Event Marketer’s 2025 B-to-B Dream has been unveiled. Each month, we’re sitting down with one of our all-stars to talk trends, best practices, and all things uniquely b-to-b.
Valerie Strehle, Senior Director-Global Events, Workiva
When an event organization operates under the code name GSD, or Get Shit Done, you know it has some serious momentum behind it. And in the case of Workiva’s global events team, that’s Valerie Strehle, who has helped the cloud-based business software brand’s events grow exponentially in the post-COVID years, thanks to an efficiency-obsessed, business-driving mindset that has rallied the entire company.
While many events struggled with direction post-COVID, Strehle saw an opportunity to reset and invest. She recognized a significant gap in resources dedicated to managing large-scale events at Workiva, and in response, she proposed—and led the formation of—a dedicated global events team focused exclusively on managing events with budgets of $1 million or more. The team, created in January 2023, consolidated resources from marketing, sales, and EMEA to form the first-ever global events team at Workiva.
This new vision is allowing Workiva to share resources better to grow its flagship events, which include Workiva Amplify (the global annual flagship conference—this year in Washington, D.C., and Barcelona), Workiva Fuze (sales and marketing kickoff), Workiva LINK (technology team kickoff), Workiva Xceed (CPX team kickoff), and President’s Club (annual sales incentive trip). Strehle heads up a group of five that sits in marketing operations and ladders up to the vp of marketing.
After studying p.r., Strehle followed a path into events right away, landing her first job on a strategic events team at Principal Financial Group focused on experiences and event logistics for clients at the end of the sales cycle. That work led to a role at Workiva (formerly WebFilings), and over her 12 years at the company, Strehle has watched the brand grow from small startup to pre-IPO to IPO, with the event strategy growing along with it. In fact, the first Amplify took place six months after she joined the organization. That event, in particular, has grown from fewer than 500 attendees in 2012 to more than 2,500 participants across two regions (Americas and EMEA) in 2024.
“We often talk about what’s really driving people to events,” Strehle says. “After working through the challenge of getting people to come back, we’ve learned what truly motivates them. It’s clear that, in addition to learning, people want to do business at these events. They want to be able to show their companies that their time was well spent and that they were productive, which is becoming an essential part of the in-person experience.”
Fun Fact: This year, the global events team at Workiva has introduced PATH water bottles, reducing the use of more than 50,000 single-use plastic bottles at its events alone. The team also partners with internal sustainability teams to invest in carbon offset programs for employees’ travel to the events.
To that end, she guided her team to launch Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs) in 2024 at Amplify. The centers are designed to help sales and CPX leaders engage with attendees, progress pipeline opportunities, and close deals while at the event. The team had 20 rooms running for the entire duration of the 2024 event, with more than 165 meetings hosted at Amplify Americas and 51 meetings at Amplify EMEA.
“What we’re trying to drive internally is this mindset shift of why we do Amplify, to change perceptions that it’s not just a marketing event. We’ve shifted the mentality and that accountability, and by adding the executive briefing centers, we’re giving sales and our CPX teams more of that one-on-one time that they were wanting,” she says.
Another Strehle brainchild: The high-touch Leadership Forum at Amplify Americas, for attendees hand-picked from Workiva’s most strategic target accounts. The forum offered direct access to Workiva’s top executives, networking dinners, exclusive sessions and experiences, with the objective to build the business where it counts. The forum ultimately brought in 40 VIP attendees—200 percent of the original goal—proving that there is a “clear business value” in tailored, executive-level engagement at events, she says. And how about this for efficiency and experience: George Clooney was the Amplify keynote speaker, and also took part in the Leadership Forum during an exclusive, closed-door VIP session for the attendees.
Looking ahead in 2025 and beyond, Strehle continues to push for growth and expansion, with plans to build on the success of the Executive Briefing Centers program and expand events like Amplify, in some instances, with the goal of doubling in size, year over year. She’s also eyeing expanding the organization’s use of AI, beyond Wordly translations, session summaries, and Braindate topics on-site, to create personalized attendee journeys. “That’s our next pivot,” she says.
We’ve got a code name just for Strehle: CID or Consider it Done. Welcome to the Dream Team.
Day in the life:
