Senior Meeting Planner

Do you want to improve the lives of working people and strengthen the labor movement? Duties and Responsibilities: • Carry out logistical aspects for assigned meetings, conferences, and events to include: location scouting, on-site management, and post-meeting wrap-up (i.e., bill review, debrief, etc. • Coordinate and draft attendee messages via registration system (for up to 1,000 people); • Assist with drafting preliminary budgets for all meetings, analyze for cost-effective comparison, and make recommendations accordingly; • Effectively communicate with internal and external customers to determine all meeting specifications to draft RFPs (request for proposals) and ensure that RFPs (request for proposals) are within fiscal year considerations are met; • Distribute RFPs (request for proposals), review incoming proposals, and prepare an executive summary for the director's review; • Obtain, analyze, edit, and make recommendations for contracts from hotels and other vendors for the director's review; • Develops a schedule of deadlines and coordinates actions to meet deadlines with internal and external customers; • Coordinate meeting logistics with hotel and vendor contacts, including but not limited to F&B (food and beverage), meeting room sets, A/V (audio/visual), and IT (information technology) needs, shipping arrangements, and miscellaneous preparations; • Make menu selections and ensure special dietary needs, variety, and fiscal considerations are met; • Effectively communicate with customers to ensure final specs are properly coordinated and within budget prior to signing of BEOs (banquet event orders); • Review and finalize BEOs (banquet event orders) prior to signature (some BEOs might require the Director or Deputy Director's approval); • Assist internal and external customers with the development of meeting agendas to ensure the program is within contract boundaries; • Serve as a liaison for event coordination with both AFL-CIO staff and elected leaders and staff from affiliates, external organizations, and outside vendors; • Assist with executing on-site meeting details at executive council meetings, conventions, and other external AFL-CIO meetings as assigned; • Coordinate with Digital Strategies and Programming Departments to ensure content between organizational and registration websites mirrors one another. • Act as liaison between AFL-CIO and selected venues for external AFL-CIO meetings, conferences, and conventions; • Collects, reviews, and analyzes historical meeting data in order to predict future trends; • Manage all aspects of the department's event calendar to track meetings from RFP (request for proposal) development through event conclusion; • Suggests new processes or procedures for working more efficiently and effectively, particularly through the use of innovative technologies; • Coordinate private dining agreements and menu selections; • Administrative duties as required or assigned, but not limited to coordinating ground transportation, maintaining a calendar of events, group housing and transient reservations, and invoice reconciliation. Required Experience and Qualifications: • Minimum 2 years of consecutive experience with all aspects of meeting planning and event coordination for events of 25 people or more; • Minimum 1 year experience with food and beverage menus, meeting room set-ups, audio-visual items; • Familiarity with creating budgets for cost-analysis purposes; • Demonstrated ability to understand, interpret, support, and apply organizational and department policies and procedures; • Demonstrated ability to exercise good political, fiscal judgment and discretion; • Demonstrated ability to handle highly confidential information; • Demonstrated ability to exercise high attention to detail; • Experience working with executive staff and elected leaders from affiliates and other external organizations; • Demonstrated ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks and support multiple managers while meeting competing deadlines; • Demonstrated ability working as a team player; • Excellent communication, verbal, written, and analytical skills; • Positive and proactive attitude with excellent organizational and interpersonal skills; • Highly motivated and a demonstrated self-starter; • Excellent collaboration, problem-solving, and customer service skills; • Highly proficient in all Microsoft Office applications, particularly Excel, demonstrated exposure with a travel management company, and Internet research; • Desire to receive training/education in the field of meeting planning; • Desire to learn a CAD program, to create detailed schematics.