Brittney Derrick

I attribute my success to people who have believed in me along the way, people who have given me chances. I think back to one of my original mentors and bosses who taught me that you can teach people how to do a job, but you can't teach them how to have certain personality traits, or how to care about things and act with integrity. Those are just innate abilities. You can't teach those things. So having people believe in me and seeing that I'm capable of doing things, I just have to learn how to do them, has been crucial. Having the foundation in my personality, with my own values, and the way I operate, those things are there. That's what has allowed me to grow and succeed in this field.

The best career advice I ever received was to believe in yourself and trust your instincts. This advice has guided me throughout my career and helped me navigate the challenges of the meeting planning industry. It's reminded me that while I can learn the technical skills of the job, I need to trust my own judgment and have confidence in my abilities.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes, and advocate for yourself. We're in a unique industry where it's not male-dominated, so you're not competing in that aspect. But on the flip side, when you are a woman going into a field of other women, everybody does not necessarily act accordingly. Everybody's not necessarily there to support each other and lift each other up, so just make sure you advocate for yourself. I think it goes back to those core values of humility. Humble yourself. There's always something to learn, you can't know everything. And really surround yourself with strong people. You can't be good at everything. Surround yourself with people who can amplify those things you might not be the best at.

I would say the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity are both the same, and it is AI. I think there's a lot of really good uses for AI that can streamline processes in our field. However, the challenge is that as companies move towards AI, at the end of the day, in my opinion, AI can never replace a human interaction and a human exchange, which is so very necessary in this field. People will think that they can use AI to plan an event, but AI doesn't know what to do when there's a snowstorm coming, or there's protests downtown Minneapolis. AI can only do so much, so you still need people that can think in real time and make changes. Also, the human factor is what matters so much in my field. You can train somebody how to use a system and a platform, but a system can't have humility and humanity and see somebody who's going through something difficult, but also still having to operate an event.

The values most important to me are accountability, transparency, and humility. I think we're all humans, we're bound to make mistakes, but if you can communicate about them, and take accountability for them, and correct them, then you're doing good. These values guide how I operate both professionally and personally, and they're fundamental to how I approach my work in the events industry.