Claire Smith on Retirement and the Law of Forward Motion

When the 1986 World’s Fair came to Vancouver as she was graduating, Claire Smith, CMP, seized on it as an opportunity to realize her childhood dreams.

Claire Smith credits her mother’s subscription to Gourmet with instilling in her a fascination with “the intersection of food, culture, and travel,” she said. As a child, she couldn’t wait for the magazine to arrive in the mail. She would pretend she was a travel agent, spreading out Gourmet issues to show the other kids why they really needed to book a trip to some faraway land.

But there was no straight path to experience those places when she went to university, so she learned about culture through anthropology and archeology studies. Tourism “was very much not a big career path,” Smith said. “It was an important part of the economy where I grew up” — in British Columbia, Canada — “but it was not looked at as a profession.”

When the 1986 World’s Fair came to Vancouver as she was graduating, Smith seized on it as an opportunity to realize her childhood dreams. The event “sounded so global to me,” she said. “I kept bugging them until they hired me.”
Despite the fact that she worked in “an office somewhere else managing ticket sales, public inquiries, and complaints, and really wasn’t immersed in the food and the culture of the World’s Fair,” that gig became her entrée into the business events industry. When the Canada Pavilion was repurposed as the Vancouver Convention Centre after the World’s Fair, Smith was hired in marketing as the center opened in 1987. “I didn’t know anything about the convention business,” she said, “but people were coming [to the facility] from around the world, and that just excited me.”

Other Stints in a Long Career

Experiences outside the walls of the center include a long list of volunteer leadership roles at professional organizations, including PCMA, where, for more than a decade, she served on committees, task forces, and as a member of the Board of Directors and the PCMA Foundation. When she was named the 2018 Chair of the PCMA Board of Directors, Smith became the first supplier member and non-U.S.-based member to hold the position.

Other organizations where she has donated her time and experience include ASAE, ICCA, IBTM, GMIC, and EIC. She was inducted into EIC’s Hall of Leaders in 2025.

In addition, mentoring others, especially women, has been important throughout her career. She has found that when you are no longer worrying about climbing the corporate ladder, you have more capacity, “maybe more insight, because you no longer feel the need to play the game in the same way. You’ve lifted yourself out of it.” A longtime participant in Terri Breining’s mentoring initiative, Smith is now leading a Mentoring Ring for PCMA. “I’ve got a group of senior leaders, and I am so excited about what we can do together because it’s in that safe space that we can all lift each other up.”

Making a Contribution

What has brought her the most satisfaction in her career was “feeling like I played a part in events that really mattered, where there were really big outcomes as a result,” Smith said. Among them: The World AIDS Congress, held at the Vancouver Convention Centre in 1996, “where they put a stake in the ground and said, ‘We’re going to rid the world of AIDS, HIV by 2026.’ At the time, we were losing so many people around the world to it. It seemed so far off, but the fact that an event could mobilize the world to focus on what is possible” was, she said, “what kept me in the industry.”

She also cites the 1993 International Confederation of Midwives Triennial Congress as a pivotal event held at the center. “Midwives were not a legal profession in our part of the world at that time,” she said. “The local host committee used bidding and winning the conference as the catalyst to allow midwives to practice in British Columbia and to be covered on the medical plan. To see them become recognized and elevated” during the congress demonstrated for her the influence events have on determining outcomes for an industry or profession.

Keeping It Interesting

Hosting Convening Leaders in 2016 — which “felt like bringing my family to my home” — and being part of bringing the TED conference to Vancouver stand out to Smith as other career high points. Having TED “happen within our walls, and understanding the ethos behind TED is about changing the world through sharing ideas — when you see a TED conference, the 15-minute talks are part of a thematic block of talks. Say ‘cities’ is the theme, there’ll be eight different perspectives on how cities are transforming or innovating, and then there’s dialogue in between, people are saying how they’ll help invest in a project, or they’re going to make a movie to amplify that great work that’s happening” in a particular city, or an initiative to make communities safer. “There is a relentless focus on action and outcomes,” she added.

What she also learned being up close to TED is the power of choice. “One of the things that TED does brilliantly is they don’t pretend that you have to be in the room to be part of the event. They create opportunities throughout the facility with live feeds. If you and I were attending TED and we really just wanted to catch up, we could sit on a sofa and have TED going [on the screen], and we could be chatting, eating, but still engaging with the content. They meet people where they are. There are workstations where people are working, but they’ve got TED going, and you’re connecting. All throughout the building there are live feeds. You can experience it in a way that makes sense for you.”

She sees exercising the power of choice as one of the biggest evolutions in attendee behavior at events overall. “I think people no longer can be told what they’re going to do,” Smith said. “You can’t tell people they are going to go to a general session and you’re going to sit there for two hours, and then you’re going to go into the trade show where we give you a passport that you’re going to get stamped. People are just like, ‘No.’ If they walk in and see a lunch that they don’t like, they are going out for lunch or they’re calling Uber Eats, and they’re going to have what they want delivered to them. We really have to stop thinking that if you build it, they’ll come. People are determining how they want to experience and interact with an event.”

Stepping Into the Future

“I think what is so exciting about this industry is it’s always evolving,” said Smith, whose early background in anthropology seems to have been the lens through which she sees events. “Because human behavior evolves and changes, and everything that we do is a reflection of human behavior. I guess my one piece of advice is that if we don’t evolve where our audiences are going, then we’re all out of business. If you’re not watching how people are behaving at your events, in your venues, at your hotels, then you’re missing the plot.”

As part of that, Smith thinks adaptability in an ever-changing environment will be key to industry professionals’ success going forward, as well as “being really clear of where they add value and what their gifts and strengths are,” she said, “and then being able to translate that into multiple environments.”
Even though Smith is retiring, she said she doesn’t feel like she’s at the end of her career — more like she’s “shifting gears.” She said she is giving herself “grace” not to draw up a strategic business plan for her next chapter, seeking only to “contribute to an organization’s success” on a project basis. “I’m very open and ready to go on a bit of a journey. I want to learn some new things. I want to have some new experiences. I’m excited to see what will evolve.

“I so believe in the momentum of change, and that when you take a step forward, a lot of things start happening with that forward movement that could never have happened if you stood still,” she said. “That has served me well in my life.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.