2026 Meetings Trendsetters: 20 Events Pros Who Are Taking Initiative and Getting Results

What is a Meetings Trendsetter? Someone who drives change across the business-events industry in singular fashion. The 20 industry professionals highlighted below took action over the past year to bring significant benefit to those in the business of creating effective, memorable meetings and events.

Congratulations to the Meetings Trendsetters class of 2026!

EJ Corporan

Head of Marketing, Growth & Research, Ansera

CONTRIBUTION: Pioneering the science of awe in event design

At the experiential agency Ansera ("goosebumps" in Latin), EJ Corporan leads development of the Science of Awe platform, original research translating neuroscience and behavioral science into practical event design, along with proprietary technology that analyzes event elements for awe impact—connecting production design decisions directly to ROI and ROE. This past year, Corporan's been strapping heart-rate monitors on event attendees to show how design choices register physiologically in real time, and also teaching planners to engineer collective effervescence, connection and memory with the same rigor as logistics. His mission: to prove that the most powerful events are first felt, then acted upon.