Log In
Industry Award-Winner Appointed New Development Director
CHICAGO, IL – As the global business events industry continues to emerge from the COVID pandemic, PCMA President and CEO Sherrif Karamat today announced the appointment of JoAnn Bedrosian Ryan as Development Director to lead fundraising innovation across the PCMA Foundation’s portfolio of donors and business partners.
Ms. Bedrosian Ryan’s hiring comes as the Foundation builds on the success of the Accelerating Reskilling campaign – an effort dedicated to investing in key skillset development areas for business event industry professionals and supplier partners. 794 individuals have benefitted to date from this effort and last year, the Foundation provided over $900,000 in total outreach funding including scholarships, charitable support and critical research like the Business Events Compass report.
Ms. Bedrosian Ryan brings an impressive track record to PCMA from an accomplished career in the travel and business events marketplace. Most recently she was the Director of Business Alliances for Maritz Global Events, overseeing recruitment, training and integration of a 100+ member independent sales network in the global meetings marketplace. Previous to Maritz, she spent 24 years with United Airlines, helping launch the company’s Meetings & Incentives Division, eventually scaling the product to include group, government, and charter business and taking the product global while leading the integration among Star Alliance carriers.
JoAnn Bedrosian Ryan
“PCMA has been such an important part of my professional life throughout my career, and I am thrilled to be joining the organization in this new capacity, and at this important time”, said Ryan. “As the travel sector recovers from events of the last year, I believe the meetings industry will help lead the way and once again be the vital and vibrant space we knew pre-pandemic. I look forward to leveraging relationships and building new ones as we move PCMA forward. I can’t wait to get started.”
An energetic force on behalf of the events industry, Ms. Bedrosian Ryan is a longtime supporter of PCMA and a recipient of the prestigious PCMA Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She served as a founding member of both the Greater Midwest Chapter and the PCMA Foundation Partnership Summit, and is a former board member of the PCMA Foundation, the MPI International Board of Directors and MPI Foundation Board as well as an ASAE Fellow.
“JoAnn is a forward-thinking professional who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in the business events industry to our PCMA team and the Foundation. She will play a critical role in accelerating recovery by helping raise funds to reskill and advance our community in a post-pandemic world,” said Karamat.
Ms. Bedrosian Ryan will be responsible for Foundation fundraising revenue generation including developing and executing a strategy to grow the Foundation corpus that includes managing relationships with charitable foundations and partners. She joined the PCMA Foundation on May 17th and is part of PCMA’s enterprise business development team reporting to Vice President of Global Business Development Marco Bloemendaal, and Chief Community Officer and Foundation Executive Director Meredith Rollins.
###
About the PCMA Foundation
The role of the Foundation of PCMA is to support the mission of PCMA through fundraising and grant-giving focused on scholarships, education and research that will advance the business events industry. Annually the Foundation funds over $900K in impact, and since 1985 has funded over 2,500 scholarships, 100 research studies and education programs, and $2.5M in charitable giving.
For media queries from the Americas, APAC, EMEA, and requests for interviews with Sherrif Karamat, please contact: Meghan Risch, PCMA Chief of Staff, Vice President, Corporate Communications PCMA, PCMA Foundation and CEMA educate, inspire, and listen, creating meaningful experiences where passion, purpose and commerce come together. We are the world’s largest community for Business Events Strategists, providing senior-level education, networking, and market intelligence for the global business events industry. Our mission is to drive social and economic progress through business events. Headquartered in Chicago, IL PCMA has 17 North American Chapters, regional communities in APAC, EMEA and LATAM, and members in 59 countries. The Corporate Event Marketing Association (CEMA), a PCMA subsidiary, advances strategic event marketing and marketing communications for senior-level event marketers and industry professionals. Visit us at pcma.org. The role of the Foundation of PCMA is to support the mission of PCMA through fundraising and grant-giving focused on scholarships, education and research that will advance the business events industry. Annually the Foundation funds over $700K in impact, and since 1985 has funded over 2,500 scholarships, 100 research studies and education programs, and $2.7M in charitable giving. The Corporate Event Marketing Association (CEMA) is the eminent community for senior event executives, association peers and industry partners and is an integral component of the Professional Convention Management Association’s (PCMA) brand collective. CEMA promotes professional networking opportunities, facilitates peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and drives industry standards. Through strong relationships with strategic partners, CEMA fosters both finding innovative solutions to business issues and continuous focus on members’ career growth. For more information, please visit http://www.cemaonline.com.About PCMA
About PCMA Foundation
About CEMA