President's Corner

Farewell Laureen

On December 31 st , Laureen Boykin, our Senior Director of Products and Services, sailed off gracefully into a well-earned retirement after 20 years with Smart City. Laureen joined us as our General Manager of Telecommunications at the San Diego Convention Center when Smart City took over the in-house operation, back in 2000. Laureen moved into roles with ever-increasing responsibilities over the years and played a key role in a significant number of quality initiatives at Smart City including; the integration of the PNI and CCPI acquisitions, development of our Advanced Exhibitor Solutions team, tripling the use of our online ordering portal, and oversight of numerous successful RFP responses for both new and existing Smart City accounts. She did all of this while also running one of the larger regions within the Smart City operations team for five years.

Laureen has been a true trailblazer as a woman in leadership both in Smart City and the meetings industry. She has always lived by the motto that there were consequences to a person’s actions and decisions. While it was difficult for some folks to receive that message from Laureen, they all knew she was right and delivered the message in the spirit of constructive criticism. Laureen leaves a team of excellent leaders who mentored under her and are ready to take on more challenges.

I will miss Laureen personally, as she made me a better leader. She wasn’t shy in expressing her opinions and views. Still, once we made a team decision, she carried the torch and completed the project. I could always count on her getting a project to its successful completion.

Speaking to Laureen just two weeks after her retirement, she is easily transitioning into this new chapter. She is sleeping past 6 am and has embraced the beauty of an afternoon nap! Her plans for the future are to completely spoil her 10 grandkids in the Little Rock area and to never, ever answer another RFP.

Sounds like a good plan. Congratulations Laureen, we will miss you.