When I joined Bizly in the Fall of 2019, I wrote a blog post called "Why I Joined Bizly".  Now I am about to retire from my current full time Chief Customer Officer and Head of Enterprise role and move into a more consulting Senior Advisor role for Bizly.

Looking back, my entire career has always been focused on thought leadership and driving changes in areas that needed improvement whether in productivity and/or cost savings.  Meetings and events are a complex endeavor with many different stakeholders involved -- the venues, the travel and meeting managers, the admins, team leaders and the planners themselves. So when I was first introduced to CEO and Founder Ron Shah, and got to know more about Bizly, I became excited about the role Bizly was playing in reimagining the small and simple meetings space with a simple mission:  democratize event planning for all and make it truly self-service.

Bizly was on a mission to build a solution that brings everyone in the planning ecosystem together. Bizly’s genesis and deep insight was that it’s not just about venue sourcing, but rather it was automating the end-to-end journey from meeting planning, simple registration, to sourcing all while incorporating corporate policies; this combination was groundbreaking. But what really excited me was how thoughtful Bizly was in its approach to make the entire end-to-end planning process simple for everyone across an organization. The thought of joining Bizly and helping to make it more relevant and transformative was just too good to pass up.  

Reflecting on my time at Bizly, I’m proud to have played a role in the transformative changes the company has made during my tenure.  What we achieved over the past four years is pretty amazing.  We became a global solution launching in the UK and Europe with eight languages.  We added best-in-class carbon and sustainability tracking and infosecurity with SOC2 Type 2 certification. And we even fulfilled one of my most valued initiatives around diversity by becoming a certified minority owned business!  I’m proud to have played a role in helping spearhead our growth.  

While I won’t be present on a full time basis to help launch the exciting new enhancements that Bizly is working on in 2023; I’m thrilled to have played a role as the company formulated its next chapter: developing the next generation of event technology powered by AI.  Bizly’s vision was always to democratize event planning.  Their new innovations in AI accelerates their mission in a transformative and unprecedented way and I can’t wait for you to see all that the company has in store.

In closing, let me say a big thank you to all of our loyal customers who stuck with us during the pandemic, the amazing and dedicated Bizly teams and contractors, and to our CEO, Ronak Shah who invited me to join him on this incredible journey. As I count down the days before embarking on my new life chapter of retirement, I can confidently repeat the same closing statement I made in my first blog post in 2019, “More exciting developments to come, so watch this space!”

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