Ori Lahav, vice president clients & operations at Kenes Group, was elected president of the International Association of Professional Congress Organizers at the highest ever-rated IAPCO Annual General Assembly in Vancouver last month, and takes over from outgoing President Mathias Posch for a two-year term.
Ori Lahav says, “It is a huge honor to lead an association of industry professionals and more so, to follow the footsteps of our founder and president, Gideon Rivlin, who was president of the association 39 years ago. I am set to continue raising the standards of IAPCO together with the HQ team and the exemplary Council. No matter the hard times that we are currently facing with COVID-19 and other unrests around the world, I believe that this is the right opportunity for us to come together and prove the resilience of the events industry once more.”
Martin Boyle, IAPCO CEO, says, “I have had the privilege of working with Ori during the last year in his role as IAPCO vice president and am certain that his international experience and network will be of great value to our association.”
Key focus areas for the IAPCO Council during his term are:
• Launching webEDGE – the new IAPCO online learning platform
• A strong commitment to the IAPCO Quality mandate and an active industry outreach to communicate it
• Widening the association’s reach in Latin America and APAC
New Council
Elections were held during the General Assembly and along with a new president, the Council welcomed one new elected member and four re-elected members. Creating a truly global team, the new elected council member is Alejandro Tabche, Business Travel Consulting, Mexico and the four re-elected council members are Barbara Calderwood, MCI UK; Monica Freire, AIM Group International; Keith Burton, African Agenda and Sarah Markey-Hamm, ICMS Pty Ltd.
IAPCO Council 2020-2021
President: Ori Lahav, Kenes Group, Israel
Immediate Past President: Mathias Posch, ICS, Canada
Treasurer: Keith Burton, African Agenda, South Africa
Jan Tonkin, The Conference Company, New Zealand
Alain Pittet, Ega worldwide congresses & events, Italy
Barbara Calderwood, MCI, UK
Monica Freire, AIM Group International, Portugal
Sarah Markey-Hamm, ICMS Pty Ltd, Australia
Nicolette van Erven, Congress by design, Netherlands
Alejandro Ramirez Tabche, Business Travel Consulting, Mexico
The International Association of Professional Congress Organizers is the leading international association for professional conference organizers, representing 137 companies comprised of more than 9,500 professional congress organizers, meeting planners and managers of international and national congresses, conventions and special events from 39 countries. For more info, visit www.iapco.org.
