Institute Advisory Board
The senior advisors guiding the standard of excellence for event and experiential ROI.
The Edgucation Institute Advisory Board helps shape the standards, strategic direction, and long term credibility of CPES and the Institute’s educational framework
What the Advisory Board supports:
Certification standards and rigor
Strategic relevance across the industry
Business credibility and measurable outcomes
The long-term growth of experiential strategy education
Gretchen Bartek built Adelska Events on a premise the industry is still catching up to: events are business tools, not productions. With a background in finance and business strategy, she approaches experience design the way a CFO approaches a balance sheet—every decision connects to an outcome. The result is an award‑winning firm known for high‑impact corporate, community, and destination experiences ranging from intimate executive summits to large‑scale public events serving tens of thousands.
Over her career, Gretchen has led strategy and execution for conferences, leadership summits, incentive programs, experiential marketing campaigns, and large‑scale public events for corporate clients, municipalities, chambers of commerce, and national organizations. Her work sits at the intersection CPES was built for: experience design, attendee psychology, business growth, and measurable results.
On the Advisory Board, Gretchen brings a commitment to rigorous standards, strategic frameworks, and leadership that takes experiential strategy seriously.
Jenny Howard‑Maxwell has spent 25 years in the experiential industry doing the work, and the last several building the infrastructure to make everyone else better at it. As the founder of HM Experiential, she has designed and executed experiences across corporate, community, and branded event landscapes with one consistent
thread: every experience exists to produce a result.
That conviction led her to found The Edgucation Institute, the first certification program purpose‑built to teach event professionals how to tie real business outcomes to their events. The CPES designation exists because Jenny believed the industry deserved a standard, not just a credential, and she built one. With 25 years of hands‑on experience and a reputation as one of the industry’s loudest advocates, Jenny sits at the intersection of practitioner and educator.
On the Advisory Board, Jenny brings the practitioner’s perspective, certification vision, and a deep commitment to raising the standard for experiential strategy.
Their combined expertise ensures CPES isn’t just current
it’s built for where the experiential industry is heading.
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