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PCMA CEO Sherrif Karamat, CAE, onstage at Convening Leaders 2026 in Philadelphia.
If you were one of the more than 4,200 people at Convening Leaders 2026 (CL26) in Philadelphia in January, you may have seen me on stage wearing a kilt.
It was a fun moment, but one that was rich in meaning. We can thank Neil Brownlee, outgoing PCMA Chair and VisitScotland’s head of business events, for leading us through the process of creating the PCMA tartan, which is officially recorded in The Scottish Register of Tartans. The tartan’s colors reflect the look of our new brand, and its thread count repeats a pattern based on the numbers 70, 20, and 26, marking both PCMA’s 70th anniversary, and 2026 as a turning point for our global community.
Sherrif Karamat, CAE, President and CEO, PCMA and CEMA
For me, the tartan also represents the ways in which PCMA has woven leading organizations — through acquisitions like CEMA, EMA-UK, and the Event Leadership Institute, now PCMA Institute — together under one brand, to create a more connected, inclusive, and future-ready global community. At CL26, we formalized the most recent of our many strategic partnerships — a two-year collaboration with the International Association of Professional Congress Organisers (IAPCO) — as we move toward the goal of becoming the platform for the global business events community by 2030.
Participants traveled to Philadelphia from 43 countries, bringing with them a diversity of opinions, ideas, and experience, as we honored past leaders, heard from the “now generation” of leaders in the 2026 class of 20 in Their Twenties, and welcomed more than 1,000 first-time participants. The unifying purpose that brings us together is an ongoing commitment to the global business events community as a catalyst for economic good and social transformation. We are committed to challenging conventional thinking, to innovation, to forging meaningful business connections, and the knowledge that business events are about more than convening — they are about leadership, trust, and finding solutions to complex challenges that benefit us all.
In Philadelphia, we also found time to give back to the local community, with volunteers giving their time to local organizations that support children and others experiencing homelessness, assembling care packages to support the American Cancer Society, and through our first-time blood drive with the American Red Cross.
As the times we are living in seem to grow more uncertain by the day, “the world feels increasingly unsteady,” incoming PCMA Chair Kelly Ricker told the audience as she officially stepped into the volunteer role. Her point in bringing it up, she continued, “is to suggest that the power of human connection, and the role our PCMA community plays in fostering those connections, is more important than ever. Our entire business is centered on bringing people together and we will keep creating environments for healthy dialogue and positive progress.”
I hope to connect with many of you in the coming year, at a PCMA or another industry event.
Introducing Spark 2.0
In Philadelphia, PCMA also launched a streamlined, more intuitive version of the Spark AI platform that’s been redesigned to help you access the tools that fit your precise needs more quickly. Read more about the changes — and how using Spark has given user and CL 26 Spark Hackathon winner Patricia Guidetti, DES, more time to spend on the strategic and creative facets of events in her role as senior director of programs for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.