New President

Ori Lahav, Vice President Clients & Operations at Kenes Group was elected IAPCO President at the highest ever-rated IAPCO Annual General Assembly in Vancouver, and takes over from outgoing President Mathias Posch for a two-year term.

Ori Lahav commented “It is a huge honour to lead an association of industry professionals and more so, to follow the footsteps of our Founder and President, Gideon Rivlin, who was President of the association 39 years ago. I am set to continue raising the standards of IAPCO together with the HQ team and the exemplary Council. No matter the hard times that we are currently facing with COVID-19 and other unrests around the world, I believe that this is the right opportunity for us to come together and prove the resilience of the events industry once more.”

Martin Boyle, IAPCO CEO, commented “I have had the privilege of working with Ori during the last year in his role as IAPCO Vice President and am certain that his international experience and network will be of great value to our association.”

Key focus areas for the IAPCO Council during his term are:

Launching webEDGE – the new IAPCO online learning platform

A strong commitment to the IAPCO Quality mandate and an active industry outreach to communicate it

Widening the Association’s reach in Latin America and APAC

New Council

Elections were held during the General Assembly and along with a new president, the Council welcomed one new elected member and four re-elected members.

The new elected council member, Alejandro Tabche, Business Travel Consulting, Mexico and the four re-elected council members Barbara Calderwood, MCI UK; Monica Freire, AIM Group International, Keith Burton, African Agenda and Sarah Markey-Hamm, ICMS Pty Ltd create a truly global team.

IAPCO Council 2020-2021

President: Ori Lahav, Kenes Group, Israel

Immediate Past President: Mathias Posch, ICS, Canada

Treasurer: Keith Burton, African Agenda, South Africa

Jan Tonkin, The Conference Company, New Zealand

Alain Pittet, Ega worldwide congresses & events, Italy

Barbara Calderwood, MCI, UK

Monica Freire, AIM Group International, Portugal

Sarah Markey-Hamm, ICMS Pty Ltd, Australia

Nicolette van Erven, Congress by design, Netherlands

Alejandro Ramirez Tabche, Business Travel Consulting, Mexico

About IAPCO

IAPCO (International Association of Professional Congress Organisers) is the leading international association for professional conference organisers, representing today 137 companies comprised of over 9500 professional congress organisers, meeting planners and managers of international and national congresses, conventions and special events from 39 countries Email: info@iapco.org www.iapco.org