Transamerica

As the Vice President of Event Management at Transamerica, Cindy Villa is responsible for managing all events for retirement and operations. Working with the organization for over two decades, she has held various roles, including marketing, event planning, and business development. Over the years, Villa has been an integral part of planning major company-organized events.

What are the current challenges in the event management space? 

With the increasing inflation, businesses are on the lookout for ways to cut event expenses. As the budget continues to take a hit, producing influential events with limited resources and sometimes stringent timelines becomes challenging. We must find the best practices to organize an event with less. As event planners, we need to be open and willing to talk to one another in our sphere of influence to find the relevant strategies and solutions that deliver outcomes in less time and budget with fewer resources. Building relationships and partnerships give us the power of negotiation to meet these changing demands. 

What are the factors that have impacted the space recently? 

After Covid, the way we connect with each other and approach events has changed. Since it was challenging to have in-person meetings and organize events during the pandemic due to social distancing mandates, the business world moved towards virtual meetings. Most planners had to take crash courses to learn technologies and tools that were entirely new to them and found new ways to organize these virtual meetings and events.

This trend of virtual meetings remains with us even when we are back at the offices. Realizing that many people can do their jobs remotely, organizations have found ways to reduce their real estate footprint. Most companies have hybrid work culture today, and event planners need to organize hybrid events—both face-to-face and virtual meetings—to engage individuals that work remotely. Even at Transamerica, the hybrid event is one of the latest trends.  

“Moving forward, we must revamp the old ways of organizing events by keeping an open mind and looking for new ways and processes that ensure better efficiency and effectiveness in reaching the audience”

However, managing remote teams is still challenging, with connection always remaining a point of contention for people. From a planner's perspective, a face-to-face connection is always stronger than the experience that we offer through streaming technologies.

As we look at behavioral science and how people learn, function, and get engaged, businesses need to continually evolve and change to adapt new ways of conducting meetings and improve collaboration. Recognizing how people's brains function and how they learn differently is the key to successfully executing an event onsite or virtually.  

What strategy do you follow to ensure the successful execution of events?

At Transamerica, our strategy is going forward with face-to-face connection and onsite meetings while keeping the hybrid approach alive. As we continue to dig in and look at behavioral science, we observed that it is easier to keep individuals tuned in when they are onsite than in virtual meetings, where they sit in front of a computer all day trying to concentrate on a discussion. 

Our strategies going forward will be more face-to-face events but designing them differently and creatively. It could be 30-minute increments of content with longer breaks or break cycles. Or we can create different types of zones at events where we can continue to deliver the message to attendees without having them seated in a meeting room. We are exploring various aspects of educating and engaging attendees outside the meeting space, rethinking how we design and execute events.

What would be your piece of advice to your fellow peers? 

COVID has taught us how we are stuck in our own ways and often get sidelined by not taking an approach to change. Moving forward, we must revamp the old ways of organizing events by keeping an open mind and looking for new ways and processes that ensure better efficiency and effectiveness in reaching the audience. 

I suggest my peers learn new methods, tools, and technologies and approach work in a manner where you're constantly digging in, supporting changes, and talking to peers. Keep doing surveys and research, and make sure you collaborate with different people outside of your main scope to gain a better perspective.