Trendsetter Tuesday: How Cvent's Rachel Andrews Builds Bridges to a Digital Future

Our weekly Trendsetter Tuesday podcast series checks in with Rachel Andrews, senior director of global meetings and events for meetings and events industry technology giant Cvent.

After signing on with Cvent in 2011, Andrews built its event program from the ground up. Fourteen years later, she leads a team of 30 managing some 1,200 events every year. She also has catapulted Cvent’s annual user conference, Cvent CONNECT, into a globally recognized industry event.

Andrews is also the co-host of Cvent’s Great Events podcast and is an MPI International Board of Directors member, sought-after speaker and respected mentor and leader.

[Related: The 2024 Meetings Trendsetters Paving New Paths in the Events Industry]

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[Related: Championing Women and Building Confidence Through Experience - A Great Events & Dare to Interrupt Podcast Mashup]

Transcript:

Editors note: The following transcription was facilitated by AI program Otter.ai and proofed by our editors. Although it is very accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.

Tyler Davidson

Hello, and welcome to this Meetings Today Podcast. I'm Tyler Davidson, Vice President and Chief Content Director for Meetings Today. And thank you for joining us for this special Trendsetter Tuesday podcast, in which we highlight one of our 20 Meetings Trendsetters we name every year. 

And today, I'm really happy to be speaking with Rachel Andrews, who is with Cvent, who is, I believe is your title, senior Event Manager? What is your title, Rachel?

Rachel Andrews
Senior Director Global Meetings and Events.

Tyler Davidson

Thanks for joining us, and you've been there, I think, since 2011? A lot has changed in the industry. A lot has changed at Cvent in that time. 

Why don't you give us a quick background, first on yourself and your history in the industry, and then what was Cvent like when you came aboard, and I know you've noted a lot of significant accomplishments with your time there, and maybe go into some of that.

Rachel Andrews

Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for having me. I feel like a celeb being a Trendsetter. I got that announcement, I was like, dang, I didn't know I was setting trends, but I am here for it. I love doing anything I can for this industry. So, thanks for having me. I'm happy to take you through it. 

I guess I'll just dive right in. I guess what led to this point my career; I've been in the industry about two decades. I started doing events in college. I couldn't find an exact major for event planning but I knew I thought I wanted to be in PR and I went down the PR track in college with communications and public relations. And right after college, I tried to get into the PR world, and I realized very quickly it wasn't for me, and I gravitated towards the events I was doing. 

So, I was in New York and I pivoted quickly to a financial company and doing their events. And it just so happened that right after I started in the financial space, the 2008 crisis happened, which was a wild, wild time, especially in the financial sector, for sure, because of all the regulations that changed, all the things we couldn't do, all our processes changed. A lot of our departments were either let go or repositioned. 

And it was, I like to say, my trial by fire year of, you know, sink or swim. You either like doing these events, and you either do ’em or you don't. And you know, it was a do or die mentality. And I just put my big girl pants on and I just did it. And it was a wild like. I don't think I slept for most of 2008 or 2009 just making sure, because I was still junior, and I was given all of these very large-scale events to still complete. And luckily, I had a lot of great people on the team and a lot of great mentors that helped me through it. But it was wild. 

And then, like you said, I joined Cvent in 2011. I moved back the D.C. area to be near family. I actually moved without a job. And I just so happened to see a posting from a friend from Virginia Tech who was posting about them hiring at Cvent, hiring a meeting professional. And I thought, Okay, I'm going to apply. And it was a funny interview process. I interviewed with [Cvent CEO] Reggie Agarwal directly for like hours. He grilled me on everything. And it was a kind of a funny interview. And I started at Cvent in 2011 after interviewing with them. 

So, you know, it's been a wild ride since then, when I joined. I know you were talking about the kind of the career projection progression of me, but also Cvent; I think I've lived nine lives. Been at Cvent 14, almost 14 years, in January, and I have lived a lot of different roles at this company, been in the same department and marketing, but I have lived 1,000 lives. 

I feel like when I joined, I think there were about 400 employees total at Cvent, and now we're about 5,000 employees. So, we have changed a few different ways since I started. You know, when I started, we barely had an internal event strategy. We were doing product lunch-and-learns was the extent of the events that we did. And I was planning 400 events with myself, a couple people in India and an intern, and then a couple disparate teams were contributing to industry shows and things like that.

The first year I was there, we said, Okay, we're doing a lot of things in these silos. We need to join forces here. And we started the events team with my counterpart at the time, merging trade shows, the events we attend and the events we host together, and developing more of an employee morale and internal events strategy, because we were growing like crazy, and we needed to have a lot of meetings for that growth, and to get our employees together to rally around that growth. 

So, I remember the first three years of Cvent being just inundated with new custom things that we were building from scratch, you know. And then throughout those years, as we started growing, I started growing the team. And, you know, I'm fast forwarding a few years, but nearly 14 years later we have a team of 30. 

But it didn't happen overnight. It happened over a decade of just maturing our events model, developing new roles outside of just the standard event planner or event design role, growing those functions and branches within the team, and then along the way, we've gone public and private twice. So those also change the dynamics of the events that we did. It changed the dynamic of the company. We've acquired a lot of companies, which has changed some of the way we do events, or acquired other events that other companies were doing that we brought into our own total event mix. 

So, I've seen a lot of iterations of the company, but every time the company morphs or changes, it changes the way in which we do events. And it's been really cool, you know? And then people are like, gosh, you've been there so long. What makes you stay? And it's always the fact that I've never been bored. I've always been growing and learning and leaning on some amazing people on the team. But also, the team here is just so awesome.

And, you know, just the fact that we've been able to grow globally and hire and nurture from within and have this amazing events team, but also within, like the greater company, we work very closely with all departments, so just being able to nurture and grow that. 

Sure, there have been tons of growing pains right along the way. We've had a lot of learning lessons, a lot of failures, but mostly successes, and mostly due to the fact that we hire really, really well and make sure that the people on the team are subject matter experts, are good team players, are good at their jobs. You know, that can do attitude at all turns of the adventure.

Tyler Davidson

And could you imagine, like, what you're doing now, as opposed to when you joined up in 2011 you didn't study this in college. Basically, you probably had to, like, you know, envision this all on yourself within your team to

Rachel Andrews

I laugh about that all the time. I think back to I did a fundraiser event in college, and I did the communications department’s 25th anniversary. And at the time, I was like, oh my god, this is so much work. I had to manage 25 committee heads. We had a whole week where we brought alumni in, and that was a lot to coordinate, but really all I did was get some stuff for silent auction and help with, you know, coordination of a few publications. 

And you know, I'm oversimplifying what we did, but back then, I was like, that was the most massive thing I could have ever imagined doing. And then just now looking back at that, and now looking back at like, just doing, you know, lunch-and-learn seminars at the scale I was doing it when I started, I don't think I would have imagined myself being in this place. 

But, you know, one of the questions I asked when I started, after a year of being there and year of being like, oh my god, I'm doing 400 events by myself, essentially, with a couple of support people. If we want to grow or if we want to do anything else, we need to look at our infrastructure here or outsource to a company to help support this. And we ultimately made the decision as an events company to keep it in house and grow that, you know, that lifeblood within Cvent, so that that's been cool. 

But to answer your question. I had no clue. I've always known that I like growing and thinking outside the box and saying, How can we do it bigger, better and more badass and more epic every year. But I never really thought back then that I would go beyond product seminars and managing lots of people.

Tyler Davidson

And I think you mentioned you may manage more than 1,000 events a year, and then your big, globally recognized Cvent CONNECT, right? I mean, it's crazy. What are like, some of the basic events you do. And then tell us more about CONNECT, and then, are you going to be in San Antonio again next y ear?

Rachel Andrews

I think for that, we are working on an announcement as we speak.

Tyler Davidson

Okay, yeah, so I'm here for you when you want to make that public.

Rachel Andrews

I know you are. I promise you'll be on the top of the list to tell you when we're announcing. It's very soon. It's coming up very soon. I just need to sign the contract before I say anything externally. 

But so, yeah, to answer your question, just kind of the 30-second overview of our events, total event program we have here. Like you said, we manage about 1,200 events a year, and these range from the internal events that we do at the company that can be anything from company-wide meetings, virtually streamed meetings, happy hours, morale events, holiday parties, training programs, SKOs, you know, sales, kickoffs, incentive trips, things like that.

Then we have external events. And underneath external events, we have events we attend, which are the almost 300 tradeshows that we go and either exhibit at or attend every year, just as our brand, or we're going for a relationship, or we're going to speak. We go to that many globally. 

Then the other flipside of that are the events that we host. So, these are Cvent-led events. We don't plan events for other companies. It's just our own events. So, they range from tier three all the way up to tier one and flirting with tier-one plus. But we're not quite in that realm yet, of like 40,000 attendees would be like a tier-one plus, so we’re at the tier-three level.

We support advanced production for webinars. We do lunch-and-learn series. We do training programs. And these are programs that are typically anywhere from one hour to three hours, that have training, content, speakers, you know, and then some sort of networking. We do a ton of client appreciation and client events all over the world. We do networking events. We do partner events where we partner with even someone like Meetings Today and do a co-meeting with them, or co-event with them, and then going up to more of our marquee or tier-two into your tier-one programs. 

We have our all-day conferences, our Cvent Accelerate program, for example, and then obviously our Cvent CONNECTs. We do our U.S.-based one, and we do a London one every year. Usually CONNECT is in June, and the CONNECT Europe program is either in October or November. This year, it's November 5 through the 7th in London. 

But those two programs are the largest events we do, and they're a hybrid between user conference and industry event. You know, we have a unique position in the industry as one of the event tech leaders in the space, and not only that, we also talk about trends. We're not just talking about our products the whole time. We try to split the fence, if you will, between both, because we know that event profs want to talk about both innovation and they want to talk about their total events program, strategy and other trends facing the industry.

So, I have a ton of people on my team doing different things, too. The other thing, I think, when you say 30 people, they're like, oh my god, 1,200 events, 30 people, that's so much! But when you drill down into it, I have an event tech team. I have event operations, research and reporting and analytics. I have an event marketing branch. I have event design, which would be your traditional project managers or your traditional event design for planners function, and they all work very closely together across all of the sub departments to ensure that, you know, event tech is helping us build a great Cvent event, and that our event marketing team is working within that and they're working with our event designers on what the agenda and the content and the flow and the attendee experience looks like.

So, we are a well-oiled machine, but every year we morph into something else just because of the demands of the growing business or the demands of the of the industry

Tyler Davidson

Then you're also the co host of Cvent’s Great Events podcast. Tell us more about that. You know, what kind of topics do you cover? Who do you have on there? And are you enjoying doing that part of your job?

Rachel Andrews

Yeah, that's another question. Tyler, if you ask me, would you ever be a podcast host in your life? I don't think I would have put that on my bingo card! 

To be honest, I was really skeptical about doing it. I was like, Who the heck wants to listen to me? But it's been three years now where there's three co-hosts that run the Great Events podcast, and it's been a delight. Honestly, it's been really fun to interview people in the industry about what they're doing, what trends they're seeing. But we go all over the map, and we're very serious about our Great Events roadmap. We have an amazing marketing team behind us that is looking at, you know, different things. And I'll say, you know, I was talking about this at an industry event. 

So, we just ebb and flow with it, depending on what's surging trend-wise. Or if we talk to, you know, a new partner and they want to come on it. But we try to, when we look at the overall roadmap, we try to make sure we have something on AI, something on accessibility, something on sustainability. Those topics are so meaty that they can go in in eight different sub-directions with what you're talking about. 

But we've been really lucky to have a lot of great people come on and give their insights. And you know, what I find really cool is the listeners are all over the map of who actually listens to the podcast, but one thing we've been seeing lately is a lot of students are listening to our podcast, which is awesome, because I'm like, Yeah, I would love to talk to more students, because when I was in college, I didn't even know that this was a career that I could go into, right?

Tyler Davidson

That's one of the things that I and the other editors in our company feel strongly about, is nurturing that next generation coming into the industry. So that's refreshing, so important.

Rachel Andrews

And I feel like the more we can dedicate time to training and educating them on this path, the better. Like I thought events when I was growing up were this fun, you know, decor, food and beverage experience. It's still that, but it's way more strategic, and it's way more driven to business success than I would have ever guessed.

Tyler Davidson

And I'm guessing what you do at Cvent in general. It really does, in the end, it reinforces that message that it's all more about buying gallons of coffee and rates and dates, right? I mean, there's a whole life cycle of events and myriad aspects of it that it's just too big for that proverbial one person to handle anymore.

Rachel Andrews

It's important to a company or an organization. It's such a lead generation funnel relationship, building a brand exposure funnel for a company. 

Events as a channel is way more sophisticated than it was 10 years ago, and a lot of that's due to the technology we're using. A lot of that's due to, you know, AI coming about and seeing, Oh my gosh, if you look at the impact that you're making from these events, or the deals you're closing, or you're or the new members that you're getting, whatever your KPIs are for your event success, you're looking at that, you're like, you know what? We are driving business to the organizations, and we should, as business owners, capitalize on the impact that we are making to our company. 

So, it is way more sophisticated than the gallons of coffee, like you mentioned. Event strategy is a beautiful science, but it's ever evolving.

Tyler Davidson

And you are in a great position to discover what the latest trends are, because your audience is so engaged and you are running the events portion of Cvent. What are some of the trends you're seeing from your audience that are relevant to you, and then your colleagues out there, planning meetings and events?

Rachel Andrews
Yeah, a lot of these we talk about on our podcast. But I would say, for me, top of mind is AI and how that can save me time. You know, being able to upload survey results and AI and say, Hey, give me the executive talking points from the data that I got from the survey. Oh, my God, saves me hours. Uh, summarize this meeting that I just had with the action points and send out an email to everybody involved. You know, help me. Make an agenda for this meeting, or this, you know, trip that we're going on. Help me start a PowerPoint deck for the pre-con that we're hosting. 

There’s so many things. And I've talked to my team where I was like, we need to make a checklist of all the things that we need to use this for on a regular basis, because I think that that isn't a trend. It's just the future of what we need to incorporate into our events. 

You know, I struggle with saying trends for things that are kind of here to stay, because it's like, no, it's a mind shift. And I don't think it's going to take away what we're doing. It's going to enhance the way we talk about data. It's going to enhance the way that we can not spend hours and Excel with our eyes bleeding. And so that's number-one for me. 

Number-two is, there's got to be a better way to figure out how to be sustainable without it being so expensive. That's a very hard conversation that the industry is still having, and it still hasn't figured it out yet, but I think the tracking of it, the tracking of every event, the tracking of your events program, and how it's saving. I don't know what the right word is, but like, how it's basically helping the environment. 

Or, you know, hey, we didn't use 800 water bottles this year, but last year we did. You know, where do you keep that? And that's something that kind of keeps me up at night right now, is just, how do we do that? Because, you know, we'll try to get water coolers, but then we get people complaining about it. 

That's just one example of, like, 40 different things that you can be tracking. And I guess the last thing would be for me, as the Center of Excellence is really coming back to this conversation of, do you have the right processes and the right roles on your team? Because we're being asked to do more with less, and it's hard for me. I hate hearing that. I'm sure other planners do, too--just do more with less, and like what the in the heck does that mean? Does that mean not hire people or do more meetings? Okay, then where can we outsource? Where can we get more efficient? Maybe we cut down programs that aren't performing well and look at the prioritization or ROI exercises that will help push back on okay by doing more with less. Maybe we take these low hanging fruit, well performing events, do more of those because they're not as hard to plan, and do less of these really complex events that aren't yielding us anything, right?

Tyler Davidson

Thanks for joining us today. And I know how busy you are, so I appreciate the time. And given that, I mean, how do you stay energized? How do you motivate yourself? And what is your advice to someone, even maybe just coming into the industry, about having to deal with all these loose ends that never seem to be resolved.

Rachel Andrews

And in our wonderful industry, it's like the never-ending agility that you have to have. You know, at a certain point, I just made wellness and mental health a priority there. There are always going to be events that you have to do. There are always going to be executives that want to do more more, more, more, more. 

And at a certain point you need to put some guard rails into place if you are able to. And I think some people that join the industry get burnt out pretty quickly, and I think you need to understand your limits a little bit, as far as making those guardrails for yourself, but also finding yourself some mentors and hopefully your boss is on the same page with you about those things, but I find it helpful to communicate. Hey, here's my schedule for the next week if I need to shift it, or, you know, just if you're starting out like, make sure that your calendar and your schedule is available to the people that are require you, and then make some hard and fast rules for yourself. 

And honestly, find some time to have fun. I feel like we get so serious all the time, and I like to make sure I've carved out time to travel, I've carved out time to see friends, and just making sure that I do that with getting my to do list done every day, it's like, here are the five things I have to do today, and here are the 10 things I have to do by the end of the week. And if I get those things done, then I can reward myself with travel or fun, just because it is never ending. 

All I'll say is the final thing is, work will always be there for you. So, you know, you can kill yourself every day on working, but you can also make time for your own personal well-being.

Tyler Davidson

Well, thanks for joining us today, Rachel.

Rachel Andrews

It was so nice to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited that I'm a Trendsetter. I hope that I set some trends in this podcast…

Tyler Davidson

Oh, for sure, today and in the future, I'm sure. So, I really appreciate it, and I love working with you all the time, too, on different stuff. And your team, you're just amazing people. So, thanks again. 
And that was Rachel Andrews, who is the senior director of global meetings and events for Cvent. I'm Tyler Davidson, Vice president and chief content director for Meetings Today.

Thanks for joining us for this Meetings Today Trendsetter Tuesday podcast. If you're interested in any of our other podcasts, just head on over to Meetingstoday.com. Check out our podcast section for lots of broadcasts with industry thought leaders. 

Thanks again for joining us today, and no matter what you're up to with the rest of it, go out and make it great.