Reporting to: SVP, Navan Events
Scope: United Kingdom and Europe
About the role:
Navan Events is bringing together its meetings and events businesses under a unified, technology-enabled operating model. We are building a scalable managed-services organisation that combines Navan technology with deep event expertise. The VP, Event Management is the senior operating leader accountable for client delivery, commercial performance (gross margin, operating expense, workforce capacity, productivity, and forecast accuracy), organisational leadership, and transformation across the UK and Europe.
Based in London with a minimum of three days per week in the office and reporting to the SVP, Navan Events, this leader will oversee a multi-country organisation responsible for event strategy, planning, venue sourcing, supplier contracting, registration, attendee management, event production, onsite delivery, and reconciliation. They will establish globally consistent standards while enabling regional teams to respond effectively to local clients, markets, and suppliers. The VP will partner closely with the Senior Director, Global Event Travel, who owns online and offline event travel operations.
This is a hands-on transformation role. The VP will integrate teams and capabilities across Navan and Reed & Mackay to align under Navan Events, improve the economics and scalability of managed event services, and build the leadership, processes, and technology required for the next stage of growth.
What you'll do:
- Unify Navan and Reed & Mackay teams, capabilities, technology and operating practices.
- Establish scalable service, staffing, and delivery models that improve profitability without compromising client experience.
- Make investment and resource-allocation decisions based on growth, client value, operating expense, workforce capacity, operational risk, and expected return.
- Define and implement the target operating model for Event Management across the UK and Europe.
- Standardise roles, processes, controls, systems, data, and performance measures while preserving clear local accountability and market expertise.
- Hold executive accountability for the quality and commercial performance of managed event programmes.
- Serve as executive sponsor and escalation owner for strategic clients and complex or high-profile programmes.
- Establish standards for delivery quality, supplier management, contracting, budget control, reconciliation, risk management, and service recovery.
- Own the operational technology strategy for Event Management. Partner with Product and Engineering to prioritise platform capabilities, automate manual workflows, improve client visibility, and ensure new products are operationally ready and adopted successfully.
- Lead a multi-layer, multi-country organisation comprising country directors, functional leaders, managers, and event professionals across the UK and Europe.
- Build a high-performing team across countries. Set clear expectations, hold leaders accountable for commercial, client, operational, and people outcomes, and create credible succession and development pathways for critical roles.
- Surface performance and operational issues early, explain their commercial implications, and give leadership clear recommendations for resolving them. Communicate change to the organisation with transparency, clarity, and confidence.
- Drive M&E business growth. Partner with Sales and Customer Success to shape the regional growth plan, qualify opportunities, define service scope and pricing, and ensure new business is operationally ready. Hold teams accountable for delivering contracted commitments and retaining profitable revenue.
How success will be measured:
Success means delivering on what the Sales team sells and creating an operational flywheel that brings customers back and retains revenue. It will be measured through:
- Gross margin, operating expense, and forecast performance
- Client retention, satisfaction, and service quality
- Employee engagement, retention, leadership development, and succession readiness
- Budget performance, team utilisation, productivity, and cost-to-serve
- Adoption of common platforms, processes, and reporting
- Delivery of integration and regional growth milestones
What we're looking for:
- 12+ years in meetings and events, experiential, hospitality, or another complex managed-services environment.
- Significant experience leading multi-country, multi-layer Event Management organisations.
- Strong knowledge of venue sourcing, supplier contracting, registration, attendee management, event production, and agency economics.
- Demonstrated success integrating organisations, modernising operating models, or leading large-scale transformation.
- Commercial ownership experience: operating budget, gross margin/contribution margin, forecasting, pricing, capacity forecasting, cost-to-serve and productivity
- Experience serving as executive sponsor for complex enterprise clients.
- Evidence of building high-performing leadership teams and credible succession pipelines.
- Ability to operate across different European employment, regulatory, supplier, and cultural environments.
- Experience partnering with Product and Engineering teams to digitise or automate service operations.