Beth Cooper-Zobott
Director, conference services
Equity Residential
Chicago

PAST Cooper-Zobott, who is multilingual, worked for various international companies, helping their marketing teams develop a synergy between international and American events, before landing at Equity in June 1998 as the company's first full-time meeting planner.

CRED Working with the vice presidents of her company's communications, education, and organizational development departments, she has homed in on the messages that the company delivers at its meetings to ensure that they are consistent on a global level and resonate with attendees in the field. She has also been responsible for moving the company to online meeting registrations, developing conference Web sites, and establishing an online platform for conference evaluations.

FORWARD-THINKING As a department of one, planning 30 to 60 events a year, Cooper-Zobott handles the tactical and strategic elements of meetings. She is currently evaluating the viability of an SMMP, as well as exploring the use of virtual media such as Second Life as a means to incorporate new learning and social networking aspects into her conferences. Green meetings are also on her radar; she is pursuing ways to make her events more sustainable and to quantify the environmental benefits of these actions.

GIVING BACK In addition to speaking to meeting-planning students at Roosevelt University, she organizes a raffle at her company's year-end holiday party where the money raised goes to charity.

MENTORS “Working with my fellow planners and seeing what they have done in their own companies has helped me become more strategic at Equity.” Some of those contacts include Patty Reger, sales meeting manager, Johnson & Johnson; Sharon Marsh, program sourcing manager for meetings and events at VeriSign; and Camille Paluscio, manager of travel, meetings and events at Volkswagen.

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