Case Study: Peggy Gelernter

Planner: Peggy Gelernter, Senior Associate, Conference and Event Planning

Organization: Hillel: Foundation for Jewish Campus Life

Events: Gelernter helps handles the logistics for in-house meetings, special staff conferences, alternative spring breaks and training events for student interns, which can have as many as 500 attendees.

Challenges: “Budget is always a challenge,” says Gelernter. Hillel often combines staff conferences and intern training events at one location making site selection and logistics difficult. “It’s very hard to pick a place that holds a group that is still acceptable in location and reasonably priced [for students].” As many as three different Hillel groups — professionals, directors and interns — could be meeting at one location with different programming that may or may not overlap.

Getting organized: “For each track there’s someone that’s in charge of the training and each of them has an agenda and a program,” says Gelernter. “Our role is combining the schedule so we can see how everything will fit in together.” Gelernter uses a grid arranged by time and meeting room location to make sure sessions with the same speakers or interested attendees are not overlapping. “Then you kind of have to go back and forth with the programmer,” she says. “If you need a ropes course and you get a better deal with a larger group, then you can combine groups together and figure out a way to make it economically feasible.”