Being a talented meeting planner can open the doors to a number of attractive positions in the corporate world. One example would be the position of Director, where you manage other planners and implement the strategies and procedures for an event department.
Positions like this do require several years of experience in planning events. After all, it would be difficult to answer staff questions and manage best practices without understanding them yourself. But even beyond experience, management in general requires leadership skills, and not everyone has what it takes to positively influence others.
When you think of all the things that go into planning events, and then multiply that by how many coordinators a director is responsible for, it takes a special person to keep all these details straight. I recently mapped out some of the key leadership functions in this article on How to Lead an Event Planning Department.