In his new position as senior director, education, for the Professional Convention Management Association, Glen Ramsborg's goal is simple: Make PCMA the education leader of the meetings profession.
"Our members, both planners and suppliers, are learners," Ramsborg said. "PCMA has excelled through the years in education, and my goal is to take that to the next level."
Serving on Chicago-based PCMA's education advisory committee since 2001, Ramsborg now has revised PCMA's educational offerings into three main categories: PCMA Essential Education, including basic skills instruction for planners, suppliers and students; PCMA Professional Education, exploring best practices and innovative solutions; and PCMA Executive Education, for CEOs and senior-level planners, investigating external issues that affect the profession.
Programs focusing on executive education include PCMA's Executive Edge at its annual meeting, and stand-alone programs Executive Experience and Partnership Summit. On the professional course level, he is at work on a multi-city, one-day program titled Legal Advantage, on association legal issues.
Professional education courses he oversees include the online course leading to the Certified Association Sales Executive (CASE) certificate for suppliers, and a revised Learning Environment Specialist (LES) certificate for planners. He currently is preparing a fifth edition of the PCMA book, "Professional Meeting Management."
"Our tag line is 'Advancing careers through life-long learning,' " he said, of a strategic purpose he helped formulate as a committee member in the early 1990s. "It's gratifying to see something you started keep growing, and to be able to pick it up 10 or 12 years later as a staff person. It's very exciting."
Ramsborg, who for the past two years headed up his own education consulting firm, is a 20-year PCMA member. A professional nurse anesthetist, he served for 17 years as director of programs and meeting services at the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists. His consultancy work with PCMA helped pave the way to his new post: In 2003, he was tapped as the group's Educator of the Year.
Ramsborg's job has experienced some turnover, as has the association leadership overall. His new position formerly was filled by Marsha Hawk, who lasted about a year after having taken over from longtime PCMA volunteer and planner Barbara Connell, in the job for three years.
Those staffers, among several others, left during the two-and-a-half-year tenure of David Kushner, who departed PCMA last month as president and CEO after failing to receive renewal of his contract. He has been succeeded by Deborah Sexton, former president of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau. Ramsborg's appointment as education chief is Sexton's first official one since coming to PCMA.
"She is a complete class act," Ramsborg said of Sexton.