Meet John Kirby (MPI Kansas City Chapter), director of customer relationships for Encore, recognized as MPI’s Volunteer of the Month for February 2026.
How did you get started with MPI?
I should start by saying that I have been a member of MPI since 2004, but I can’t remember why I got involved. If I’m being honest, as an in-house AV guy at the time, one of our hotels probably decided to host a reception and told me I needed to be a member. So, I joined. Because that is what many of us as vendors did. It’s been one of the best things I ever got “voluntold” to do.
What’s your history of volunteering with MPI?
I have been in and around the MPI community since joining but didn’t really get active in the community until my wife (who is also a planner and CMP) were asked to chair the chapter’s annual education conference in 2017. We accepted and did not know at the time that I would get promoted and my wife would change jobs midstream in planning for this conference. But we stayed the course, and I think we felt really good about doing something where we could see the work land in a way that the members really enjoyed. I got a great feeling from that.
A couple of years later in 2019, I was promoted into another role in my company that required industry volunteerism, and I reached out to a friend of mine who was in the Office of the President (OOTP) at the time and told her I’d like to start on a committee. She talked about it with the board, and they counteroffered the VP of Membership role. I felt very unqualified for that role out of the gate, but I settled in wonderfully and had an amazing team working beside me that had a strategy on lock. Six months into the term, I was asked to join OOTP. Again, I felt even more unprepared! But I felt very confident at the time that the leadership within the chapter at the time would guide me in the ways that would best serve the needs of our membership.
Very timely, because in the months to come, the pandemic would fall on everyone. Our chapter admin decided to leave, and I became tasked with multiple things out of the gate. What I will say about my experience with our chapter at that time was the experience of engaging our membership and managing to build the community we did during such a challenging time was that it built me as much as it did the MPI Kansas City Chapter. We celebrated multiple RISE Awards during that time and really grew a reputation as a chapter with something to offer.
Since then, I’ve volunteered on MPI’s Chapter and Membership Advisory Council for three years, chairing the Subcommittee on Chapters & Policy for two of them. The work I’ve been able to do to involve our chapter leaders in informing policy at the global level has been a great experience for me, and it has helped me to think so much more strategically about the ecosystem around me and the relationships I keep every day.
Can you share a standout experience you’ve had as an MPI member and/or specific to volunteering with the association?
I would have to say my favorite experiences thus far have been the two RISE Awards the MPI Kansas City Chapter won for Industry Advocate (2022) and Membership Achievement (2023), along with my RISE Award for Member of the Year (2023). It wasn’t the winning the awards necessarily that I loved so much…the group of people I got to work with on our board during that time and getting neck deep in all of the things none of us really have time for blossomed into something that we are all so proud of now! The MPI Kansas City Chapter has continued to thrive in the years since I’ve rolled off, and it really was a fun experience to see so much valuable time and effort land in such a fun way for our team when celebrating together [at the World Education Congress (WEC) in] San Francisco and Mexico. I will never forget those three years in OOTP!
What’s one of your favorite aspects of the MPI community?
The thing I love about MPI is that you see every part of our industry represented in the MPI audience. I tell my teammates and customers all the time, “I don’t know everything… I know everyone who knows everything!” Being able to point people in the right direction is often the job at hand for me, and being in the MPI ecosystem allows me to be better connected to what it is I believe that makes me valuable when needed. That’s being able to get the right talent to the right task, no matter what it is. I’m a more well-rounded professional because of my time working and volunteering among this wide array of professionals in our industry.
What, if anything, would you like to see (or see more of) when it comes to the MPI community?
After WEC in Mexico, I told MPI President and CEO Paul Van Deventer we were going to need pools at every Rendezvous from now on. I really did tell him that…one of my best memories from Mexico!
Seriously though, I want to see more avenues for students to begin flowing into our chapters around the globe. I feel the village-building our incoming generation needs to do always has the best opportunity to start in affiliation with young careers. My experience is that MPI has not only been a great place for that to happen, but the MPI Kansas City Chapter has allowed MPI to become a great vehicle for moving the student experience forward. I think about students as the organic pipeline of new members in our organization. Investing in their journey and making the case why MPI is the place for them to invest their time as a professional is and, I think, needs to be a core tenet of MPI’s long-term strategy.
What is one thing the meeting and event industry needs right now?
I’d just say a cocktail, but that would be too easy! For those of us that are really steeped in this industry and tethered to our careers the way so many of us are these days, I’d encourage us all to take time to look long and wide at the industry we are working in so we can continue to challenge ourselves in our own convention and comfort to do the thing we think we can’t. I think every instance where I see that happening, I see growth and a sense of fulfillment that comes from the work we get to do together. And that is the key word: Together. So go do it. Together.
