From Angus Queen to Detail Queen
I got to spend time with one of the most energetic, focused people on our team last week, a colleague you might not even notice at a Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand event. But you’d notice if she were NOT involved.
Events don’t just occur, you know. They take place. They happen. Helping to make them is CAB meeting planner Danielle Foster. Behind the scenes is where she thrives, but hundreds of events owe their success to her love of detail and “telling this producer side of the story.”
Last August, she says, “I celebrated three years – it is absolutely insane to think I have been with the brand that long (she is only 25)!” The former National Junior Angus board member and Miss American Angus from Niles, Mich., joined CAB as a management trainee, and cross-training soon found the right fit: “meeting planner.”
What is a typical day like? She laughs a throaty chuckle, dismissively, implying: Get serious!
Well then, how many events would there be in a year?
“I never sat down and calculated them out, but we often have something going on every day,” Danielle says. “Whether you’re the lead on it (like CAB at last week’s Angus Means Business Convention) or a subset of a big event (like CAB Annual Conference), it’s just incredible the amount of off-site events our team pulls off.” Plus picking up pieces of never-ending events at the Education & Culinary Center next door in Wooster, Ohio.
“It’s a large number of groups that we get to touch and be part of, so that’s pretty cool.”
Ever plan five events in one week?
“Um, no, we’re not crazy! A little nerdy maybe, but not crazy. We make sure that we don’t over extend ourselves. We want to do as many as we can do well, no matter the size, but we stop and ask is it really necessary to book something on Wednesday when we already have things going on the other four or five days.”
“I live by the motto that I’d rather be busy than bored any day of the week!”
We won’t have to worry about Danielle getting bored. In her “spare time,” the Michigan communications studies graduate completed an MBA in project management online.
“I’m a numbers geek at heart. so that really fit with me,” she says. “I love to A, do budgets and B, look at the ROI. The details, that’s where my heart lies.”
Can you tell, by that short reply already outlined into parts A and B?
“I used to think I would teach math, until my mom reminded me I’m not very patient with people who don’t apply themselves, like some math students I have tutored,” she shares. It turns out not everybody loves numbers…
Focused on each event in sequence, Danielle maintains an equal focus on self-education, including participation in the Professional Convention Management Association.
“It’s the organization for meeting planners – their meetings are the BEST!”
Well, so is Danielle, in that group’s professional judgment: Last week the PCMA named her to a prestigious list called “20 in Their Twenties.”
“When they called me to inform me, they said A, having cattle in my video was funny and refreshing… and B, the passion I have for this is critical; to be in a role like mine, you have to love it. Because you can feel discouraged pretty much every day if things aren’t going according to plan – and there is always something. You have to have a clear vision.”
Heck, sometimes the wild cards make an event more fun, Danielle admits: “An event comes together beautifully when there’s a merge of detail and spontaneity – without either it is surely not going to be up to par.”
Once she got SO lost going from Dodge City to Pratt, Kan.: “I was on the deep sand roads and even saw a roadrunner I swear…” But since she was far in advance of the tour that would follow, she found her way and attendees never knew.
And as proactive as she can be, sometimes what we say is not what another hears in the world of beef cuts.
“To highlight the importance of the full team we have, one time all I wanted was a Select, Choice, CAB and CAB-Prime strip steak example,” Danielle relates. “So I ordered through our partner and just said “strips…” luckily I had Chef Michael onsite to cut (the subprimals) down to steaks. Whoops!”
“No matter what goes wrong, or what goes right, as an event planner I consider it my job to remain positive, calm and solutions-focused, our team and our attendees are counting on that!”
– Steve
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PS–Want to catch up on the whole series? Check out these links below:
- Introduction: Nice to Meat Ya
- Day 1: Ashley Pado
- Day 2: Scott Redden
- Day 3: Jesse Stucky
- Day 4: Bridget Wasser
- Day 5: Amanda Barstow
- Day 6: Josh Moore
- Day 7: Ruth Ammon
- Day 8: Bill Tackett
- Day 9: Dan Chase