Visit Alexandria’s 6th Annual Gingerbread Decorating Contest Event.
The Visit Alexandria Sales Team hosted a delightful evening of decorating gingerbread houses to help raise awareness and funds for Alexandria’s Carpenter’s Shelter. We were overjoyed by the number of participating teams and the beautiful and creative ideas on display. We had an overwhelming number of votes, and the contest was extremely close.
The winner of the 2023 Gingerbread House Decorating Contest is…WETA (#13)!
Breakfast and Blossoms Event: Defining Your Why: Know Your Purpose Before Adopting the Trends
We hope you enjoyed breakfast, networking, and the valuable insights from our speakers—a very special thank you to Kimberly Hardcastle-Geddes, President at mdg, A Freeman Company, and Shay Onorio, President & CEO at Red Thinking. We’ve recapped all the good stuff they shared in our newest blog post, which you can check out here.
Featured Speakers & Topics:
Kimberly Hardcastle-Geddes | President at mdg
With 18 years of event marketing experience, a Master of Science in Business Administration, and an uncanny ability to switch from left-brain to right-brain thinking (and back again), Hardcastle blends focus and discipline with innovative thinking and creativity to craft unique solutions for agency clients. She’s a CEM faculty member, a Krakoff Leaders Institute alumna, the editor of mdg’s marketing newsletter, a presenter of industry seminars on strategic marketing planning and, most importantly, an integral collaborator for several prominent association and event clients across in the country. She’s also a mom, runner, reader, lover of east coast cities and west coast beaches and is known to eat lunch at her desk as early as 9:15 a.m. 
Learn more about mdg, a Freeman Company here.
Shay Onorio | President & CEO at Red Thinking
Red Thinking is a woman-owned, privately held brand strategy, creative and digital firm located in the D.C. Metro area. Red Thinking believes that real conversations lead to real connections, and creating connections is what changes the world. Their team is full of thinkers who are fun, thought-provoking, and organized.
“Often asked WHO we are as a company, not just what we do, I continue to lean into what our Red Thinkers share when we discuss it (rather regularly), and, I take great consideration in what our clients share from their experiences working with us. It allows me to be more pragmatic in our ongoing goals, and ensure our values are intact. Combined opinions leave me confident telling folks that Red Thinking is a multi-faceted creative agency that has honed in on what we love most, and do best: thoughtful branding, design, digital, and thinking. We listen, push boundaries, and collaborate. From that, we provide award-winning creative, data driven and strategic digital prowess, and content that resonates. On top of that, we’re a bunch of likable and fun folks. Ahem, subject matter experts.” 
Learn more about Red Thinking here.
The Leadership Collection at Alexandria’s Fall Webinar: Love in Leadership
Thank you to those who joined us for The Leadership Collection at Alexandria™ Love in Leadership Webinar! We had a great time with James Robilotta, award-winning leadership coach and Michelle Kolacz, manager of experiences & programming at Building Momentum. Check out the tangible takeaways from the webinar in our blog and view the recording of the webinar here.
Featured Speakers:
James Robilotta
Award Winning Leadership Coach
Love in Leadership
Great teams require great coaches. And great coaches pour love into their talent. It may feel weird to bring up love in the meetings industry, but it’s the cornerstone of commitment, relationships, teams, and growth, so it’s time we talked about it. In this session participants will learn where they fall on an innovative leadership spectrum and identify ways to balance performance and team dynamics. Meeting planners have to be nimble in their communication style across various groups and teamwork is paramount. This hysterical and vulnerable talk will be packed with powerful reflections and tangible takeaways.
Michelle Kolacz
Manager of Experiences & Programming at Building Momentum
Michelle creatively tackles problems to help generate impactful solutions and unique training experiences. During the webinar, Michelle will immerse participants in a unique training experience to work their leadership muscles.
