Paying attention to details, scheduling and organizing have been a part of Kelly’s professional life from the beginning – first as a Certified Travel Agent for group tours, then as a special projects manager for Blue Coral Inc., advancing to managing their creative services department where she got her first taste of trade show management. In 1996, when Quaker State Company acquired Blue Coral, Kelly decided to focus her career entirely in the trade show industry.

At Quaker State Kelly was given the assignment to assess and revamp any existing trade show programs, implement and manage a new corporate trade show department to support the entire corporation with its 250+ annual shows. Two years later Quaker State and Pennzoil Products merged, and she was asked to continue the systems, policies and procedures she had begun previously. With the new mergers and acquisitions, there seemed to always be more pieces added to the puzzle of unifying them.

Kelly did a very thorough exhibit program evaluation and provided an assessment and recommendations to the company president in 2001. Given the “go-ahead” to develop the new trade show department and program, she first developed objectives for the department which included:

• Work with all related departments to ensure all trade shows are implemented as part of an integrated marketing strategy
• Develop/implement a staff training program, setting strategies and objectives resulting in measurable ROI and ROO
• Develop/implement a “post show” results program, including overall show quality, personnel participation and lead follow-up.

The project also included consolidating all booth properties into one exhibit house, evaluating current custom booths (disposing of some, adding new), standardizing the portables, integrating the graphic message, designing an internal trade show web site, and more.

With the hundreds of tasks completed in this major undertaking, it’s quite fitting that Kelly has the distinction of being recognized as our 100th Certified Trade Show Marketer.