IV CEO Summit of the Americas
Client: US Chamber of Commerce
Venue: Intercontinental Hotel, Los Angeles, CA
Date: June 7-9, 2022
Event Challenge: Agility, Adaptability, and Keeping Cool in the Face of an Ever-Changing Event
The 4th CEO Summit of the Americas took place in Los Angeles, California, where scores of international diplomats, titans of industry, and forward-thinking entrepreneurial minds converged. To ensure a successful event, our team departed from DC to the Intercontinental Hotel two weeks prior to the event. Although site visits had occurred in previous months for our core team, for the size and scale of this event, we brought in an expansive team of trusted industry partners to execute– some of whom had never visited the venue.
The US Chamber of Commerce envisioned an event hosting six hundred people, requiring multiple speeches, meals, exhibitions, and builds happening simultaneously; not only on different floors, but also different hotels (the West Bonaventure, only two blocks away, was enlisted to provide additional guest accommodations). Furthermore, prominent elected officials, as well as high-ranking executives from Amazon, Google, Meta, Citibank, and the Motion Picture Association would be in attendance. That’s a whole lot of major officials and executives to coordinate and keep safe. Because of the security needs that accompanied these guests, the US Chamber instituted an expansive security network– complete with a badging system denoting different levels of access, as well as multiple security teams assigned to certain high-risk individuals. This required all event participants to have their business readily identifiable through a color-coded ID card. Event participants were given blue IDs, press were given yellow IDs, security personnel black IDs, and so on. Because of the facilitative role our team played, we were granted unrestricted access to the event and the various spaces. With the high level attendees and government officials we sought out a security firm to assist with managing the overall security plan. Rob Savage, a former Secret-Service agent with his own security contracting firm– would be critical in keeping our safety protocols under wraps and our guests safe.
Throughout the week, our team primarily focused on tailoring the event program to a constantly in-flux slate of speakers, as well as overseeing construction of the main-stage in the Plenary Room and the large-scale builds of Innovation Alley. Our main-stage was designed with two adjacent panelist forums on either side of one podium that resided center-stage for keynote speakers. Innovation Alley, however, required an even more imaginative approach. Seeing as these structures would serve to compete for the attention of influential policy-makers, our foremost concern was guaranteeing our sponsor activations exemplified the innovative characteristics each business wanted to highlight. General Motors, for example, provided Secretary of State Anthony Blinken an in-depth look of a self-driving electric vehicle to showcase their progress in clean energy and autonomous technology; our team’s part in design & content formulation played crucial roles in ensuring these companies made the right impressions on important politicians. Perhaps more challenging than coordinating these builds was accommodating demanding security needs; for example, intermittent construction pauses were required to ensure the safety of various governmental delegations touring the space. This is just one practice that highlights the importance of keeping agile in an environment that demands flexibility.
All in all, between a cohesive lineup of insightful speakers, ranging from President Biden to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and the utilization of inventive, immersive exhibits to showcase the accomplishments of free enterprise, the US Chamber of Commerce fostered meaningful discourse between international business leaders and policymakers– an outcome that proved the IV CEO Summit an invaluable effort in their mission to drive economic growth at home and abroad.
All photos taken by Ian Wagreich.
