For Marnie, success has been the freedom to make her own way – to not be beholden to a balance sheet or an idea she can’t support. “I achieved this success early in my career at MTA by working four (4) jobs to support MTA until the company could support itself.  Marnie’s advice is to “endure”.  She shared, “Following a dream into reality takes grit and purpose. It’s doable, but you need to forgive your mistakes and those of others on your journey.”

The pioneering leader has become an extensive support system for budding entrepreneurs who are out there trying hard to establish themselves. “I try to live in an aspirational state.  Meaning as I dream about MTA’s future, I’m clear that we may not realize the dream, but that doesn’t stop us from aspiring to reach the dream,” says Marnie. “I hope that living this way inspires the MTA team to take creative risks in creating exceptional events.  Mentorship comes in sharing stories.” Marnie has learned valuable lessons throughout her two decades working with various organizations and leaders. “Lessons come in all shapes and sizes. I try to embrace each lesson from a position of gratitude looking for the positive in each situation. It’s true that you learn more from challenging situations than from easy wins,” she adds. “I’ve learned my approach to each challenge sets the course. Leadership can be lonely; therefore, I surround myself with principled people.  I lean on them and endeavor to build relationships that withstand the many challenges a company must address.”

Armed with this exceptional mindset, Marnie has been taking the company to new heights. Miller Tanner Associates is a WBENC-certified, full-service corporate event planning company with proven experience globally on six continents. The company specializes in event management and technology for the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries. They deliver exceptional capabilities for face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid meetings that exceed customer expectations. MTA mixes its outstanding service with technology to create its own products by connecting the data MTA collects for their customers to view in real time.

Among MTA’s many successes, one notable achievement is the company’s agility and ability to go beyond “Plan A” by developing contingency planning for all events. One recent example was a biopharmaceutical company with an urgent study timeline sponsored a series of three complex trainings for an important study trial. The studies were to take place in Lagos, Nigeria; Cairo, Egypt; and Accra, Ghana. The first meeting in the series was a hands-on training in Lagos, Nigeria. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Nigeria, was completely closed to non-Nigerian citizens. The majority of the sponsor’s attendees and all the uniquely qualified trainers had to join the meeting virtually.

Concurrently, the entire contract research organization’s (CRO) attendees, one sponsor attendee, the trial’s healthcare professionals (HCPs) attendees and the patients all attended the meeting in person. MTA mobilized to create a dynamic hybrid event with two audiences to create one experience. MTA tackled many challenges, foreseen and unexpected, to provide a successful hybrid event solution for the customer. 

The results included that during the city’s unexpected protests, MTA successfully pivoted the Lagos, Nigeria hybrid event in less than 18 hours. The meeting was quickly rescheduled within thirty (30) days of the original date and MTA produced a successful investigator meeting as a hybrid event with two audiences that shared one experience.  Alongside, MTA created a comprehensive safety and security plan to address Covid-19 amid local civil unrest and was able to successfully execute an extensive, customized training plan.  Using cutting edge technology and MTA’s production knowledge, nine (9) sites completed training on sonographer equipment virtually, twenty (20) pediatric patients received exceptional care, and the clinical trial progressed to the next stage.

Marnie’s most recent significant achievement was to survive a global pandemic. As an event planning company, MTA’s survival was connected to the foresight of being a virtual event leader, having already created technology that allowed them to progress during a world event. Looking ahead into the future work of MTA, they plan to add a “self-service” feature to their technology which would allow their customers even greater ease to connect their event’s behavioral data to their respective internal systems. For the days to come, MTA is working on feeding their customers’ systems with the behavioral data collected, believing that this data can eventually be fed into their customers’ greater artificial intelligence (AI) goals.

“The current and legacy MTA team members are truly exceptional people that possess the ‘gift of service’. It’s an honor to work with them every day knowing how much they care for what they produce. They inspire me every day,” says Marnie referring to the importance having a remarkable team with which to strive for success.