SBCA Staff Spotlight: Ali Saladin-Valerio

Ali Saladin-Valerio is SBCA’s Director of Events; she has been with SBCA for over three years and has been the backbone of the association’s many live events. Ali is responsible for organizing and coordinating every part of each event, from choosing venues, coordinating logistics, and making menu selections to creating floor plans and researching team building activities. If you have attended any of SBCA’s live events in the last three years, then you’ve likely met Ali and have realized how smooth and enjoyable the events are due to her fantastic planning skills.  

Prior to Ali joining the SBCA staff, she was a Senior Events Manager at a venue in Downtown Austin, where they put on corporate dinners, rehearsal dinners, holiday parties, meetings, and weddings. Ali hosted several fun events for SXSW in Austin, TX, for clients like Dell, Gopuff, Deloitte, Texas Instruments, and Food Network. Following this, in 2020, Ali pursued her Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) certification, which is something she had wanted to do for many years, especially since she wanted to curve her path from hospitality to corporate events. 

As one could guess, BCMC is what consumes the largest portion of Ali’s time. BCMC planning is a year-long task that often requires planning multiple years into the future. Ali must balance her time with consistent BCMC planning, intermixed with planning Open Quarterly Meetings (OQM), assisting with chapter events, and most recently, the European Offsite Tour. Ali is looking forward to making incremental improvements to BCMC to help drive the attendee and exhibitor experience; she continues to grow in her knowledge of the industry and learn more about our exhibitors, their goals, and how she can help accomplish them. 

Ali’s success stems from the fact that she is organized, efficient, driven, detail-oriented, strong-willed, and passionate. Her extensive background in events, combined with her strong skill set and talents, are what make SBCA’s events successful. “Ali is great to work with. She’s always on top of things and knows exactly what to do. Her knowledge and intuition for events is impressive,” says Christine Wagner, SBCA’s Director of Communications. “Ali and I joined the SBCA team just a few weeks apart, so it has been a lot of fun to watch her growth within the association and work on events together over the last few years.” 

“Ali brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the staff and association. I have learned a lot about the planning side of events from her,” says Jess Lohse, SBCA’s Executive Director. “It is great to know that things are getting done and done well. I can always count on her to put on a successful event for our members, which is great for the association.” 

Ali earned her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from Canisius University. She and her wife, Zee, reside in Austin, TX, with their adorable son, Sebastian. Interestingly, Ali was a Division 1 swimmer and part of an Academic All-American Team in college. In her free time, Ali enjoys playing softball, loves to dance, sing, and says in another life she’d be an interior designer. You can often find Ali spending time with Seba and Zee, kicking the soccer ball around and spending time together. Ali can be reached at asaladin@sbcacomponents.com.