Carol Muldoon
Director of meeting services
KPMG International
Montvale, N.J.

PAST Before joining KPMG, Mul-doon was an event manager for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, where her responsibilities included the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. She started with KPMG 22 years ago as planner of small training events in a group of three, and now directs a 100-member operation.

CRED In 1998, KPMG's senior management, concerned with the number of meetings and programs happening at the local level without much oversight, asked Muldoon to look into rationalizing the process. “It was a big moment in my career,” she says. “I ran some focus groups internally and put together a proposal to fully centralize our meeting needs. The company's CFO and AFO supported the plan, and that was really the inception of what I would consider to be our SMMP program.” Last year, her role expanded significantly as she presided over the merger of the company's event marketing departments and meetings services department.

SUCCESS STORY “As an individual planner, I used to have full responsibility for the firm's annual partner meeting, and to have the chairman of the firm recognize the value I brought to putting that meeting on was extremely important. As a manager, being able to grow our department and be seen as a real partner by our internal clients and company leaders has been a real achievement.”

FORWARD-THINKING Her new meetings department is a year old, and “we've tracked a lot of data. The key is what we do with that data.” The goal is to better leverage spend with suppliers and to extend the small meetings program to more cities. She is also on the steering committee for a new in-house training center KPMG is developing, “and I'm looking forward to being involved in its design and operation.”

ADVICE “Don't just accept that things are the way they are and can't be changed. Seek out new opportunities.”

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