For Artemis Event Planners, Experience and Backup Plans Ensure Success

Event planning and management isn’t a career for everyone. You need strong people and organizational skills, a boatload of patience and the ability to troubleshoot and think quickly on your feet. But this team of two at Artemis makes it look easy. Their secret? Experience and always having a backup plan — or plans.

“We’re planners, so it can be frustrating when things don’t go as planned,” said Rachel Pisarski, a senior event planner and manager at Artemis. “You plan for everything ahead of time and have contingencies, but there are some things you can’t control — and things happen. The unknown is one of the most challenging aspects of event planning and management.”

Things like an exhibit booth not arriving at a conference site on time or boxes of handout materials getting lost in transit due to vendor errors or unexpected delays. In situations like that, you can use what you do have available while you track down your shipments, make copies of materials locally and rent or locally source other things you need, according to Sharia Barksdale, a conference planner at Artemis.

“Taking responsibility is part of our job,” said Barksdale, who has a master’s degree in tourism administration and a certificate in event sustainability. She is also a certified meeting professional and digital event strategist. “You must have a plan A, B and C to ensure a successful outcome. Even with SOPs [standard operating procedures] and careful planning, something will happen that requires us to pivot into our backup plan.”

Learning how to pivot and take control of a situation when something doesn’t go as planned comes with experience, according to Pisarski, who said she learned everything about the event planning and management industry on the job. “When something doesn’t go as planned, the key is to focus your energy into finding a solution, rather than assigning blame or becoming overwhelmed,” said Pisarski, who has a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management and is a certified government meeting planner.

Having What It Takes

Certifications, education and experience prepare event planners to succeed in this industry. Meeting and event planning and management students take classes in finance, budgeting, logistics, leadership, marketing and communications. But having the right personality for the job is also important.

“You can learn the skills you need for this work, but you have to have the temperament,” said Barksdale.  “You need the correct spirit more than anything — a spirit for service and for people.”

In that spirit, Barksdale supports the National Science Foundation (NSF) in expanding its Convergence Accelerator Program nationally to 10 regions of the country. Artemis helps NSF host regional expansion events to raise awareness about the program among academic, industry, nonprofit and government stakeholders and encourage their involvement. NSF created the program to advance critical technologies and solutions that address complex, national-scale societal and economic challenges, such as artificial intelligence and the future of work.

Pisarski joined Artemis last year to work on the National Veterans Small Business Engagement (NVSBE) Event Services contract. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) awarded the contract to Arrow ARC, a joint venture between Artemis and Aptive.

Under this contract, Arrow organizes a yearly event that brings together thousands of participants from the government, small and large businesses, and Veteran-focused associations and service organizations. The purpose of the event is to give Veteran-owned and other small businesses the opportunity to learn from and network with VA business leaders and decisionmakers. Arrow provides comprehensive support for marketing, planning, logistics, hiring and managing vendors and staff and more.

With these projects well underway, Artemis has its sights set on growing its event capabilities and event management team, including partnering with other companies. What does Artemis bring to the table for clients interested in using its event planning and management services?

“Artemis offers precision in the process and adequate resources to serve every client need,” Barksdale said. “I’m proud of that. Event teams are always notoriously understaffed. But here we can execute at a level that yields the desired outcome.”