In our own version of Profiles in Courage, Venues Today has been honoring women and young professionals who are leaders in this industry for six years. Now it’s time to up the ante. We are planning a conference, tentatively titled VT RISE, (or Venues Today Raising the Industry in Sports and Entertainment), Sept. 13, in Long Beach, Calif. You are invited.
Case in point, your votes are in and Venues Today’s GenerationNext Class of 2014 is now official: Tyler Bates, director of Booking, Barclays Center, Brooklyn, our Readers’ Choice selection; Adam Cook, GM, Rexall Place and Edmonton (Alta.) Expo Centre at Northlands; Juliette Feld, producer, Feld Entertainment; Andrew Newport, GM, Klipsch Music Center, Noblesville, Ind., and Farm Bureau Insurance Lawn at White River State Park in Indianapolis for Live Nation and our Social Butterfly this year, having the most Facebook votes; and Christine Pileckas, director of Sales and Marketing, Intrust Bank Arena, Wichita, Kan.
Wow. They are all 35 or younger and they have achieved peer recognition in their chosen careers in sports, entertainment and meetings. We will share their insights on those careers in our June issue and honor them all at a reception during the Event & Arena Marketing Conference in New Orleans on June 12.
Now we are accepting nominations for Women of Influence, Class of 2014, who will be profiled in our July issue and honored at our annual reception during VenueConnect, this year in Portland, Ore.
The Class of 2014 joins a remarkable group of leaders, from VT Woman of Influence Claire Rothman, who managed the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., in its first iteration and was there to see it reinvented by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, to Carl Mittleman, who has risen high since being elected a GenerationNexter, becoming president of Aramark Sports and Entertainment earlier this year.
We have learned a lot from and through them and now invite you to do the same. We like to ask people we interview for Talking Points and Q&A’s who their mentors are. In fact, this month, Jack Lucas talks about his mentors, Mike Kobluk and Kevin Twohig of Spokane, Wash., who have worked closely with him over the years and have proven invaluable to him personally and professionally.
That’s what leaders do. They share a wealth of knowledge and are a networking goldmine for those wise enough to listen. As Maureen Ginty, SMG, Venues Today Woman of Influence, said, sometimes mentors pick you, you don’t pick your mentors. But you do have to choose to be in the vicinity either way and that’s why we’re hosting a networking-learning-communicating-skill-sharing conference — to bring those remarkable people into a room with the rest of us.
God grant you many years to RISE to the occasion.