Our Team
Melinda Wunder
Certified Meeting Professional
Based in Lyons, Colorado, Melinda Wunder, CMP, President, Creative Conventions & Events has been planning meetings and events for 40+ years. A graduate of University of California, Los Angeles, her experience includes over 180 national and international conventions, 700 one-day seminars, international video-conferences, trade shows, and over 800 events. A past member of the Meeting Professional International’s Southern California Chapter Executive board of directors, she was nominated for MPI’s “National Planner of the Year” award out of 17,000 members worldwide. Melinda recently won the prestigious IMEX Green Meetings Award for small to medium sized meetings. She has served on numerous panels and given workshops on varied topics such as menu planning, creative coffee breaks, expert hotel negotiations, and ethics in meeting and event planning. She is also a Travel Agent accredited by the International Airlines Travel Agent Network. Melinda currently serves on the Lyons Arts and Humanities Commission where she is working to place 15 new sculptures in the town of Lyons, CO. She also is the owner of Art Detours which leads private, contemporary art tours throughout the U.S. and Iceland. Melinda lives on a river with her husband Tom, daughter Julia and her little puppy, Lulu.
Sally Petrigac
Certified Meeting Professional
Sally consults and provides meeting management services to Creative Conventions and Events through her company, On the Mark Productions. Sally is a meeting planning professional with a 30-year proven track record of successful high-profile meetings and events for large American and international corporations. Sally consults and provides meeting management services to Creative Conventions and Events through her company, On the Mark Productions.
As a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP), Sally is recognized as having achieved the industry’s highest standards of professionalism. The CMP designation is the foremost certification program of today’s meetings, conventions, and expositions industry.
On The Mark Productions recently completed a five-year contract with the Canadian Tourism Commission’s Canada Media Marketplace, a Business-to-Business event (Canadian Tourism and U.S. Media), that connected over 5000 face-to-face pitches in a single day.
Organized and detail-oriented, Sally has the ability to multitask and handle a high volume of programs simultaneously. (Example: As a senior meeting specialist/project manager at Amgen, a leading biotech company based outside of Los Angeles, she handled up to 50 programs and events a year for both internal and external clients.)
She focuses on program objectives, executing on-time, in-scope, and within budget. Sally has excellent decision making and problem-solving competencies. She is a skilled negotiator who achieves excellent outcomes for her clients. She enjoys reading, hiking, biking, and yoga. She lives with her husband Mark in Cleveland, OH along with four cats and two horses.
Tanya Nieto-Winzey
Certified Cvent Event Management Professional
Tanya is an expert Cvent technician, a leading event management technology company, and Crowd Compass, the world’s largest developer of mobile event and conference apps. She is proficient building both online registration websites and event mobile apps and provides excellent on-site technical support to attendees using these systems. Tanya is a Certified Cvent Event Management Professional. The certification is awarded to an elite number of event professionals using Cvent Event Management software.
She earned a Masters degree in Psychology & Rehabilitation Counseling from Boston University. Tanya came to Miami to work for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Secretariat as a conference officer, in turn spending many years learning crucial meeting planning skills. She later worked for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as a program assistant and continued coordinating events and meetings in the nonprofit arena.
Cynthia Slater
Cynthia Slater graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a BA in History. Since then, she has had multi-national experience working in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing and event planning. Her skills include the development of marketing events, customer education seminars, and direct mail marketing. Always willing to take action, Cynthia has superb customer service skills in working with clients. She currently manages several print media projects and registration databases for Creative Conventions & Events.
Melinda Wunder
Certified Meeting Professional
Phone: (303) 818-6982
Winner of the IMEX Green Meeting Award presented in partnership with the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) for Small to Medium Sized Meetings