Event Leadership Acquired by PCMA

ByHoward Givner

Together We Will Establish the Industry’s Most Powerful Educational Resource and Product Development Design Lab To Lead Educational Innovation

Over ten years ago, I founded the Event Leadership Institute with a simple mission: to help event professionals take their events, careers, teams, and businesses to the next level. We set out to develop highly curated education, delivered in ways that were accessible to working professionals when they needed it, online and on-demand.

I’m incredibly proud of how much we’ve accomplished with limited resources, pioneering innovations such as micro-learning, flipped classrooms, hybrid course delivery, and digital credentials.

Particularly during the past few years, when our industry most needed reskilling and strategic guidance, we worked hard and fast to respond:

  • Developing ten new certificate courses.
  • Curating over 50 webinars and virtual summits.
  • Bringing experts and insights to help tens of thousands of event professionals survive – and thrive – in this strange new world.

But it’s not enough. As much as things have changed recently, the pace of change will only increase. According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, we are in an Exponential Age where the rate of change will double over the next ten years and will double again in the following ten years. We need to be more agile at developing new skills to adapt to this rapidly shifting landscape. It’s a significant effort that requires the deeper resources and broader reach of a larger industry partner.

And that partner is PCMA (Professional Convention Management Association), a house of brands that includes CEMA (Corporate Event Marketing Association), the UK-based EMA (Event Marketing Association), Convene Magazine, the flagship Convening Leaders conference, Convening EMEA, and others.

I am excited to announce that, as of today, PCMA has acquired the Event Leadership Institute. PCMA, and its leadership team, led by CEO Sherrif Karamat, align with our vision of empowering event professionals to take their events and jobs to new heights. And PCMA’s support and global market reach will enable us to do that on a larger scale, developing the training resources our industry needs to excel no matter what comes our way.

Together we will establish the industry’s most powerful educational resource and product development design lab in order to lead educational innovation for our industry into the future, driving innovation, building an agile workforce, and providing the tools and resources to create the next generation of meaningful, measurable, and impactful events and experiences.

I know that across the past few years, we’ve felt like the rug has been pulled out from under us, and we’re still yearning to be on stable ground for more than a few months at a time. I know the ongoing uncertainty has been stressful. However, as many of you have heard me say, change and uncertainty create enormous opportunities for us to prove our value as strategic and trusted advisors. And I’ve never been more excited about the future of our industry and what ELI can accomplish as part of the PCMA family of brands.

I look forward to working with many of you to build that bright future together.

Howard Givner
Founder & CEO
Event Leadership Institute