After an extensive global search, PCMA president and CEO Sherrif Karamat, CAE, announced the hiring of European business events industry leader Jaime Bennett as business director, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), effective Sept. 21.
“PCMA can and must support business events stakeholders in EMEA as they come to grips with the challenges of post-pandemic recovery,” says Sherrif Karamat. “Jaime is an acknowledged European business events industry leader with EMEA-specific insights and relationships that will ensure PCMA delivers compelling high value initiatives for our EMEA audiences and partners in the face of today’s marketplace realities.”
Most recently as sales and marketing director of Ireland-based Conference Partners International, Bennett has been actively involved in the business events industry for more than 15 years, building partnerships and delivering events around the globe. As immediate past chair of the Association of Irish Professional Conference Organizers and through her participation in multiple business tourism groups, she has gained a 360-degree perspective of the business events industry in Europe and beyond.
“The recovery of business events in EMEA will be varied and complex and PCMA can play a vital role for all stakeholders,” says Bennett. “I will be making collaboration with business event brand and organizational leaders throughout the region my top priority to ensure PCMA is developing products and services to serve the unique needs of our EMEA audiences.”
Bennett will be based in Killyleagh, County Down, Northern Ireland, and will lead PCMA’s EMEA business operations. Her focus will be on the development of a new PCMA EMEA regional business plan in conjunction with PCMA’s EMEA Regional Advisory Board. This includes region-specific events, curated content and education, as well as enhanced stakeholder engagement and the activation of EMEA initiatives outlined in PCMA’s global business events industry recovery plan—Recovery Discovery.
“Jaime is joining PCMA at a challenging time for our industry; but, there is no better time for us to be taking such a positive step forwards by growing the PCMA support in EMEA,” says Robert Bagust, BA, CMM, Worldwide Congress Manager for Bristol Myers Squibb and PCMA Regional Advisory Board member. “The growth of PCMA in this region is critically important in our increasingly connected world and I am confident that having Jaime on board will allow ongoing growth of our member services, commercial offerings and overall presence in support of our sector.”
PCMA believes that business events can economically and socially transform communities, enterprises and individuals. As the world’s largest platform for business events strategists and their business partners, PCMA’s success is driven by a commitment to providing provocative executive level education, face-to-face networking and business intelligence to its global audience of 7,000 professionals and students. Through its Ascent leadership initiative to promote inclusion and diversity across the business events industry and beyond, PCMA seeks to empower those challenged by gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity or disabilities to find success. Headquartered in Chicago, PCMA has 17 chapters throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico with members in more than 40 countries and regional offices in Switzerland and Singapore. For more info, visit pcma.org
