Michael Drake

Michael Drake, joined Destination Vancouver eight years ago, as the Director of Sales, Meetings and Conventions. In this senior leadership role, Michael oversees Destination Vancouver's Meetings & Convention’s International and Canadian sales team. His team covers the Corporate and Association markets, along with their Ambassador program, called “The MIND Program”. Michael assumes the board level roll with our global alliance with “BestCities”, on behalf of Destination Vancouver. 

Veemal Gungadin

Veemal Gungadin is the founder & CEO of GlobalSign.In Pte Ltd (GSI), the company behind the fast growing event tech platform, Gevme. Veemal Gungadin graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2003 with a Bachelor in Computing.

Veemal founded GSI in 2007, architected and coded the very first software platform of the company. GSI is today a leading event tech company in Asia. Veemal remains at the forefront of technology and spearheads the product vision of the company’s core platform, Gevme. As COVID-19 changes the nature of events and marketing forever, more than a software tool, Gevme has transformed into a platform and community to power the next generation virtual & hybrid events.

Veemal also invests in and advises several startups in other areas such as MarTech and Fintech. Some examples are: 1) Singapore-based, Synchestra, a fast growing InsurTech company, 2) Sweden-based, Severalnines, a leading Database management product for highly-available database clusters.

Veemal volunteers his time at SACEOS as the VP of Digital and Innovation, where he drives national level initiatives in Singapore to help enterprises and individuals in the events industry digitally transform themselves to be future ready. He also volunteers his time on other causes such as the Migrant Workers issues, working with the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre in Singapore.

Matthias Schultze

Matthias Schultze is passionate about driving change and innovation, focusing on future proofing meetings and events as vital platforms for knowledge exchange. 

With a degree in business administration, he started out in hotel and congress management at Hilton International in Germany and has now almost 20 years of management experience, including as CEO of the World Conference Center in Bonn, which is part of the United Nations Campus. In 2010, he took up his current role as managing director of the GCB German Convention Bureau that represents and markets the German meetings and conference sector on a national and international level, with offices in Frankfurt, New York and Beijing. 

Together with industry partners, Matthias has initiated various projects, such as the “Future Meetings Space” innovation alliance, that focus on the opportunities and challenges brought about by the digital transformation.

Mike Williams

Mike is a destination and convention and visitor bureau specialist with 30 plus years of experience in the tourism and business events industry. Since joining GainingEdge in 2007, he has been a lead consultant on destination and convention bureau development for clients around the globe including Australia, Dubai, Fiji, Japan, Indonesia, Macao, Malaysia, Qatar, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand & the USA. Mike was the lead consultant for establishment and capability strengthening for the Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau and the Global MICE Cities programme in Japan.  Mike’s skill set extends to strategic planning, destination sales and marketing, product development, bidding and business development. In addition, Mike oversees GainingEdge’s In-Market Sales Representation.

Mike served as General Manager Sales & Marketing for the Melbourne Convention & Visitors Bureau leading Melbourne’s business development and bid teams to secure events for the city. He also worked in senior marketing roles with Tourism Australia helping establish their presence in the Asia market and overseeing travel trade development in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Mike was instrumental in the development of AIME, the largest MICE trade show in the Asia Pacific and the world’s first BestCities Global Alliance. Mike is also a past Victorian State Chair and National President of Meetings and Events of Australia (MEA).