Teresa Broccoli: “The event industry changed 180 degrees in 2 years”

# tags: Events , Portugal , Associations , Spain , Business Tourism

We caught up with Teresa Broccoli, MPI’s Iberian Chapter former President (but still on the board), to talk about the chapter, her legacy as the leader, and how she sees the changes in the event industry.

How would you present MPI in a few words?

MPI is the largest association in the world for event planners that provides the best support, education and community. Besides, it stands for human rights, equality, and sustainability. We also have the MPI Foundation that advocates for our profession and does incredible work towards helping our members.

What are the responsibilities of a Chapter, like the Iberian, within the association?

We are responsible to act on behalf of MPI vision, goals and mission. However, the most important is to create a community of event planners and suppliers in our countries (Portugal and Spain) that we will unite by the same goals. So depending on the country the chapter is, the goals might be different. I believe that the most important thing that we deliver is an excellent education, discussions about the MICE industry, we bring top speakers to our events to deliver content and we help our members to thrive in their careers.

What would you like to leave as the main legacy of your mandate that has just ended?

First I loved my role as a President, especially because it was a very demanding time to do it. I call myself “the pandemic president”! During these 2 years we focused in: helping our members by helping them economically to continue as members; create new event formats with an international focus because we are the biggest association in the world and the fact that our members can communicate with other countries and discover new business opportunities is amazing; following this idea we challenged our Spanish speaking colleagues from LATAM to create the Foro Hispano that is an international event done twice a year that connects all the Spanish speaking countries…and Florida and north California; then we focused on Europe and created the first hybrid event called Europe Connect that was done in Italy and transmitted live. The next Europe Connect will be done in Madrid with the Netherland chapter in September. So this is my legacy… let’s grow internationally and give our members the possibility to connect with MPI members all around the world.

What is the strategy to attract more members from Portugal, and what are the advantages you can offer?

We are planning a direct approach to meeting planners and suppliers by creating a challenge to create awareness of our content, benefits, vision, and mission. The winner of the challenge will be awarded with a membership. On the same strategy we are creating two events: one for the last quarter and the other for the first quarter of 2023. For these events we are now looking for partners and sponsors to help us deliver magic!

What role can MPI, and the Iberian Chapter in particular, play in a changing events industry?

Yes, the event industry changed 180 degrees in 2 years and we will not go back to 2019. The way is forward because in this period of time we learned so much that we have implemented with our clients new trends in the events industry and the events gained with our knowledge and the implementation of those new trends. Our work as an association is to deliver our members all the tools and skills into the new era of events so they can thrive in their careers and in their businesses. This is done by our MPI Academy and the chapter education events. Another step that we are ready to take and we are now in contact with Spanish universities is to create a Meetings and Event Management Master. This might be a project already for the next 22/23 education year. We will do the same in Portugal and we will approach the universities and schools there. We deeply believe that this master is needed as the present courses do not prepare their students for our industry.