Debbie Friedman-Hueller, MA, CMP, CSEP, CMM, DES, is the 39-year-old manager of meeting and event operations for Land O’Lakes Inc. She's based in Minneapolis.
What I do:
I collaborate with cross-functional and leadership teams to design and deliver best-in-class experiences that enhance an organization’s engagement and performance. In my tenure, I’ve curated all types of meetings and events, from bespoke groups of 20 to large-scale activations with 5,000 attendees through purposeful strategy, innovation and enthusiasm.
Why I love my job:
It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: I love that no two days—and no two events—are ever the same. And it’s the rush that comes from reimagining and recreating events and experiences that motivates me each and every day. There’s nothing like that feeling of satisfaction in the middle of an event, when the audience is vibing with the keynote speaker, or singing along with the band, when you can humbly think to yourself, “Yeah, I did that.”
My career journey:
I was active in on-campus event planning while an undergrad at a small liberal arts college—everything from weekend programming to a culminating Women’s Leadership Retreat I created and that is now a yearly tradition at the school. I left college understanding that I wanted to do more of this work—leading events from conception to execution—and I soon landed at Laureate Education, where I lead the speaker series, orientation events, academic conferences, leadership conferences and awards galas.
Ten years later, Land O’ Lakes Inc. offered opportunities to grow and contribute in new ways, and, in my time there, I’ve led and designed customer, B2B, and internal meetings and events across the enterprise while also leading our talented operations coordinator team. In addition, I’ve been active in my local Meeting Professionals International (MPI) chapter, having served on the board to help hone my leadership and communication skills.
My greatest career accomplishment:
There are so many moments in my career of which I’m proud, such as leading a virtual event strategy (both pre-COVID times at one institution to enhance reach and access and, years later, bringing those learnings to another in a time of need); developing and maintaining a monthly global thought-leader speaker series; and revamping our local MPI chapter website.
However, the one thing that I’m most proud of is my ability to stay hungry. Each morning, for nearly 20 years, I wake up ready to relearn and reinvent, and that brings, for me, a vitality to the work. This hunger helps me have interesting and—sometimes—challenging conversations with colleagues and stakeholders; it helps me to think and do different. I love that I’ve brought new vision to program design and content development. I pride myself on my creativity and agility and how it translates to the attendee experience.
How I helped my organization during COVID:
I brought suddenly-needed virtual technologies to my company to help us stay connected as the world was needing us to stay apart. But more than that, I helped stakeholders see and think differently about our events in a pandemic world. We didn’t merely replicate an in-person experience; rather, we embraced our situation and its possibilities to reimagine what events looked like. In doing so, we created opportunities to genuinely connect virtually, in various modalities, that resonated with our diverse audience groups. Now we’ve curated new and exciting virtual engagements for our attendees that we’ll carry with us even in a post-pandemic world.
The time I averted a complete event disaster:
It’s our job to mitigate risks by anticipating what could happen on-site, and we have contingency plans for contingency plans. However, no one could have prepared us for a global pandemic. Our national sales meeting took place the Monday-Thursday before the world shut down in 2020. There were murmurs and whispers that COVID was upon us and that it was going to be big and bad, but we didn’t quite understand just how paradigm-shifting it was going to be. So, we put out extra hand sanitizers and thought that was that. Twenty-four hours after safely sending our attendees home, we all learned the world was hunkering down. This ended up being our last big in-person gathering for a year and a half.
My most memorable event experience in the past year:
Our first “return to live” event, which was in September 2021 in Savannah, Ga. There was such an excitement and sense of gratitude amongst everyone involved, from attendees to hotel staff to transportation partners to entertainment and everyone in-between.
Best advice I’ve ever received:
Relationships matter: You’re only as successful as your weakest vendor and partner. We can’t do our jobs alone; every aspect of our job is influenced and made successful by choosing valued partners and allowing everyone space to do their role.
Impressive stats I’m responsible for:
I played a key role in developing a new student orientation event for an online university. This was a project that required developing a major concept from the ground up and executing it across different modes for thousands of students. The project was hugely successful, with double-digit retention improvement equating to a major ROI for the company.
Additionally, at my current company, our first virtual event for one of our divisions in early COVID yielded over an 800% increase in live attendance, resulting in sizable new business opportunities.
What’s next?
I’m so excited to return to live events—safely. I’m looking forward to working with our vendor partners to provide exceptional experiences for our attendees that deliver on business objectives.
Favorite icebreaker line:
I’m a big TV binger—so love to connect with folks about what they’re currently watching!
Connect with Friedman-Hueller on LinkedIn.
“Connect x BizBash 40 Under 40” is sponsored by VDA, an experiential marketing and event design agency based in Massachusetts that specializes in custom live, virtual and hybrid experiences.
