People 3-1-2003

Meetings & Conventions: People March 2003

People

By Terence Baker

Barbara K. Hickernell, CAE, is conferences director at the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Engineering Conferences International (www.engconfintl.org), which is affiliated with the Engineering Conferences Foundation and Brooklyn’s Polytechnic University. She and her team organize approximately 25 to 30 interdisciplinary scientific and engineering conferences per year.

How are you funded? Purely from registration fees, so there always is a lot of risk. We are at the mercy of economics. Approximately 75 engineers attend each conference, and our fingers permanently are crossed.

Who gets to decide where you meet? I do. I choose destinations that are of interest to attendees who can opt to meet anywhere. In April, one of our conferences will be held in Tomar, Portugal, and I have planned a banquet in a castle that used to be home to the Knights Templar.

Do you have experience as an engineer? I started as a chemist, doing research at the University of Washington in Seattle, and that helped because I understand the terminology of science. My husband has a doctorate in organic chemistry, but my children want nothing to do with the subject: One is a lawyer, the other works in finance.

How do you spend your spare time? I am a board member of the Westchester Civil Liberties Program, and I do work for the local Westchester (New York) library system. Libraries are places where everyone always is welcome. At the moment, I am reading The Best American Travel Writing 2002 [Houghton Mifflin; www.hmco.com], which has whetted my appetite to go to Australia. I organized a conference there two years ago but had to send my husband in my place.

PLANNERS

Soyster joins real-estate association
Karin Soyster, CMP, CAE, has been named vice president, meetings, for the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts in Washington, D.C. Previously, Soyster was director of administration, meetings and education for the Arlington, Va.-based Manufactured Housing Institute.

Skorepa moves up at AUA
Janet V. Skorepa has been promoted at the Baltimore, Md.-based American Urological Association as director of conventions and meetings. Her primary responsibility will be to arrange the association’s annual meeting. Formerly, Skorepa was an account supervisor at the association.