Alan Peterson is stepping up into a new role at PPAI and taking on greater responsibilities. Peterson, who joined the Association in 2016 as its vice president of business development, will now serve as senior vice president, with expanded oversight of PPAI’s operations and programs.

Peterson joined PPAI with an extensive background in business development and strategic management, trade shows and business-to-business media. During his career, he has held senior leadership roles at several prominent exhibition management and trade publication firms, with a direct hand in the success of numerous shows and publications serving a wide range of industries.

As the Association’s vice president of business development, Peterson oversaw the business development, sales and marketing efforts of PPAI. In his new role as senior vice president, his responsibilities grow to include a larger share of the organization’s initiatives to help achieve member and association success.

“My responsibilities will change significantly,” Peterson says. “I will be responsible for a number of new departments and will evaluate how we add key talent and find creative ways to reset expectations.”

Looking ahead to the challenges and opportunities of his new role at the Association, Peterson says, “In response to COVID and all of the unfortunate aspects of the pandemic, PPAI and promotional products businesses have had to completely revamp how things are done. While I am sure I am not alone in preferring that the pandemic had never happened, the silver lining is that it allows us to create new products, elevate our colleagues and explore creative ways to serve our members.”

But up first will be a fresh assessment of where PPAI stands. Peterson says, “My immediate goals are to dig deep on what are our key offerings, benefits and access to market that will provide our members with a trusted association focused on growing the market, industry and their businesses.”

Now more than six years into his tenure in the promotional products industry, Peterson reflects on what he’s discovered about the field and the professionals within it, particularly over the last few tumultuous years.

“It has been interesting learning more about the promotional products industry and how the engaged professionals, both at PPAI and in the industry, adapt,” Peterson says. “It amazed me how quickly both PPAI and companies changed the way they go to market and how they created products that were a small part of the spend within the industry—things like masks, Zoom, packaging, working from home, etc.—quickly became part of how business was conducted. Suppliers who never sold masks had them in their inventory within weeks to keep their people working and selling the product that distributors needed.”