Leading information services company Questex has repositioned and renamed its Event Operations Division. Now named Event Performance, the team supports Questex’s strategy of zeroing in on the experience economy with a laser focus on customer engagement at all touch points online and offline. 

“As the world returns to live events, we are taking this opportunity to refocus and align our team with Questex’s commitment to ensuring the best customer experience,” said Kate Spellman, CMO of Questex. “In addition to our Q Activate platform, this change allows us to combine event and content intelligence with trends and demographics to deliver superior events. 

Kirstin Lewis leads the global Event Performance team and is joined by new leadership talent and a new management structure. Chris Correa is responsible for trade shows; Rowan Scahill manages Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) events; Dawn Walton leads conferences and hosted buyer events; and Molly Witges heads customer engagement. 

The Event Performance team delivers a multi-channel approach, working collaboratively with Questex’s Center of Excellence, which includes customer experience, marketing performance, content innovation, and product and technology. Questex delivered nine trade shows, 21 conferences and six hosted buyer events in 2021, including IHIF (International Hospitality Investment Forum), Bar & Restaurant Expo and Sensors Converge. 

Lewis drives the new Event Performance team in all Questex verticals, including hospitality, wellness, travel, education, life sciences, healthcare and technology, media and telecommunications, connecting live events with digital and hybrid experiences. Using Q Activate, she is able to strategically lead her team by focusing on industry trends that place the customer at the center as well as implement new systems and processes. 

Lewis also brings strong executive experience from managing verticals and market events, small networking events and multiple large trade shows. 

“I am passionate about creating event experiences from beginning to end, which means both digital and live event experiences,” she said. “Questex’s business is centered on bringing buyers and sellers together. Meeting people face-to-face and learning about new innovations and trends are all vital to the advancement of business.”

She added, “I have the best team in the business, and I am constantly inspired by them—their innovation, creativity and collaboration.” 

Correa brings a deep knowledge of Questex to all aspects of event operations. He leads the overall operations of service management and exhibitor services for Questex’s trade shows. Correa helps drive the events operation strategy as well as provide leadership, project management and oversight on all logistics for the trade shows such as LDI, International Beauty Show (IBS) and International Esthetics, Cosmetics & Spa Conferences (IECSC). He understands the step-by-step workflow to produce a calendar exceeding 100 events per year to bring communities together. 

Scahill leads Questex’s European event operations team, where each year thousands of the world’s leading minds connect at Questex events that span investment, buyer programs, management and technology summits and private networking functions. She has vast industry experience managing and delivering successful corporate events, including conferences, seminars, trade shows, award ceremonies and product launches from both Good Thinking and Don't Panic Projects Ltd. In her role as founder and director of Good Thinking, Scahill also launched and delivered a number of B2B events, including food and drink and artisan festivals. 

Walton leads event operations for Questex’s buyer events and the conferences within trade shows. Questex’s buyer events connect suppliers with senior decision makers that have an immediate need to purchase, while the conferences deliver targeted learning to attendees in a vertical market. A Certified Meeting Planner (CMP) with a proven track record in live and digital productions, client services and process transformation, Walton came to Questex from Total Event Solutions, which she founded, owned and ran for more than 20 years. With live to virtual pivots and the overall increase in virtual events, Walton joined Questex to help build its digital events strategy and successfully produced and launched 60 virtual events. 

Witges, a CMP and a Digital Event Strategist (DES), is responsible for driving attendee and exhibitor engagement across all Questex events. In this newly created position, she utilizes her planning and solution provider expertise to develop industry leading event opportunities to build personalized user experiences. Witges has the unique understanding of the event world from sales solutions, technology, product development and meeting logistics perspectives, and the ability to match event strategy with the right technology, which will ultimately lead to driving value and maximizing return on investment for all stakeholders. Witges was most recently director, strategic solutions at Maritz Global Events.

Photo: Kirstin Lewis

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