
Incoming PCMA Chair Neil Brownlee addresses the Main Stage audience Tuesday at Convening Leaders 2025. Brownlee is the board’s first non-North American chair. (Whatever Media Group)
Neil Brownlee attended his first Convening Leaders in 2011 in Las Vegas. “I’d heard of PCMA through my colleagues’ work in the associations field at VisitScotland,” he said. “I knew they took turns to go to this thing called ‘Convening Leaders.’” Brownlee’s previous experience at the time in his role at VisitScotland — where he has worked for more than 16 years and now serves as head of business events — was largely with incentive meetings in Scotland and Europe. He described his first time attending Convening Leaders as “a complete eye-opener” in a recent Convene interview. “It was by some way the largest convention I’d ever been to, and I think for many first-timer attendees of Convening Leaders, it can be a bit scary. Little did I know where it all might end up 14 years later.”
Brownlee, who first joined PCMA’s Board of Directors and Trustees for the 2018–2021 term, will serve as chair in 2025 — the first non-North American in PCMA’s history to lead the board. He shared his plans for the coming year and how he intends his more global perspective to help pave the way for PCMA’s future.
What are your goals for PCMA in 2025?
I think a lot of what I want to do in 2025 is building upon the tremendous work of Leonard [Hoops, PCMA’s 2024 board chair] and the previous boards and previous leaderships under Desirée [Knight, PCMA’s 2023 board chair], and Charles [Starks, PCMA’s 2022 board chair]. Those are the people I’ve had the closest [line of sight in] working with, and also with my fabulous chair-elect, Kelly Ricker. As usual, PCMA has a strong strategic direction, and the 2030 vision is what I want to build upon.
At the beginning of 2024, under Leonard’s chairmanship, PCMA undertook a brand review that looks to unite all the different brands under one umbrella, because there is a little bit of a logo fest going on. A major portion of that work has been completed in 2024. During the course of 2025, we will be rolling out this new brand with all our stakeholders, including our chapters and CEMA. That’s a big thing to happen on my watch — not at all intimidating.
The rebranding has multiple purposes. First, it’s about consolidating our acquisitions under one umbrella. However, it also has a much bigger implication for the industry. This is about the world recognizing associations as brands that are purpose-driven rather than this woolly concept. This is an important and critical distinction, as most associations see themselves as an association and not a brand. Our hope is that PCMA will lead the transformation of the association industry into a world of purpose-driven brands that will attract the next generation to join. That’s very high up there.
Beyond our own brand and vision, there’s so much I want to achieve in 2025, including the cultural integration [of acquisitions] we have made over the past few years, such as CEMA, the Event Marketing Association (EMA) in the U.K., and the Event Learning Institute (ELI). This might sound … like a simple process, but it does take time, resources, and careful planning — very careful steps at each point to ensure we can integrate and scale the investments we have made as an organization and as a board in 2025, but also building on the decisions of previous boards in ’24, ’23, ’22, and earlier. I’ll also be trying to build on the new assets that have been developed as part of joint ventures and partnerships in the pursuit of delivering new value for the members and audiences around the world.
We had the inaugural Convene 4 Climate in Barcelona a few months ago, and that was foundational to our values and core to the survival of our industry, if not us as a species. Much more to come on Convene 4 Climate, as [it was] another huge success for Jaimé Bennett [PCMA’s managing director, EMEA] and her team, as well as my European colleagues in the Strategic Alliance of the National Convention Bureaux of Europe (SANCBE).
There’s also Spark, the joint venture with Gevme. A.I. is transforming all industries. The business events industry is not exempt from this. It’s something that PCMA needs to be central at in terms of helping people like me convince my people at home at VisitScotland, and certainly in the U.K. [of A.I.’s uses]. I think at PCMA, we feel compelled to equip members with the latest in A.I. so that we can lean into it instead of fall behind. As the adage goes — which Sherrif [Karamat, president and CEO of PCMA] never wastes a moment by not quoting — “A.I. will not take your job away, but those using A.I. will.” It’s very profound; it’s very true. I use it a lot in my day job at VisitScotland.
Another development we want to be building on and haven’t quite rolled out yet is our partnership with [data analytics company] dFakto. This is going to revolutionize the way that site selection is done. I believe that event organizers are being tasked with bringing value to the role, yet we’re still stuck doing some pretty mundane tasks that are unfortunately still very important — but they’re very time-consuming. In 2025, on my watch, we will be rolling out destinAItor, which will completely transform how event organizers select destinations.
Also on my list of 2025 priorities — the Pathway 100 program under the Ascent umbrella. I’ll continue to develop and build upon that with the team, and we’ll have a complete assessment of our [related] education content strategy, and how PCMA can best serve the needs of the ever-evolving membership. That’s really critical stuff, because in the DEI world, there’s a lot of shifting sand and I think it’s important that we can adapt and adopt.
Finally, with the rebranding, we’ll be looking at our membership model, [and] roll out a model that works for what will be a globally expanded audience. PCMA is not just a membership organization. It’s a platform for positive change using business events. I want to see PCMA’s expertise, resources, and networks used to help grow the business events sector globally, grow and protect it especially in markets and regions where economies and societies can be transformed by using business events to develop key sectors. There’s such a ton of work to do there. I’ll hardly make a dent in it in just one year, but I will at least be the temporary guardian of that drive for mapping the untapped potential of business events. For me, that would not only be a positive legacy for my year as chair but would also underline everything that PCMA is committed to achieving.
You’re the first international chair of PCMA’s Board of Directors and Trustees. How do you think your perspective will benefit PCMA? Where do you see differences in your perspective or approach compared to previous North American–based chairs?
PCMA always had the behavior, the positioning, and the poise of a global organization, but with its roots firmly planted in North America. A lot of what I will try to do as the first non-North American chair is reassure the North American membership that, in addition to all of the global expansion and stuff, it’s in addition to the North American base — it’s not instead of. The main thrust of that will be that I’m their chair. I’m everyone’s chair.
I’ve got history in the organization, but also, the experiences that we have [in EMEA and APAC and LATAM] show that we might have different languages and different cultures, but the situations and the problems we face are identical. When it comes to trying to convince politicians of the untapped potential of business events in the U.S.A., it’s Capitol Hill. In the United Kingdom, it’s Westminster. In Australia, it’ll be Canberra, and so on. We’re always trying to speak to the potential for business events, convince [others], and make it stick. That’s why I think there are more similarities than differences. There are, of course, cultural and logistical differences in operating in a different region or continent, but ultimately everyone at PCMA is committed to the same values of having a strong and stable business events sector, with openness, equity, and inclusion, and where that doesn’t exist currently, helping those communities to adopt positive change through using the influence that business events bring.
I think it’s very smart and very clever of PCMA to come into these regions and not come in saying: “This is how we do it. How can we help you?” It’s more important than ever that PCMA has not only a global footprint, which I hope to help expand, but a truly global voice which can speak with an experience of other cultures. I believe my current role within VisitScotland, and my connections, not just in Europe but across the world, can add content and value to that voice.
Casey Gale is managing editor of Convene. This interview has been edited and condensed.