Miller Tanner Associates (MTA) is talent empowered. It’s what makes MTA such a special place to work – the collection of talent that believes in the same core values and comes together to create transformative event experiences for clients around the world. Our clients can find a personality they can connect with and the MTA Team crafts events that connect to all people, pronouns, and ranges of accessibility.
“At MTA we try to celebrate each other every day,” shares Marnie Battistini, CEO, “but over time we realized that each year there are those of us that shine brighter and that bright beam of light should be celebrated in a more robust format.”
Annually at our MTA Workshop, we hold an awards ceremony. We experiment with different ways to design a memorable awards show and this year was no different. To recognize our 2021 award winners, MTA held the awards show on a Glacier in Iceland – an MTA first to build a stage out of snow, insert a locally built custom stage set, and gather the team together on a glacier to praise and celebrate this year’s winners.
Our five award categories are Story of the Year, Gift of Service, MTA Saver, Theme of the Year, and the Marnie Award.
And the 2021 Theme of the Year Award goes to…
Bart Alazio, Senior Global Experience Manager, Production
Each year MTA creates a theme for the year. Usually, it’s a word and sometimes it’s a statement that will describe that year’s emphasis. MTA’s 2021 theme was around “Revolution” which we defined in this way – “a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.”
MTA’s Strategic Leadership Team (SLT) focused on the words “dramatic/wide-reaching change” and then connected those words in the way “something works/or is organized/or in people’s ideas” to see how REVOLUTION was realized at MTA in 2021.
The clear winner was Senior Global Experience Manager Bart Alazio who has been working hard to shift the way MTA operates, budgets and approaches vendor partnerships within our expertise.
Bart spent a large portion of the fall of 2021 transforming MTA’s previous approach to production budgeting and pricing by introducing a more efficient and strategic approach to proposal budgeting, operational functions, and financial accounting.
In addition, Bart is continually creating new packages and offerings for MTA’s customers. With Bart’s leadership MTA is deepening the understanding and connectivity of events and production to create a better internal and external experience. Bart has taken big strides to bridge that gap in both education for the MTA global team and for our customers’ global team – first in creating a master class series about production to help teach the ins and outs of our team’s expertise in creating an event and secondly, in adding production education to MTA’s onboarding process.
MTA CEO Marnie Battistini added, “I knew Bart had the gift of service the first day I met him in person. It just so happened to be his first day on the job having joined MTA just in time to attend one of our annual events. I expected Bart to have exceptional production knowledge as MTA’s production lead, but what struck me so immediately was his awareness level. He naturally absorbed the audiovisual set up and quickly offered some audio tweaks that greatly impacted the audiences’ experiences – both the virtual audience and the face-to-face audience. His quiet strength of purpose was not only appreciated by me as the presenter, but indirectly by the audience who never knew anything differently. I really admire Bart’s ability to see what is needed to be done and always does it in the most professional way possible. He’s the best!”
MTA’s Chief Experience Officer Meredith Shottes said this about why Bart deserved the 2021 Theme of the Year Award: “Bart is a master at translating complex production elements and concepts into ideas and words that our clients can understand. He continually meets the new needs of the ever-changing landscape for event production, revolutionizing our service offerings and processes as he goes. Never has production been more important for events and we are grateful everyday to have Bart’s voice leading our team.”
Congratulations, BART! You are an MTA Bright Light!
