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Rosemary Mueller

PAST Mueller began her career with Weyerhaeuser as a temp in 2002, bringing meeting planning and marketing skills from previous jobs at startup companies in the software industry. Now the “temp who never left” is part of a team that includes senior meeting planner Julie Merken and meeting planner Katie Mercille.

CRED Data is the stock in trade for the Weyerhaeuser meeting team. “Data collection is one of those things people sometimes scratch their heads over,” she says, but statistics going back to 2003 are her small department’s backbone. “We can detail our analysis down to a department code. We’re pretty proud of that.”
Mueller says the group would like to find dedicated meeting management software that’s cost-effective and scalable, but until then, an Access database is at the heart of the data collection and reporting system.

SUCCESS STORY “I really pushed [online event registration provider] Certain Software to create a weekly report of which attendees are at off-site meetings and where,” Mueller recounts. Since 2007, that report has been delivered to corporate security each week, keeping Weyerhaeuser prepared should it need to find employees in an emergency.

And she knows first-hand that those emergencies do occur. She was in Manhattan on 9/11 and would have been in the Twin Towers herself that morning, except for a twist of fate. She remembers then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urgently trying to account for everyone in the buildings. Says Mueller of her off-site meetings report, “If you’re collecting data, you should make good use of it.”

FORWARD THINKING Diversification is a strength of the Weyerhaeuser meeting team, which in the past year has taken on a variety of roles assisting with the travel and hotel programs, and managing special events and after-hours activities that take place at corporate headquarters.

Next Page: Donna Foppoli-Patrick
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