speakers
Sponsored Exclusively by VisitBritain
