36: Encouraging Female Leadership in Event Strategies with Angeles Moreno

Today, we have the great pleasure of speaking to Angeles Moreno, the founder of the specialist consulting firm, The Creative Dots. Angeles is a spirited entrepreneur, and she has had some tremendous experiences that include losing her company to her partner and writing a book about it.

She is joining us today to talk about her journey, the importance of women's empowerment, how women should get empowered, how to interact with people, and what it means to be an event manager, either face-to-face or in the online space. We hope you will enjoy today's conversation as much as we did!

Angeles Moreno's bio

Angeles Moreno is an internationally recognized expert in her field. She has 20 plus years of professional experience, with 18 years as an entrepreneur and 16 years dedicated to her own event management company.

She is a regular Keynote speaker in main events with topics like Women's Empowerment, Organizational Change, and Experience Design. In recent years, she has devoted most of her time to her passion, which is strategic consulting.

Her constant search to continue evolving and learning has led her to specialize in Customer Experience, Human-Centered and Behavior Design, and to launch the specialist consulting firm, The Creative Dots. With offices in Madrid and Berlin, TCD has developed its own innovative method, the CX Design Playbook, and specializes in the design of people-centered solutions, Learning, and Transformational Experiences.

Angeles is a trusted advisor, and she collaborates with organizations around the world to define strategic lines of growth and development. During the year 2019, she was appointed for MPI | Meeting Professionals International (USA) as the Senior Advisor for Europe. More recently, she was appointed as the strategic advisor for the Women in Digital Switzerland organization.

She is the author of the book The Time Is Now. She also holds the title of Spanish Director of the Event Design Collective for implementing the innovative Event Canvas™ Methodology through training and consulting services.

How Angeles got into the world of event planning

Angeles grew up on the Canary Islands. Although her family wanted her to study law, she decided to study tourism instead. She started working at a hotel, and because she spoke fluent German, Spanish, and English, she received an offer to work in the events or special operations department of a company that is now known as Pacific World. Right from the start, she knew that she had landed in the right place!

The biggest event

After working for the company for just two-and-a-half years, Angeles ran what was probably the biggest event that the company had ever done.

More responsibility

Angeles kept looking for more and more responsibility and bigger events to organize. So she moved to a smaller company that was very well-known in her country, where she spent a short time before moving to England, and then to Germany.

Her first company

When Angeles returned home in 1999, she set up her first company, which was an online marketplace for organizing events. The company was successful until the dot-com crisis hit, causing her to shut the operation down within 48 hours.

An event management agency

In 2001, Angeles set up an event management agency in Madrid. Within five years, the company was turning millions. It kept on growing, and after fourteen years, Angeles decided to bring in some new partners. That was a bad decision, and she wrote a book about it, called The Time is Now.

The Time is Now

Angeles wrote her book because she thought that the story she went through when she made a huge mistake and lost her company in 2014 could help a lot of people. And she also wanted to tell people that her life is not always perfect and she's not always happy.

Advisors

Now, Angeles is far happier than ever before in her business. She has a group of advisors and a business coach to help her to make the right decisions.

Angeles Moreno and The Creative Dots

At The Creative Dots, they do human-centered strategies, and they embrace change in company cultures, organizations, and operations.

Learning from the events industry

Angeles feels that people in the events industry tend to underestimate their capabilities and how much they know. She has learned many things from working in the industry, like how to be more efficient and how to push people to become more creative.

Experts getting to the next level

People who think that they cannot work at all right now because they can't do physical events need to realize that they are experts in human interactions and in designing transformational experiences. By believing in that, knowing their strengths, and investing in a bit more education, they can get to the next level.

Online events

If you are used to running face-to-face events, and you want to do an online event, you don't have to run the online part yourself. What you need to do is to partner with people who specialize in online productions.

Event managers

If you are an event manager, the format of the event does not matter. Whether you are running a virtual event, a physical event, or a mix of the two, you need to be an expert event manager. And that is all about live communication strategy.

Common mistakes in the industry right now

People in the events industry are making a huge mistake right now in pivoting to a virtual platform and using the same format and content as they would for a physical event.

Another mistake people are making is trying to convert event managers from the physical world into virtual event managers.

Empowering women in the industry

Something is missing in the world when it comes to empowering women. Many different elements, like culture, education, and leadership strategies, need to change.

Inclusivity project

MPI has set up a group for promoting female leadership in events strategy. They have sessions every two months, with female leaders talking about events strategies and why we need to be more inclusive in the designing of events.

It is hard to be a professional and a mother

It is hard for women to continue with their professional careers when they become mothers because neither society nor governments help them much in the process. Some conversations are necessary around that issue in all industries and governments across the world.

Empowering women and leading by example

If events become inclusive in all their aspects, like their message, their participants, and their speakers, they will serve as a good example, and that will help in getting people used to the idea of inclusivity. Children also need to see women in many more traditionally-male roles.

Women in Digital Switzerland

Angeles loves the Women in Digital Switzerland project because she thinks the world is suffering from a lack of female talent in digital. If we have no females in the digital economy the women will disappear entirely from all decision-making positions and processes and end up having to stay at home in the future.

Thoughts on the digital world

Angeles thinks we need to focus on digital societies, associations, communities, and projects to promote the need for more digital careers for young ladies. We also need to become more open to the digital world.

Angeles Moreno's book launch

Angeles Moreno's book is available on her new web page. You can download it there, in Spanish or English. All the money will go to the MPI Foundation.

Connect with Angeles

• The Creative Dots website
• On LinkedIn
• Angeles's book, The Time is Now