The Delegate Wrangler of the Month for March 2021 - Pamela Benitez

We're very pleased to announce the March 2021 winner of  'The Delegate Wrangler of the Month' award - this is to recognise who has officially played an active role on the group in the last month - according to the both insight stats from Facebook and also who the DW team notice has been a fab member of The Delegate Wranglers.

We'll be sending the winner a fantastic voucher for a one night stay at one of the fab House of Daniel Thwaites spa hotels (Excellent business hotels - locations throughout the UK) - what a fab prize that is!! And we're very delighted to say the winner is Pamela Benitez of The Virtual Events Experience. We caught up with Pam to tell her about the award and to find a bit more about what she does:

Q. Congratulations on being our top contributor over the last month! How long have you been a member of the Delegate Wranglers?

A. Thank you so much, love supporting our colleagues and I am super surprised, it’s a honour. I joined Delegate Wranglers last year around September/October 2020 - introduced to it by Denise Atkins who spoke highly of the group.

Q. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company

A. l Iost my job in April 2020 and I was Head of Events in an events agency. I would never thought I would lose my job so fast…but it happened and I decided instead of sitting and waiting for change, to create a business for good.

First, I started to improve my virtual management skills attending a course at The Media House combined with diverse number of virtual events. Then, I came across a business called Elvis & Kresse that is a social enterprise and after understanding the concept I thought was perfect because allows a company to support a cause (purpose) and is regulated by Social Enterprise UK to do so. So, I decided to launch the first events agency specialized in virtual and hybrid certified by Social Enterprise UK. My company creates events with social impact and every event is aligned with a relevant cause promoting the cause and giving back immediately. For those that don’t know, a social enterprise goal is to make profit but how the profit is handled that determines the business to be a social enterprise, a company to be a social enterprise must give away or reinvest more than half of the profit which is a big commitment specially for a new business.

The Virtual Events Experience purpose is to reinvest 51% of the annual profits towards promoting different social causes and helping unemployed event managers to find a new source of income.

Plus on top of it, every event experience created we donate 5% of the product profit immediately to a cause and for selected alcoholic events we donate 1 x course at virtual events planning to an unemployed event manager in order to improve the skills and hopefully get a new job in the industry. Currently we donated 2 x courses to 2 x unemployed event manager and almost ￡1500.00 to Charities as Samaritans, Shaw Trust, The Lewis Moody Foundation (Brain Tumour), looks not a lot but for a six months business we are super proud and looking forward for the big distribution when our fiscal year ends.

To keep on mind: we are an events agency and we can support corporate and agencies with amazing experiences as cooking with ITV chef Parveen The Spice Queen or Jamaican Cooking to Change Poverty, Virtual Team Quiz hosted by Lewis Moody MBE, Portuguese Wine tasting, The Face Whisperer Workshop, bespoke events as we are currently organising Women’s in Sports Business with BBC Sports, we also created events in partnership as Buses 4 Homeless Networking & Charity Online Event with Hubilo as main sponsor and Break the Ice Forum as partner where we will bring 120 event managers to meet virtual and hybrid suppliers giving back 10% of the revenue generated to Buses 4 Homeless from Dan Atkins, finally we provide consultancy for tech platforms and clients and sustainable and socially aware supply change for events organisers.

Q. How did you get involved in the events industry

A. My father is specialized in opening hotels in Brazil and I grew up living in hotels literally, therefore following the path to hospitality/events felt natural ?? - I love events because we always learn something new every day and meet different people from the most diverse background.

Q. How do you use the Delegate Wranglers? Do you use it to ask questions or to assist people - or both?

A. I use for both. I love sharing my knowledge and helping others to connect. I also find really useful to ask support as well and finally to promote the business and events. I joined Delegate Wranglers Superstars too and I try to be as active as possible, it’s a really good tool to grow the business, learn, help and support colleagues.

Q. What do you like most about the group?

A. The community sense is the best, everybody helping each other is fabulous. It’s the social google for events, ask anything and you will get the answer!  

Check out Pam and her fab company here:  www.thevirtualeventsexperience.co.uk

If you want to be in the running for this award next month, we'll look forward to seeing your contributions on the group.