Gijs Verbeek

Head of Events at European Association for International Education (EAIE)

Before joining the European Association for International Education (EAIE) as Head of Events in March 2020, Gijs was the Executive Director of the local MPI Chapter in The Netherlands for over a decade. One of the most memorable highlights of his time with MPI was the organisation of the European Meetings & Events Conference (EMEC19). This flagship event for the European MPI community was entirely designed with the different stakeholders in mind and was recognised with several awards. EMEC19 was a true Game Changer.At the EAIE, as in many other parts of our industry, they had to rethink their event strategy and quickly change their event portfolio from mainly in person conferences and events to virtual. Instead of a 4-day annual conference & exhibition with around 6000 attendees and a large exhibition, the association organised a series of online events, trainings, conference & exhibition for over 10.000 people in the first year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.