Denise Pierson

Meeting Planning Assistant

West Chester University
Bachelor of Science, Health and Physical Education, 1986

Ms. Pierson has over 16 years of event‑planning experience.  As a meeting planning assistant at PAI Consulting (PAI), she uses this experience to help support the twice‑yearly Aviation Safety InfoShare (InfoShare) meeting attended by more than 1,000 participants from a variety of aviation safety professions (Government, commercial, and general aviation operators; corporate and business operators; associations; and international operators).  Ms. Pierson, in conjunction with other PAI employees, performs administrative and organizational services associated with the planning and support of a recurring, large‑scale industry meeting, such as records, information, and schedule management; resource coordination and oversight; shipping; meeting preparation; and other office‑support services.  She also maintains the event registration and information website; tracks meeting requests, RSVPs, and attendance; assigns meeting space, staffing, and other resources; and coordinates printing, procurement, and shipping needs.  Ms. Pierson conducts site visits for venue selection and planning, and provides onsite support during the meeting.

In addition, Ms. Pierson helps support the Flight Safety Foundation’s (FSF) Business Aviation Safety Summit (BASS) by conducting coordination calls for status updates, tracking details on tasks and resources, monitoring room block usage, and acting as a liaison with hotel and other support services for event‑planning purposes.  She visits sites to help with venue selection and planning, and provides onsite support at the meeting.

In 1992, Ms.  Pierson was hired as a health and physical education teacher in the Chichester School District, teaching grades K–4 and 9–12 for 5 years each.  At both the high school and elementary levels, she was responsible for developing and writing daily lesson plans for her assigned classes each semester, keeping inventory of physical education equipment for the department, purchasing any needed equipment within the allotted budget, and writing status reports and documenting grades for all students.  Ms. Pierson evaluated the school curriculum and drafted proposed changes and updates to be approved by the District.  She also was the advisor for the high‑school class of 1995.  In this capacity, she was responsible for planning the class officer elections and all class fundraising events, social dances, and proms.  In this role, Ms. Pierson was responsible for selecting junior and senior prom event venues, securing sponsors and donations, writing event‑agenda and ticket information, coordinating document printing, planning menus, keeping accurate attendee lists, collecting all payments, distributing tickets, selecting and purchasing prom favors, and enlisting volunteer chaperones, all while keeping within the allowable budget.

At the elementary level, along with her teaching duties Ms. Pierson organized two fundraising events to benefit the families of students who were fighting cancer.  She planned and executed the events, secured sponsors, kept accurate records of financial pledges, and ensured all financial records for all monies raised donated to each family were accurate.  Ms. Pierson also wrote fundraising rules and instructions for distribution to the entire student body.

In April 2011, Ms. Pierson transitioned to event planning with the Palladium Hotel Group (Palladium) in Ibiza, Spain.  As Assistant to the Commercial Director/Inside Sales/Office Manager, she provided contract administration for new and past commercial North American tour operator hotel contracts, including revising hotel contracts with new annual rates and ensuring their accuracy, distributing contracts to tour operators, and collecting and filing signed contracts.  In addition to contract administration, Ms. Pierson was responsible for staff administration, including writing follow‑up to sales team directives from the Commercial Director, writing detailed and descriptive correspondence to update staff on new company procedures, collecting and reviewing all expense reports and submitting monthly written accounting reports reflective of all travel expenses, and sharing all hotel updates in written documents.  She ensured staff received immediate written notification of all updated hotel contract sales offers in a timely manner.  Ms. Pierson also performed duties as an inside sales representative for all incoming phone inquiries from American travel advisors inquiring about rates, hotel offers, complaints, and general hotel information.

Ms. Pierson also attended East Coast industry tradeshows for Palladium, which included writing and editing training presentations for distribution to the North American Sales Team, presenting training to tradeshow attendees, planning all business‑related travel, keeping accurate expense reports, and ordering and shipping all tradeshow collateral to each venue.  She proofread and edited all new company hotel brochures used for American travel advisors and industry tour operators.  She also proofread and edited brochures at company hotels located in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Jamaica to ensure proper translation from Spanish to English.  In addition, Ms. Pierson reviewed all American tour‑operator websites to ensure Palladium content was correct and aligned with all Palladium Hotel location descriptions; she then drafted a written document of suggested changes, description inaccuracies, and copy errors.

Ms. Pierson was promoted to Business Development Manager at Palladium in January 2015, where she continued to review and edit hotel brochures.  She also made phone and in‑person sales calls to travel agencies within her assigned ten‑state territory to grow brand recognition and increase hotels’ revenue.  She created a positive perception of Palladium to travel advisors and tour operators by providing excellent customer service, brand education, and consistent email communication.  Ms. Pierson used Palladium’s customer relationship management tools to help grow customer relationships across the entire customer lifecycle.  She promoted Palladium by ensuring travel partners were educated on current company programs, initiatives, sales tools, and sales promotions during attendance at tradeshows, trainings, webinars, sales calls, and familiarization‑trip meetings, and created informational sales flyers for distribution at industry tradeshows and sales calls.  Ms. Pierson traveled both domestically and internationally to support various meetings and planned all meeting logistics for travel‑advisor familiarization and product sales trips in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Jamaica.  To obtain event approvals she drafted written detailed sales plans, itineraries, and projected costs for events; following approval, she identified meeting space and coordinated itineraries with the Meeting and Events teams on location.  Ms. Pierson registered all participants, prepared hotel trainings, secured meeting space for trainings, led hotel site inspections for all agent guests, planned and wrote daily agendas, arranged airport costs and transfers, worked with hotel teams for audio‑visual support services, prepared invitations, selected guest promotional gifts, managed staff support, planned food and beverage selections and locations, assisted in planning onsite social events, transported collateral for each event, and supervised post‑event follow‑up with the U.S. and Canadian sales teams.  As hotels were continuously updated or changed, she frequently drafted new copy and updated sales presentations for use at industry events and familiarization trips.

Ms. Pierson was the lead American planner of the first annual Palladium Master Experience held in Mexico for 250 travel agents, media representatives, tour operators, and American and Canadian Palladium Hotel Group staff.  Afterwards she wrote post‑event reports—including key recommendations for future events, analysis of attendee engagement at sessions, and attendance statistics at scheduled daily sessions—and drafted post‑event surveys for distribution to all attendees.  Ms. Pierson wrote and submitted a detailed monthly sales report comprised of key performance indicator results, follow‑up to sales goals, outcomes of events attended, new and projected sales initiatives, and future travel plans and travel expense estimates.

In October 2018 Ms. Pierson became Palladium’s Director of Sales, and became responsible for supervising and providing support to the U.S. sales team to establish and increase hotels’ revenue and brand recognition in the United States while maximizing the company’s short, medium, and long‑term revenue goals in North America.  She reviewed proposed U.S. sales events, including consumer shows, training opportunities, and National Account and tour operators’ events, and led her team on the decision‑making process regarding budget guidelines and return‑on‑investment for each market segment.  Each month, Ms. Pierson drafted and submitted a written proposal detailing a cost analysis of upcoming and future sales events to the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for final approval.  She led the planning of large‑scale sales events, including securing meeting spaces, drafting itineraries, planning food and beverage selections and locations, coordinating audio‑visual meeting needs and event entertainment, communicating with keynote speakers, overseeing registration, tracking RSVPs, coordinating transportation costs and logistics, and approving invitations.  Ms. Pierson managed staff support and supervised post‑event follow‑up, including writing post‑convention documents such as participant and staff surveys and key recommendation reports for similar future events, and drafted all email templates for post‑event communication for the sales team.  She also kept detailed event‑accounting costs to ensure keeping within allowable budget.

Ms. Pierson wrote end‑of‑month sales reports that included details about the sales teams’ hotel rooms, trade show attendance, costs and outcomes, monthly expenses, total sales calls, trainings and webinars conducted, and marketing budget used.  She wrote and negotiated co‑op marketing plans with both retail travel agencies and national accounts and managed the $700,000 U.S. marketing budget.  Ms. Pierson wrote, edited, and presented webinars and training to staff, retail trade organizations, wholesale tour operators, e‑commerce and national accounts, and retail travel agencies.  In addition, she reviewed and edited all sales documents prepared by her team before distribution.  During the novel coronavirus (COVID‍–‍19) pandemic shutdown when all travel ceased, Ms. Pierson wrote a comprehensive sales model plan that included online trainings and contests and content delivery to prepare travel advisors for the reopening of travel, and developed updated, detailed content and recorded presentations for distribution to travel advisors unable to attend online trainings.

Ms. Pierson began working for Tech Impact in November 2020 as a Program Coordinator/Career Development Associate Assistant.  She led special events and presentations for all Executive Order 43 (E043)/Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act grant participants on Resume Best Practices, Interviewing Best Practices, and Professionalism.  Ms. Pierson assisted with tasks related to supporting participants attempting to enter technology careers, and was cross‑trained in all aspects of the student process, including admissions, CARES Act eligibility, resume review, and resume/LinkedIn and Delaware JobLink sessions.  She formatted and edited participant resumes to ensure they reflected the protocols of the Information Technology (IT) training program.  Ms. Pierson then updated all student data during and after participation in training programs, and at the programs’ conclusion, she wrote and uploaded to Delaware JobLink program and professional development notes, and student enrollment as part of the grant requirements.  She was also responsible for all written communication with training participants during their training process to ensure all aspects for grant reporting was obtained and documented.

In April 2021, Ms. Pierson was promoted to Workforce Development Program Facilitator, assisting in the operations of grant‑funded, technical‑training deliverables with close adherence to compliance.  She executed tasks specific to IT training programs and kept detailed student case management notes, ensured training provider quality assurance, provided written evaluations following all events, and assisted with participant job readiness, which included reviewing, editing, and formatting resumes for all participants, reviewing participant LinkedIn profiles, and drafting suggested profile updates.  She also wrote job recommendation letters.  

Ms. Pierson demonstrated policy and procedural grant expertise for grant reporting and outcomes and ensured all data was accurately notated in related Microsoft Excel files and cloud‑based data‑management platforms.  She reviewed, edited, and updated all professional‑development Microsoft PowerPoint presentations as needed.  Ms. Pierson planned and executed a virtual job fair for exiting training program graduates, securing employers to represent virtual booths; writing and creating invitation flyers to send to potential employers; setting up the fair space; uploading all documents, job descriptions, and videos to the fair platform; creating and sending event invitations; tracking attendee lists and RSVPs; and communicating with attendees before, during, and after the fair.  She prepared a job‑fair document that included platform training:  written step‑by‑step instructions on requirements, participant details, and logistics for job fair success for all employer participants.

Ms. Pierson became the IT Workforce Program Coordinator in August 2021.  In this role, she coordinated over 150 professional volunteers for the ITWorks and CXWorks training programs, providing direction and support for all volunteer functions to ensure the programs had both enough volunteer support and the engagement necessary to run effectively.  Ms. Pierson communicated consistently with volunteer partners and board members, and planned over 100 full‑day professional development sessions and lunch‑and‑learn meetings dedicated to IT and customer service program participants—reviewing and editing all presentations, keeping all workforce calendars up‑to‑date with accurate event times and dates, purchasing participant lunches when necessary, providing written travel logistics for off‑site meetings, and providing written pre‑session work and details for all program participants.  Ms. Pierson provided support services to participants who faced barriers to completing the program.  She created orientation outlines and PowerPoint Presentations for all training programs.  Ms. Pierson also planned eight virtual graduations for IT and Customer Service training programs, including writing, creating and mailing e‑invitations; setting up Zoom events; overseeing registration; tracking RSVPs; securing keynote and student graduation speakers; creating and mailing graduation certificates; ordering gift cards for all graduates; writing run‑of‑show agenda for distribution to Tech Impact staff; creating graduation PowerPoint presentations and videos; and keeping graduates up‑to‑date with all logistics and ensuring they completed all graduation requirements.  She edited all participant graduation speeches to ensure they followed Tech Impact guidelines and were grammatically correct.

Ms. Pierson completed the planning and execution of a virtual job fair for exiting training program graduates for the IT Workforce training graduates.  She bridged training‑participant and classroom‑program needs with volunteer and funder needs, and demonstrated policy and procedural grant expertise for grant reporting and outcomes.  Each week, Ms. Pierson drafted a document for all training‑participant mentors listing all training information for the week, all professional development sessions, suggested activities to do with the mentee, and updated training program status of each participant.  In addition to events, Ms. Pierson led virtual and in‑person trainings on creating professional bios, resume best practices, job‑search best practices, and writing cover letters for job applications.  She edited all training‑participant professional bios, created a bio book distributed to all professional volunteers, and reviewed and edited participant resumes.  Ms. Pierson wrote new Program Coordinator standard operating procedures (SOP) for use by Tech Impact to include all training programs serviced by the Program Coordinator.  She also wrote a weekly report reflecting all professional‑development sessions, participant program notes for H–1B grant reporting, and new volunteer, upcoming event, and communication to training participant details.

Ms. Pierson assembled a 320‑page training document that included all digital training modules for the CXWorks program, and coordinated printing, procurement, and book shipping to the state institution.  Because the CXWorks participants were incarcerated, Ms. Pierson wrote instruction documents for writing professional bios, drafting a professional resume, and job‑search best practices following incarceration, and she planned the documents’ printing, procurement and shipping.  Ms. Pierson also wrote a resource booklet to be sent to the women following their release, which provided information on housing, reentry organizations, food, healthcare, and other barriers the women may face post‑incarceration.  She wrote a resume template and reviewed, edited, and formatted participant resumes and professional bios.