Many women have knack for meeting/event planning

Like many women in the meeting and event-planning industry, Lois A. Vining entered the field by accident.

Vining, president and owner of Event Planning Services in Indianapolis, developed an interest in meeting and event planning in 1983 when she was working as an administrative assistant for the Indiana chapter of the Dallas-based American Heart Association. Part of her responsibility was to coordinate three annual board meetings.

"I loved the meeting-planning aspect so much that every job after that I wanted to make sure had some part of meeting planning," said Vining, 55.

For the next nine years, she followed this dream by performing meeting-planning services for various companies. In 1992, she launched her own firm.

Vining's story is very common in the meeting and event-planning field, said M.J. Calman, managing director of the women's leadership initiative for Dallas-based Meeting Professionals International.

MPI, which bills itself as the world's largest association of meeting and event planners, comprises primarily females. Of the nearly 20,000 MPI members, 75 percent are women. Typical reports for the entire industry list the percentage of females at around 90 percent, Calman said.