- Meetings that really work.
- Gatherings that truly engage.
- Conferences that actually connect.
Why Work with Us
We transform your meetings using a variety of proven group facilitation methodologies and best practices. We ensure that your meetings are more productive. We help you get better results and improve decision-making. And our techniques truly engage people, foster collaboration, equity, and innovation. And changing the way you meet also positively influences your organization’s culture and the way it functions. After working with us, people often say they didn’t realize meetings could be both so valuable and enjoyable.
What We Do
Facilitation and Meeting Skills Trainings
Learn how to run effective meetings and upskill your staff.
Think about how many hours you’re in meetings. Can they be better? Surprisingly, most employees have never had any meeting training. Even a short course on group facilitation skills, online meeting techniques, or effective meetings training can pay dividends year after year — be it professional development for employees or a training for new managers. And while a meeting about meetings can sound dreadful, our meeting skills trainings are hands-on, productive, and fun.
Meeting Design
Consulting services to improve meetings and conferences.
A more consultative process, meeting design helps you restructure your meetings to better serve their purpose. For example, if your big annual conference isn’t connecting with sponsors and isn’t producing the breakthrough learning and networking attendees demand, meeting design fixes those challenges to produce a better event. Or, if your weekly staff meeting is all talk and no action, redesigning the meeting agenda and flow can give you that change.
Networking and Connection-Building
Improve the quantity and quality of matches.
Many meetings and conferences succeed when participants truly connect with each other. Some meetings are explicitly geared to connect people – buyers and sellers, cross-discipline researchers, etc. – and others need to build connections and foster community as a secondary objective. We use a variety of tested methods to dramatically improve networking beyond simply hoping for magic hallway moments.
Professional Meeting Facilitation
We save you time and get you better results by facilitating your meetings.
Our meeting facilitation services focus on engaging, participatory meetings with an eye on real results. The on-site or online meeting facilitation is informed by pre-meeting design, prep, and research. We can also do online facilitation (e.g. Zoom facilitation) and assist as a corporate retreat facilitator, board retreat facilitator, or conference facilitator.
Uncover the Hidden Value in Your Meetings
- Great Ideas
- More Time
- Effective Solutions
- Stronger Culture
Where We Work
Based in Washington, DC, we do much of our work for local clients and those planning events in DC, Virginia, and Maryland. However, we also travel regularly to facilitate meetings and train organizations – and we have team members around the country. Plus, we know that online meetings can be great and do a lot of work virtually as well.
In-person
Online
Hybrid
Retreats, offsites, and all-hands
Conferences, conventions, and tradeshows
Strategic planning meetings
Innovation, ideation, and brainstorming sessions
Team, staff, and committee meetings
Roundtables, townhalls, and charettes
Just a few of Our Clients
We work with innovative organizations that value their people’s time and the power of truly connecting participants.
What Our Clients Say
Casey Creech
The Better Meetings process is all about pulling out those hidden gems that exist inside the room, not just the obvious ones that sit on top. And that's something Better Meetings does an amazing job of – helping you tap into the entire wisdom of the room, not just the loudest people.
Suzanne Gunther
Lee Gimpel is a real joy to work with, and he is just so smart and committed to this work. And his colleagues are the same; it feels like working with kindred spirits who really care that our event is a success, and that people are engaging in a meaningful way.
Malikkah Rollins
Meeting with Lee to brainstorm was exhilarating! I appreciate his open-mindedness and creativity when it comes to perceiving what's needed to make meetings more interactive and effective … You need someone like Lee to help turn social interactions into vital, connecting, community-building events!
E. Lee Davenport
The training and advice have been easy to implement in my day-to-day gatherings, board meetings, and even our conference. But, more than that, it’s gotten me to really think differently about how to significantly improve our meetings in new ways.
Yvonne Y. Malloy, MPP
We have gotten nothing but positive responses about the day, about a change of focus for us, for how we do our conference. It provided an interactive experience for our members and our doctors, and they were ecstatic.
W. Ethan Lick Eagle, PhD
What people long for is structured interaction with people so they can process information. Lee's approach solves this problem beautifully.
Cheryl Little
Lee is a master facilitator. On short notice, Lee redesigned a nearly two-day Board meeting for a national association who needed to deliberate complex strategic questions. Board members have praised the deep thinking and ideas generated from our time together.
Ron Berg
Our intent was to create a virtual technology conference that surpassed all other experiences across our industry; engaging, truly interactive, fast-paced, and of course high content value with real takeaways. Working with Lee has crafted just that experience. I highly recommend engaging Better Meetings.
Benjamin Prosky
Participants left the day energized, with a clearer understanding of our organization's strategic vision and goals. For groups looking for novel and impactful ways to engage their key stakeholders, I would highly recommend working with Lee to organize your next important meeting!
Trish Martinelli
Lee's work reflected to the staff the value that the organization places in them, and the output from the meeting exceeded my highest hopes.
Jenny Parker
I really appreciated Lee’s thoughtfulness in designing our day and all the creative ways he had to help us focus, collaborate and engage. Everyone in the group enjoyed the day.
Laura Singler, CAE
Lee utilized innovative activities to bring the attendees together, allowing them to share best practices with each other, and generally get to know each other better. The sessions were highly interactive and engaging and attendees have had great things to say.
Michael J. Petrilli
From fun-but-not-hoky ice-breaking activities, to small-group activities to set norms and rebuild trust, to jumping into substantive policy conversations, Lee's guidance, leadership, and expert facilitation skills helped our group get off to a great start. I highly recommend him!
Eileen T. O’Grady PhD, RN, PCC
Lee is a gifted facilitator and he is deeply knowledgeable in how to engage groups. Highly recommend.
Meagan O’Toole, JD, CAE
Lee and Better Meetings helped us organize and facilitate a meeting that more than met our expectations! Everyone remained engaged throughout the day and even managed to tackle one of our thorniest issues while simultaneously increasing the Board's sense of camaraderie.
Fraser Hughes
The end product is great. The feedback from my clients is very good. So for me, it's an easy decision when we come to do these things. The Better Meetings team, for us, are a natural go-to organization.
Ginny Winkworth
We got terrific feedback from the people that attended, and everyone that gave us that feedback felt more engaged and more involved. I don't see why any organization wouldn't feel that that was a plus for them, and a benefit for engaging Better Meetings.
We are regularly quoted in the media for our expertise on meetings, facilitation, collaboration, group dynamics, conference design, networking, and innovation.
Lee Gimpel is a meeting planning expert and founder of Better Meetings, a meeting design, facilitation and training company in Washington, D.C. that works on improving in-person and online meetings with a focus on engagement. Gimpel says some gamification at events seems like “gimmicky window dressing,” and it doesn’t really move the needle in terms of engagement or bottom-line results.
Planning an event should always start with why you are doing an event,” advises Lee Gimpel, president of Washington, D.C.-based meeting design, facilitation, and training company Better Meetings. “Often, planners jump right to executing on the what and how of an event.”
