Keith Backsen has 30 years of experience in the hospitality and convention industry, having worked in Portland, Dallas, Chicago and Spokane before accepting the Executive Director position with Visit Omaha in July of 2015. As a member of the Omaha Mayor’s cabinet, Keith works with key city leaders to develop, enhance and promote Omaha as a tourism destination. In 2013 he received his Certified Destination Management Executive (CDME) accreditation from Purdue University. Keith is a member of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) and past President of PCMA’s Pacific Northwest Chapter. He is a member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and on the Foundations Board of Trustees for Destinations International (DI). In 2019, Keith became a member of the Board of Directors for the Omaha Sister Cities Association. He is also a member of various national and local boards and committees related to tourism and destination development.

Coryn Briggs is the Digital Marketing Manager at Traverse City Tourism. A Detroit area native, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master's in Recreation and Tourism Management at Michigan State University. She has lived and worked in Traverse City since 2004 and enjoys running, riding her bike along the area’s urban bike trail, hiking at the Sleeping Bear Dunes and spending time with her family.

Jared Bundy entered the travel industry in spring of 2017 as the director of digital marketing at the Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau, a three-county outdoor destination near Pittsburgh, PA. In that time, Jared oversaw a complete website redesign including implementation of a booking engine, launched a monthly podcast and partnered his destination with TripAdvisor. He elevated their digital marketing by refining audience segmentation and campaign strategies and introduced remarketing, native, YouTube and influencer marketing to the creative mix. He also manages the website, writes blogs, shoots photos and edits video for the organization. Outside of the office, Jared is a proud father to 3-year-old Ryker and husband to his wife, Anne. The two will celebrate their 5 th anniversary in June. He teaches communication classes at Saint Vincent College and loves sharing his passion for journalism, videography and public relations with students. In his spare time, Jared enjoys cheering on the Pirates at PNC Park, skiing, collecting retro video games and ring announcing for local professional wrestling.

Outside of the office, Jared is a proud father to 2-year-old Ryker and husband to his wife, Anne. The two will celebrate their 4th anniversary in June. He teaches communication classes at Saint Vincent College and loves sharing his passion for journalism, videography and public relations with students. In his spare time, Jared enjoys cheering on the Pirates at PNC Park, collecting retro video games and ring announcing for local professional wrestling.

Renée Chow began working at Experience Columbia SC in 2012 after beginning her career at a digital firm focused on political campaigns and fundraising. With 10 years of experience in digital marketing, Chow oversees ECSC’s online marketing efforts and programs. She holds a Master’s of Mass Communications from the University of South Carolina (Go Cocks!) where she studied integrated marketing. An avid reader, she could be at any given time, or at the same time, reading parenting books, architectural history, Crazy Rich Asians or Dostoevsky.

Katie Cook is the Director of Digital Marketing of Visit Austin. In this role, she oversees all digital marketing strategy, the organization’s website, social media campaigns and search engine marketing.

Katie is active in the Austin digital marketing community and speaks regularly both locally and nationally. Katie serves on U.S. Travel Association’s Destinations Council, the advisory board for ETourism Summit and is a member of Women in Digital. Katie holds a degree in Mass Communications-Public Relations from Texas State University.

Ty is a leader in the accessibility space and vocal advocate for digital inclusivity. Instrumental in developing and managing the partnership with CU Solutions Group, Ty specializes in managing the seamless integration of AudioEye into third-party platforms and possesses an in-depth understanding of the legal and technical demands of ADA-related digital accessibility requirements. Ty participates on the Member Committee of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), and is also involved with the mentoring program for the Rising Leaders of the U.S. Business Leaders Network (USBLN). Ty, along with the entirety of the AudioEye team, is focused on the importance of making digital content more accessible and more usable for more people.

Kayleigh has worked at the Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau, a tri-county region just outside of Pittsburgh, PA, since March 2018. Her role as the marketing assistant includes overseeing the day-to-day functions of the CRM and events calendar, assisting with shooting video content, planning the annual marketing summit and maintaining social media accounts.
Before working with the Laurel Highlands, Kayleigh was the special events assistant at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where she was instrumental in the execution of the annual Gala and Soiree. Kayleigh also participates in local volunteer activities and is a stand-up comedian.

Amir Eylon joins Longwoods from his previous role as Vice President, Partner Engagement with Brand USA, the public-private partnership serving as the destination marketing organization dedicated to increasing international visitation to the US. Prior to joining Brand USA, Eylon served as Director of the Ohio Office of Tourism. He has also served as Executive Vice President of the Ohio Hotel & Lodging Association, Assistant Director of the Ohio Tourism Division, and Sales & Marketing Manager with the Steuben County Conference and Visitors Bureau. Eylon has been recognized with a number of Industry honors including: Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Sales & Marketing award (2014) by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI); The Ohio Tourism Industry's Highest Honor, The Paul Sherlock Award; and The State of Ohio Distinguished Service Medal.

Michael Fruchtl is a Sr. Sales Consultant with Act-On Software. He has been in the marketing automation space for five years with the last three years at Act-On. He has experience helping a wide range of companies from your local small businesses to enterprise level companies evaluate and implement marketing automation strategies that streamline processes, connect sales and marketing teams, and drive revenue. Michael has been the liaison between Act-On and Simpleview since the inception of the partnership and lives locally here in the Phoenix metro area. He is an avid basketball fan and tries to golf as much as possible.

Jasmyn Goodwin has been described as possessing “stunning, energetic style.” Well…she actually read that in a movie review but feels it also works for her. After growing up in the military and living mostly on the east coast and in Europe, Jasmyn decided to grow roots and settle down in Omaha. For the past 10 years, Jasmyn has worked for Visit Omaha, helping to shape and build the city’s tourism brand in the digital world. She continues these efforts as the Director of Marketing and Content. Jasmyn happily lives with her husband and bonus-son. They enjoy traveling, exploring their city, binge watching Netflix, and eating in restaurants with 3+ stars on Yelp.

As the CRM Coordinator for Visit Frisco, Madison is passionate about giving her team the tools they need to be successful. Working primarily in the CRM, Madison thrives on learning new ways to utilize Simpleview to better the workflow for their destination. With 3 years under her belt since joining the Visit Frisco team, Madison has grown her love for the City of Frisco and loves being part of such an exciting destination. When Madison isn’t at work, you can find her and her husband working on DIY projects in their home or spending their weekends at the lake with their Labrador Retriever, Cooper.

Chad is the Sr. Online Marketing Manager at Visit Phoenix. He’s been with the organization for six years and his key responsibilities include managing VisitPhoenix.com and the organization’s social media channels. He prefers iced tea to coffee, is patiently waiting for the Suns' playoff drought to end, and has failed at getting his cats to hike on a leash.

Cat Kessler is the Director of Content at Explore Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. She oversees content strategy and development across the DMO’s website and social media channels, including editorial, video and photo, and community projects. During her eight years at the bureau, Cat has had the pleasure to work on a break-dancing Santa Claus video, a top-notch food bloggers conference, and an award-winning long-form multimedia piece about the science behind fall leaf colors. A North Carolina native, Cat holds a degree in journalism from the UNC-Chapel Hill. Outside of work, she can be found frequenting the area’s family-friendly parks, festivals and craft breweries with her husband and three-year-old son.

Gabby has been with Experience Kissimmee for four years as the Database Marketing Manager. In her role, she is the resident CRM guru and is responsible for training new and current employees, running billions of reports, and extinguishing all of the company’s CRM-related fires. She also manages mass email communications to partners, creates the consumer newsletter, and dabbles in website edits.
When she’s not helping her teammates properly maneuver the CRM, she loves working out at bootcamp classes, whipping up tasty vegan meals and desserts, and watching Forensic Files with her fiancé and their three rescue dogs.

Meagan is the vice president of sales and services for Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority, the official destination marketing organization for the cities of Des Moines, SeaTac and Tukwila, WA. She leads an exceptional team to ensure business growth and expand the organization’s long-term growth strategy through group sales and marketing activities. Meagan uses her 13 years of sales expertise and thorough understanding of the tourism industry to passionately develop effective strategies to promote Seattle Southside as a destination to group leaders and meeting planners. Her leadership has contributed to the overwhelmingly positive economic impact the RTA has on the region, resulting in strong year- over-year ROI growth. In 2017, the RTA realized a return on investment of $42.86 for every visitor dollar spent.
In prior roles, Meagan served as the business development manager for Seattle Southside Visitor Services and group sales and private events executive for The Museum of Flight. Meagan holds a Master of Arts in anthropology from Washington State University and a Bachelor of Science in archaeology from Central Washington University. When she’s not promoting Seattle Southside, she enjoys camping with her family, kayaking and exploring tide pools with her two boys.

With over 20 years of experience in hospitality and a passion for operations, Heather understands client service needs in the DMO world. She studied at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and went on to earn her MBA at the University of Phoenix. Heather joined Visit Seattle in 2016 and has enjoyed every moment of digging into the data in the CRM, streamlining processes, and (trying) to make her team’s jobs just a little easier by implementing improved practices. In her current role of Sales Operations Manager, she supervises a team of coordinators who support the National Account Directors and is the CRM Admin for Convention Sales & Services.
Heather grew up in San Diego, then spent several years in Phoenix before settling down in Seattle about 10 years ago. She is fluent in Spanish and MS Excel.

Elisabeth is a multilingual Content Expert with over 10 years’ experience of service delivery for international organizations. She has always worked in cross-cultural teams, dealing with content and communication through various digital platforms. For the seven last years, Elisabeth has been French editor for Visitnorway.fr, and multilingual campaign coordinator for other Visitnorway versions. She is the point of contact for Innovation Norway in Paris, and has been directly cooperating with other local offices, providing content support in a structured way for specific campaigns. As a Web Content consultant, Elisabeth has mastered the use of several Content Management Systems such as Episerver, EZ-Publish and SimpleView - actively contributing to how these tools have been customized further.

Terri brings over 30 years of hospitality industry sales and professional development experience to her role. She partnered with Destinations International for ten years, creating webinars, interviews, blogs and designing and delivering education sessions to help planners and CVBs to get the most from their partnership. Since 2014, Terri has conducted the city-wide San Diego Meeting Certified Program in San Diego for the San Diego Tourism Authority, educating over 500 destination and hotel sales professionals. She previously held positions with Marriott Hotels and Resorts in both a director of sales and regional director of training capacity.

Niklas Schlappkohl is the Senior Director, Travel and the in-house expert for the Travel industry. He leads the Travel vertical and provides strategic language consulting for clients. Niklas joined Translations.com after 20 years in the global digital travel industry, having managed ecommerce and localization efforts at some of the leading hospitality brands including Starwood, Accor, NH Hotels and most recently Carlson Rezidor, where he was Senior Director, eCommerce. Since 2015, he has also been Chairman of the HSMAI Digital Marketing Advisory Board. A native from Germany, Niklas has a BA in Languages, and MA in International Relations and speaks 8 languages.

Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki, CDME, CMP of 2Synergize, LLC, a Simpleview consulting company, is a passionate advocate of convention and visitors bureaus and the meetings industry. Previously, Shimo served as a full-time consultant for Destinations International (DI), managing the MINT database and the Event Impact Calculator and provided leadership and guidance to the CVB industry with specific meetings market issues and opportunities. Under 2synergize, LLC, Shimo continues to help CVBs, convention centers, hotels and corporations serve the events industry by developing sales strategies, community collaboration, strong customer relationships and high performing sales and service teams.

Shimo has been named a #CMP30 Influencer by Events Industry Council, one of the “25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry” by Successful Meetings, and a “Meeting Trendsetter” by MeetingsFocus. She earned her Masters Degree in Business Administration at San Diego State University. She has served the tourism industry as a board member to PCMA, co-chair of the Performance Measures Initiative for DI, and chair to DI’s Accreditation Board. Shimo authored the Event Room Demand Study, in partnership with Tourism Economics, quantifying for the first-time the volume of rooms booked outside the contracted room block.

Marney joined Travel Alberta in 2005 to lead their marketing efforts in North America. Within a couple of years, she took on the challenge of developing and launching the first-ever global brand for Travel Alberta – (remember to breathe) – a truly defining moment for the tourism organization. Marney then moved over to Digital Platforms and recently established the Insights team within the organization. In her current role Marney uses her strategic and analytic thinking to deliver engaging digital experiences and data strategies to drive growth. By building stronger data acumen within the organization, Marney has helped Travel Alberta and its industry partners strengthen their competitive edge.

Andrea Timbes is the CRM Administrator for Visit Fort Worth. Working under the Meeting Sales umbrella, she manages the CRM, functions as lead catcher, provides training to our internal staff as well to our partners, and wear many other hats.

Timbes joined Visit Fort Worth in March 2014. Before that, she had been working for Dolce International/AATCC in a similar position (Certified Newmarket System Administrator) for 12 years.

Originally from Germany, Timbes has over 17 years’ experience in Hotel & Restaurant industry (from F&B to Front Desk & Night Audit to Sales), a BA in Hotel Organization/Accounting & Data processing, and an A.A.S in Business Administration and Economics.

Joe Veneto, is founder and principal of Veneto Collaboratory, formerly Opportunities Unlimited, a management consulting and training company. He collaborates with Destination Marketing Organizations, Travel Suppliers and service related companies to create results that create economic development and drive customer loyalty. He is an expert in the design, development and distribution of compelling consumer packages and unforgettable visitor experiences. Joe has assisted destination marketing organizations and travel attractions throughout the North America create product development strategies that generate results. Sample destinations include: Philadelphia, PA; Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN; Columbus, OH; Hilton Head, SC; Paducah, KY, Shreveport, LA; The Mall of America and others. He is a nationally recognized professional speaker, presenting programs annually throughout North America to National Associations, Governor’s Conferences, Regional Tourism Groups, Corporate Meetings and at Industry events. His content-rich programs make him one of the Industry’s most requested experts on Tourism Product Development and Experiential Tourism

Having spent the last decade conducting market research for destinations, the travel trade and meetings industry, Kim directs and implements the vision of all Destination Analysts’ research studies. Kim brings a wealth of experience to our clients—overseeing project launch, data collection and analysis for all research projects, from visitor profile and in-depth brand research to ROI and conversion studies. Kim is a sought resource in the industry for her expertise in DMO website usability, audience profile, analytics and conversion, and was recognized as one of California Travel Association’s “30 And Under” Tourism Emerging Leaders. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and Ethnicity with a minor in Spanish from the University of Southern California.

Monty is the director of marketing for the Irving, Texas Convention and Visitors Bureau, where he oversees marketing and digital marketing for both the CVB and the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas. Monty has also worked for Hilton Worldwide as manager of content operations and prior to joining the hospitality world, he worked for several years in marketing at Bluegreen Advertising.

Monty has served on the HSMAI DFW board of directors since 2009 and is a past- president and current managing director. He also serves on the Richland College Advisory Board and previously served on the HSMAI Digital Marketing Council and the Dallas/Fort Worth Area Tourism Council Marketing Committee.

Monty received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas, is a New Mexico Military Institute Alumnus, and an MBA Candidate at the University of Dallas.

Marissa Willman is the Director of Digital Marketing for the Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau. She oversees the CVB’s digital marketing strategy, including digital media, social media, website development, content marketing, email marketing and SEO. Prior to joining the Greater Palm Springs CVB in 2016, Marissa was a freelance travel writer for outlets including USA Today, Forbes, Travel Channel and The Telegraph. Marissa holds a BA in Communications/Print Journalism from California State University, Fullerton and was named one of Cal Travel’s 30 and Under Emerging Leaders in 2018.

Jackie has been working for Louisville Tourism for over 10 years. She started her career with LT in the Convention Services Department, working with clients and partners alike. When Louisville Tourism converted to Simpleview, Jackie served as a super user on the internal committee. Two years ago, Jackie transitioned positions and is now the CRM Administrator for Meeting Sales. As Sales Information Manager, she not only manages CRM, but also serves as leads catcher, and provides training and daily assistance for both internal users and extranet partners. Jackie is particularly passionate about creating useful data reports in CRM and is a self-admitted Excel geek.
While not a Louisville native, Jackie has lived and worked in bourbon and horse country since childhood. When not working, you most likely will find her being a taxi driver for her three very busy children.