We spoke to Cecilia Lavin, President of ILEA UK and Head of EMEA Sales at One World Rental about the importance of relationship building and networking and her mission to be a positive, supportive voice in the industry.

With over a decade of experience in the events industry Cecilia has since the beginning of her career worked for a variety of prestigious events businesses including running her own events consultancy. Currently she heads up the EMEA sales team for One World Rental, a global IT and event technology company. Since 2012 Cecilia has been involved in ILEA both on a local UK and international level, taking over as UK chapter president in 2019. Her passion for the industry, educating and supporting fellow event professionals and connecting people takes a central role in her leadership and driving the association forward.

Cecilia tells us why face to face business is so important “…you will never really get the same interaction and can read body language and connect in the same way as you do if you meet face to face.”

She adds “It’s all about relationships…the common denominator is that you're dealing with people and that is one of the main reasons why I love my job, why I love the industry that I'm in and it suits me very well as a person.”

“We've had people from our Hong Kong chapter, people from Nigeria, United States that's joined our [virtual] events. Whilst if we would have hosted them face to face, they wouldn't have been able to do that.”

Looking forward to a positive outcome, Cecilia shares her thoughts “There will be events again. There will be opportunities to meet people face to face.”

“We will get through this together and there are so many people out there to help everyone…that is my main mission with ILEA, it is always to help our members and our network and people to do better and to develop.”

Watch the full interview here:

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