Two 2025 IMEX America speakers sure to inspire attendees also represent the global reach of the event, with one hailing from the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. and the other an ocean away in Australia.
[Related: The Latest and Greatest Program Components at IMEX America 2025]
Andrea Driessen
Leading two “Messages of Mattering: Harness Gracenotes for More Impact, Meaning and Purpose” sessions in the Well-Being Wheel, two-time TEDx speaker and award-winning business book author Andrea Driessen will expand on her Gracenotes philosophy. Driessen defines Gracenotes as a “message of mattering”; a long or short note that one gives to another to help them understand how they’re impacting the world around us.
“Whether you’re on the stage of an event or you’re working behind the scenes, event professionals have a disproportionate level of burnout and anxiety. It’s considered one of the most stressful professions around—a top five in some studies,” Driessen said. “The purpose of my session is to give planners and suppliers really actionable takeaways that help them feel less burned out, more grounded, less anxious. There’s just a high level of depression and anxiety, and certainly a huge lack of work-life balance, because you’re working nights and weekends because that’s when events typically happen.”
Driessen added that the digital age has only further exacerbated our disconnect, with people obsessively consuming negative information on social media channels instead of exchanging thoughtful, positive dialogue.
“The more time we spend engaging online, the lonelier we can feel. It doesn’t have to be that way,” Driessen said. “We can balance out our use of social media channels with what I call the social mattering channel, Gracenotes. Because when we know how we matter, we can feel less anxious, less burned out. We can feel more on-purpose, which is what the younger generations and all of us are feeling a lack of.”
Driessen will take that Gracenotes concept to deliver what she calls a WENOTE, her term for a co-created, interactive keynote.
“I’m not deputizing the whole audience to take over the room, but I’ll be giving them the background on why a Gracenote matters, how to write one, giving them time to write one, and helping them understand how this fits into the world of work and into their own lives,” she said. “I’ll end it with a call to action around writing a Gracenote to ourselves: Where can we give ourselves some grace and cut ourselves some slack and feel less hard on ourselves and feel more engaged in our own lives through the way we talk to ourselves?”
Sheila Vijeyarasa
Australian author Sheila Vijeyarasa, aka “Sheila V,” left her bigtime publishing CFO position for a brave leap of faith to follow her passion into personal development, which she has pursued for the last 20 years, leaving her executive job eight years ago to write her first of three books.
At IMEX America, Vijeyarasa will deliver her “BRAVE: Little BRAVE Acts for BIG Changes” presentation on Smart Monday.
“The event planning and meeting industry has been probably one of the most disrupted industries in the last five to six years,” Vijeyarasa said. “Firstly, you had Covid, then you have AI. It’s an industry where resilience is needed because it’s such a high-stress industry. So, my BRAVE leadership session is going to address how to have a resilient, brave mindset as an event planner and how that makes us successful, effective and able to manage burnout and exhaustion.
“The most successful ones have that brave mindset, the brave conversation and the brave vision,” she continued. “And the brave vision isn’t just about the vision for the client; it’s having your own personal vision for what you want your life to look like.”
Vijeyarasa explained that event planners work in cycles of booms and busts—i.e., the lifecycle of their events—and need to facilitate deep rest and learn how to switch off socially to really nourish and reward themselves for the event they just successfully delivered.
“A brave, resilient mindset is the one that expects challenges, that doesn’t catastrophize in the middle of it,” she said. “We flip our mindset from, ‘I’ve got to do this event today’ to ‘I get to.’ And in the middle of the chaos, before the day begins, during and after, we can keep on coming back to the ‘I get to do this’ [mindset].”
Other pillars of her brave mindset are overcoming imposter syndrome in a profession that is all about people pleasing, as well as creating boundaries and taking care of the truly important things in life.
Vijeyarasa lived that last pillar, as she put off starting a family until she was in her mid-40s, and even had her IVF journey documented by an Australian reality TV show.
“I showed how to be resilient in IVF over three years, and many people reached out to me and said, ‘How are you resilient?’” she said. “And I said because of several things: I never gave up—you can’t give up in the middle of an event. And secondly, I knew it was going to be hard. I went into it with the mindset that resilient people are prepared for hardship.”
Vijeyarasa will also deliver a Tough Talks presentation around IVF in a smaller setting that will allow for more personal interaction.
