Devin Dinkel
37, Meeting Planner, National Association of School Nurses
Oakley, Kansas
As the members of her association are often called to do, Dinkel was forced to nurse a sick patient back to health. In Dinkel’s case, the patient was the National Association of School Nurses’ annual conference. She had the unfortunate luck of taking over the event when the economy turned south, bringing attendance down with it. At its low point, the event attracted between 900 and 1,000 attendees. Through a number of initiatives, including adding a free mobile app, increasing registration fees by only $10 in the past five years and actively implementing suggestions on feedback forms, Dinkel brought that number up to more than 1,300 last June. “Each year, we try to increase attendance by 50 to 100,” says Dinkel, who started at NASN as a temp in 2004 and became the association’s planner in 2010.
