Venues & Events

David Vaughton to champion mentoring & succession building at Women 1st Conference

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Category: Venues & Events

Created on Friday, 01 June 2012 16:16

David Vaughton to champion mentoring & succession building at Women 1st Conference

Talented leader David Vaughton, venues director of EEF Venues will inspire female managers, entrepreneurs and those women aspiring to leadership positions to take their careers to the next level on 19th June as he co-hosts a dynamic break-out session on the secrets to successful mentoring with DUKES LONDON general manager Debrah Dhugga, at the inaugural Women 1st Conference.

In an interactive one-hour interview and open-floor Q&A session led by Sophie Allcock, communications manager from Custard Communications, David and Debrah will reflect on hospitality careers collectively spanning more than 50 years to reveal how their eyes for talent have enabled them to nurture women with ambition and flair into managerial roles.

Delegates will learn what success looks like, how changing consumer behaviour and market conditions have impacted on hospitality business skillset requirements and what mentoring techniques delegates can employ to get the best from their staff, while at the same time developing their own managerial and leadership abilities.

David Vaughton will share insight into his mentor/mentee relationship with Woodland Grange venue manager Eugenie Hales, who has excelled from a front-of-house administrative position to now running one of Warwickshire’s most highly regarded AIM Gold accredited conference and events venues. Woodland Grange also holds four-star VisitEngland Quality in Tourism accreditation for its residential facilities, a five-star kitchen hygiene rating, as well the title of ‘Best Conference Centre’ thanks to Coventry and Warwickshire’s Godiva Awards.

For David, this Women 1st Conference appearance comes in a year that sees him celebrate 10 years at EEF Venues – which counts Broadway House in Westminster, Engineers’ House in Bristol and Broomgrove in Sheffield within its conference venue portfolio – during which time he project managed a £5 million development programme to increase Woodland Grange’s capacity to 114 bedrooms and 26 meeting rooms.

Prior to EEF Venues, he amassed 20 years’ experience in hotel and conference venue management roles with Trusthouse Forte, Mount Charlotte Hotels, Whitbread Coaching Inns, Periquito Hotels, Stoke Rochford Hall in Lincolnshire and the National Hockey Stadium and Conference Centre in Milton Keynes.

“I’m a great advocate for succession building and much of my leadership logic stems from a belief that staff should be 100% engaged with top-line objectives, for example KPIs, budgets and personal targets, because individual staff performance is so intricately linked with overall business and management objectives,” says David, who enjoys extremely high staff retention at EEF Venues with a stable management unit who have all been in situ since 2005.

David is well known in the events and hospitality sector and has previously served as the vice chairman of the Conference Centres of Excellence, and on the Meeting Industry Association’s (MIA) council, contributing significantly to the development of the nationally acknowledged AIM accreditation kitemark. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Hospitality.

Debrah Dhugga is a founding member of the Leading Ladies of London, an organisation comprised of female general managers of five-star hotels whose mission is to bring more women leaders into the hotel industry and to share efforts and experiences on how to make it to the top.

David Vaughton and Debrah Dhugga will be speaking from 1.45pm – 2.45pm at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower, Knightsbridge, London, in one of a series of three optional break-out sessions. It will follow an industry leaders’ sofa session, hosted by Huffington Post UK editor-in-chief Carla Buzasi.

Women 1st Conference tickets are available for purchase at http://www.people1st.co.uk/business-and-training-support/women-1st/women-1st-conference-2012/bookings. The conference will be followed in the evening by the 2012 Women 1st Shine Awards.