Global Policy Forum
From dialogue to accountability: inside the inaugural Global Policy Forum
Iain Stirling recently chaired a session at the inaugural Global Policy Forum in Washington DC and reports on the event
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T industry has never lacked conversations about its own value. What it has lacked is a room in which that value is articulated directly to the people who shape policy. The inaugural Global Policy Forum, held at the Army & Navy Club in Washington DC, USA, on 29 May, set out to build exactly that room – and, on the evidence of one intense morning, it succeeded.
Produced by MAD Event Management’ s Marta Donato and Marty Glynn, with the support of the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance( ECA) and global association of the exhibition industry, UFI, the invite-only forum brought together organisers, venues, associations, policymakers and trade experts with a shared purpose: raising awareness of what business events deliver to local economies, and ensuring the sector’ s voice is heard in global decision-making.
Trade first, then the harder question The morning opened with trade. Sessions on the United States-Mexico- Canada Agreement( USMCA) as a model for cross-border co-operation, opportunities for trade promotion, and policy dialogues led by the ECA’ s Tommy Goodwin made a consistent case: exhibitions and conferences are not a by-product of trade, they are infrastructure for it. Every exhibition floor is a marketplace; every conference a driver of hotel nights, jobs and inward investment for its host city. That economic argument, made plainly to policymakers, is the forum’ s reason for existing.
After the break, attention turned to sustainability – framed by Marty Glynn and UFI’ s CEO Chris Skeith OBE, who set out the global transition towards common standards, before Diversified Communications shared its own journey from commitment to execution.
Intention versus execution It was then my privilege to moderate‘ Sustainability in the event industry’, with a genuinely formidable panel – Carina Bauer, chief executive of IMEX Group; Dennis Smith, chief executive North America of Messe Nürnberg; Marsha Flanagan, president and chief executive of IAEE; Shawn Cheng, regional director North America of ICCA; and Joyce Leveston, chief executive of the Javits Center.
Held under Chatham House rules, the session was designed to move past the pledges and into the gap between intention and execution. The questions were a little uncomfortable by design: when budgets tighten and contracts are being signed, what actually gets cut first? Are we measuring what matters,
or merely what is easy – waste diverted rather than the emissions of thousands of attendees flying in? And why does the supply chain, where most of the real environmental impact lives, so rarely sit at the centre of these discussions?
What made the half hour work was divergence. A venue, an organiser and two associations do not experience these pressures in the same way, and letting those contradictions sit in the room, rather than smoothing them over, produced the most honest exchange on sustainability I have heard at an industry event in some time.
We tackled whether voluntary guidelines remain fit for purpose or whether binding standards are now needed; and why, in 2026, the industry still lacks a universally adopted measurement framework.
A forum with a future Closing perspectives from Plural Strategy’ s Phil Stone and Emerald’ s Hervé Sedky underlined the mood: this industry is ready to advocate for itself with confidence.
The Global Policy Forum has established something valuable: a bridge between our sector and the policymakers who need to understand it. Future convenings are already in development. On this showing, they will be essential. EW
44 Issue 4 2026 www. exhibitionworld. co. uk