What’s Next for Ben Goedegebuure?

Ben Goedegebuure’s career in the meetings industry was celebrated at a special reception at Convening Leaders 2026 in Philadelphia. Photo by Jacob Slaton / Whatever Media Group

“After an incredible journey, it’s time for a new chapter,” wrote Ben Goedegebuure, announcing his retirement at the end of 2025 on LinkedIn. Over the course of more than four decades — the last dozen spent at Maritz, most recently as chief global strategy officer — Goedegebuure organized and/or operated conferences and events in 24 countries. And his governance roles — from serving as the Events Industry Council Board Director in 2025 to the PCMA Board of Directors from 2011-2014 to advisory boards for several destinations, including Vienna, Brussels, and Glasgow — are equally numerous and varied.

So it was not surprising that more than 400 people commented on Goedegebuure’s early December post in less than a month, many noting that this industry wouldn’t be the same without him. But he is not dropping out entirely. Goedegebuure said he will work with a couple of internationally operating organizations on a more flexible, part-time basis going forward. But it’s time, he told Convene, to pass the torch to the next generation of events professionals: “I’m all for it.”

Where He Got His Start

Goedegebuure got his start after earning a degree as a librarian in a research library in The Netherlands, his homeland. It was, he recalled, “the most boring place ever” — most afternoons, he would splash cold water on his face to stay awake. But he had a wonderful boss who recognized his potential, even if the librarian role wasn’t a good fit for him. She showed him a help wanted ad for a research assistant/assistant to the secretary general of the International Federation for Documentation and Information (FID), based in The Hague. “I think this is for you,” she told him. Because it was a global association and he was fluent in English, he was hired. “It really worked out,” he said. “The rest is history.” With FID, “I went around the world. That was fabulous.”

Less than four years later at the age of 28, he was promoted to executive director at FID, which included managing projects in coordination with UN organizations like UNESCO and organizing conferences and seminars. That work led him more than a decade later to his next role, as conference director of a PCO in Amsterdam, Congrex Holland BV, where he was promoted after two years to deputy managing director.

Goedegebuure also has spent time working on the venue side, serving as director, and later executive director of conference sales for the Scottish Exhibition + Conference Centre (SEC) in Glasgow. He spent nine years at the SEC, where, he said, “we were able to do very cool things in marketing and selling the destination — not working in an advisory capacity — just building the reputation of the venue and the city.” What helped make it “so much fun,” he added, is that he was surrounded by an inspiring team and people, including the CEO, John Sharkey.

The last leg of his career has been with Maritz Global Events, where he joined as vice president, assuming the role of chief global strategy officer in 2023.

Inspirational People

Throughout his career, Goedegebuure said, he has had the good fortune to be mentored by industry leaders. “I had bosses who were such inspirational people,” he said. “You need to have something that inspires you to do what you do. [But] it’s [more than] passion for the profession — I think it is a very inspiring profession, it’s just that you need to be prepared if you’re an event person because it’s high-pressure and you need to do a lot of stuff at the same time. There’s a deadline. You need to figure it out.”

When people talk about the challenge of attracting young people to join the events industry or association community, Goedegebuure points to how this field uniquely enables them “to meet people who are so exceptional and are so outside of what you know.” He called to mind one early climate conference he helped organize where four Nobel Prize winners were speakers. “That’s the cool thing. You meet people,” he said. “You think, ‘I would never have met those people, ever’” if not for being in this industry. You meet people “from a different world,” he said, but you also realize they’re from “the same planet. They also have to pay the bills.”

Goedegebuure said his career was made richer by seizing every opportunity to travel. “When somebody said, ‘Do you want to go to China?’” I would say yes,” he said, without hesitation. But he finds less of a willingness today among people in the events industry to jump at that chance. “Now it’s like, ‘Do you want to go to China?’ ‘Yes, but I have to be back on the 15th because of whatever.’ It was a different time, and we just worked all the time, but we didn’t care. It was also our social life. We worked hard but we had fun.”

Meaningful Work

When asked what he has found most rewarding in his career, Goedegebuure pointed to the times where he has helped “bring together people for something better — where you can see that you’ve actually done something to make an impact.” And he also talked about how much he has valued collaboration with others in the industry. “I think that that’s also the pity at the moment that the world seems to be,” he said, in a place “where people are saying, ‘No, we shouldn’t be collaborating because we’re the best.’ The world is a bigger place than the house that you live in.”

Goedegebuure said he is optimistic about the future of events, “but I do think we need some really smart people to help change what we have created,” like tired session formats, for example. And while he thinks technology offers “lots of opportunities,” he also sees its downfall. With so much information — and misinformation — at our fingertips, Goedegebuure thinks the focus of “education needs to be how you learn and how to use critical thinking and verify sources.”

There have been big and more subtle changes since he first began his career, when letters mailed from around the globe were the primary source of business communication. “The biggest change has been how we rely on technology much more,” he said, “and things are much faster” — you’re expected to respond to requests almost instantaneously.

What hasn’t changed? “It’s connections in your network, building on your network, and building trust with people you need to give you the information that you can pass on to others,” he said. “It’s about the trust of connections — and being with people. People need to be together.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.