Melanie Ellis

Honestly, it sounds so cheesy, but I have the best and most hardworking mom in the entire world, in my opinion. She's amazing. The older I get, the more I appreciate her - I'm always like, Mom, I'm so sorry for when I was a teenager. She's had a job my whole life and worked so hard. Even when things were easy, she always made sure that it looked easy to us, and now looking back on it, I can see how things weren't easy and how hard she worked. She just instilled that work ethic in my sisters and I, and I really do feel like I wouldn't be where I am without her. On the other end, she's also so supportive, so helpful, my biggest cheerleader. Working while having kids is hard, and so I just admire her so much for that.

When I was at Asana way back in the day, our head of sales told me - I was probably 25, 26 - if anything is interesting to you, try it now. Try as many different careers before you're 30, so that you end up choosing something that you really love doing by the time you're 30. I really took that to heart, and that's what ended up leading me on my journey. I started in events, then I pivoted to EA work because I wanted to see what that was like, and then I pivoted to recruiting because I wanted to see what that was like. Honestly, that's what led me back to events, and I absolutely love it. It's so refreshing to have a job that you actually love. I'm glad that I took those couple years to try some new things, even if it felt scary, but it led me back to what I feel like I truly was meant to be doing.

I would say find a good mentor, someone that you trust, that you admire, whatever it is that they do. My current VP and boss is somebody that I really, really look up to and admire. She's worked her way up, and I feel like she's been super helpful in my growth. I've been fortunate enough to work for her at a past company and now this company too, and I think having a great mentor is so important. Also, having that person, whether it's your mentor or somebody else, that you can be real with too and discuss the hardships, what's tough about this role, or what's tough about being a woman in the workplace, or whatever it might be - I think that's important too.

Things are just changing so much so fast. AI, obviously, is huge right now, and so figuring out and learning ways to use all these new tools and new systems and workflows and processes, and putting it into my day-to-day, how to help me, while also still having that human connection. I feel like in events, so much of it is human connection, and I love having relationships with hotels and different people that I work with, and vendors, and all that kind of stuff. That's really important to me, to keep those relationships and keep that personal touch, but also learning how to use these different tools and workflows to help me. I feel like that's a big one right now, it's just on everybody's top of mind.

Hardworking, honesty, and trust are really important to me. I feel like, especially in events and internal events specifically, I want the trust of my attendees, and my attendees are my colleagues, so I want them to trust me. I want them to know that I have their best interests at heart and that I'm going to produce the best event for them that I can. I feel like trust is a big one. And honestly, fun. I feel like at the end of the day, I always just try to remind myself I'm not a brain surgeon and nobody's life is on my hands, and so I really just want everybody to have fun, and that's in my personal life too. I have two young kids at home, my husband, and life is so serious at times, and the world feels so serious, and so to just remember to have fun, I think, is really important.