When Sheila Stampfli and her team at conference management company Courtesy Associates scored a huge win — a contract from the U.S. State Department to plan the 2007 President's Emergency Plan For HIV/AIDS Relief Implementers' Meeting — they had no idea it would prove to be the toughest assignment of their careers. They only knew they were honored to win the PEPFAR contract over 16 other bidders, in part because of their experience planning the first major AIDS conference in the United States — for the National Institutes of Health in 1987 — as well as other AIDS meetings.

This experience would be quite different. Launched in 2003 by President Bush, PEPFAR is allocating $15 billion over a five-year period to the global fight against HIV/AIDS. The Implementers' Meeting is not for scientists or researchers, but for healthcare professionals, community leaders, activists, volunteers, and others who implement AIDS relief programs in Third World countries. “We have a lot of meetings around HIV that are more science-based, but [this is] a venue where we can come together and share implementation experiences,” says Thomas Kenyon, MD, principal deputy coordinator and chief medical officer in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.

It was November 2006 when they got the contract. They had just seven months to plan the meeting, scheduled for June 16 to 19, 2007. Several Courtesy staff members jetted off to Africa to search for a meeting site in one of PEPFAR's 15 focus countries, those that account for more than half of the global AIDS epidemic. After an exhaustive search, they were about to sign a contract in Marrakesh, Morocco, when their partners at the U.S. State Department asked them to hop the first plane to Kigali — the capital of Rwanda.

Rwanda?

Why Rwanda?

It's not the first place that comes to mind when thinking of meeting destinations. Sadly, many people associate the country with the genocide of one million Rwandans in 1994. But the nation has been gradually rebuilt under the leadership of President Paul Kagame, who took office in 2000. It was his representatives, along with other government officials, whom one of the Courtesy team members flew to meet.

Since its inception, PEPFAR had held its Implementers' Meeting in destinations like Durban, South Africa — where there is adequate hospitality infrastructure. But this year, “what was so overwhelming,” explains Kenyon, “was the Rwandans' desire to host this meeting. That was a big part of us wanting to do it there — the simple fact that we were wanted, very much wanted.”

Courtesy staff discovered that Kigali had only three hotels and no conference center — not nearly enough space to host a meeting of 1,700 people. Says Stampfli, president of Washington, D.C.-based Courtesy Associates, “We thought, ‘Where are we going to do this?’”

The U.S. State Department organizers were going to base their decision on Courtesy's recommendation. They wanted to know: Is this doable?

Stampfli and her staff weren't about to say no. “Understanding the importance of this meeting to Rwanda, and the [Rwandan] President's strong desire to have it there,” says Stampfli, “our attitude was: OK, we're going to make this work.”

And they did.

“I have never worked as hard in my entire career at Courtesy Associates, nor has the team worked as hard as we did in Rwanda,” says Stampfli. But it was also one of the most unusual and rewarding experiences of her career. Beyond its importance in the fight against AIDS, the meeting would transform the city's infrastructure.