Brenda Rivers, JD, HMCC, CIS, is the founder of Andavo Meetings, Incentives and President of SAFE LLC. an event risk management consulting company. With a background in hospitality law, she is also certified by the Institute of Crisis Management. Over the past twenty-seven years, Rivers and her team have guided companies through event disruptions and catastrophes. She believes that there is a heightened duty of care for meeting managers to protect the safety of participants and safeguard the financial integrity and reputation of their organizations. Rivers was recognized as a 2018 top 20 Trendsetter by Meetings Today Magazine, for her work in Duty of Care Risk Management. Rivers has authored several white papers: “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, “Mitigating Meeting and Event Disasters” and a Guidebook for Creating a Risk Management Playbook. Her work includes training hundreds of meeting and hotel professionals on “Where do I start to make my attendees safer?” Her passion is assisting organizations and planners to design and implement a risk management strategy for any type of event to mitigate disruptions and crises. Her experience includes: Best practices in meeting planning processes for sourcing, contract negotiation and compliance, spend management Alignment of company business goals with meeting objectives• Transparency in decision making and reporting• Application of best-in-class meeting and event planning practices• Elevation of the attendee engagement cycle: learning, application and measurement of the business impact• Systematic tracking of meeting spend to measure cost savings, cost avoidance and lost savings opportunities• Risk assessment and crisis management plan integration Specialties: Entrepreneurship, strategic planning, risk assessment, crisis management, negotiation, ROI analytics, contract compliance, talent development, keynotes, training and consulting