Rick Stainton oversees the growth strategy of Smyle Group, which delivers live, hybrid, and virtual experiences for some of the top global brands.

Deploying this cross-sector experience and network, in August 2020, Rick founded the One Industry One Voice coalition, which aimed to deliver cross-representation and collaboration across the seven core sectors of the events industry, for the first time. It gained the support of all the main industry associations and businesses of all sizes and sectors and delivered the #WeCreateExperiences campaign in 2021.

This mission and clear mandate from across the industry evolved in April 2022 into a not-for-profit organisation, The Power of Events, with a more formal structure, model, strategy, and long-term plan. It aims to launch a comms hub in January 2022, to effectively deliver a map of the industry’s seven core sectors, to benefit all current and future event professionals – profiling the trade associations, support organisations, universities and industry media well as leading industry data research projects in order to appropriately showcase, respect and value the UK events industry.