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As senior director, Kowana Ragland, CMP, works within the meeting planning business unit to manage client engagements and team operations as well as provide strategic direction. Kowana serves as account executive for several association clients where she builds and maintains long-term client relationships.

Since joining Meeting Expectations in November 2000, she has done extensive work within both the meeting planning and association management sectors, including managing budgets of $100k-$5m and overseeing programs with 30-100 speakers, 50+ exhibitors/sponsors and 250-5,500 attendees.

Kowana began her career in the meeting planning industry at the International Society of Automation (ISA), an organization serving instrumentation, systems and automation professionals. The majority of her 10 years there were in the Conference & Exhibit department planning city-wide conferences in many major US cities.

She was named a “Meeting Professional to Watch” by ConventionSouth magazine in 2009 and had the honor of having her photo on the cover. She also served on the 2009–2010 board of directors of Meeting Professionals International – Georgia Chapter as vice president of education. as well as VP of Communications for the Atlanta Branch of the Senior Planners Industry Network (SPiN).

Kowana holds the designation of Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) and a Bachelor of Science in business administration from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.