Kevyan Ann Sly, CMP, DES
Kevyan Ann Sly is the Vice President of Meetings for the Navy League of the United States. This role leads the planning of the annual Sea-Air-Space Conference & Exposition, the Navy League’s National Convention, US Navy’s Birthday Ball and Navy League’s Board Meeting as well as provides advice to other departments about meeting planning related needs as the in-house subject matter expert on meetings and events. This role is responsible for heading up the efforts that support more than 75% of the Navy League’s operating budget.
Sly graduated from the University of Dayton in 1992 with a BA in Communications/Public Relations. Kevyan’s career in meeting and event planning began in 1993 and has covered both not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. During her career, she has successfully managed operating budgets of approximately $6.5M and consistently met overall company budget objectives to lower expenditures. Kevyan also spent six years as a Convention Services Manager at one of the largest convention hotels in the United States. In this position, she was responsible for managing groups ranging from 300 – 7,000 people at properties with over 470,000 square feet of flexible convention, exhibition and event space.
In September 2013, Kevyan joined the Navy League of the United States as their Director of Corporate Meetings & Events and overseeing the planning and execution of the organization’s National Convention and Board of Directors Meeting. She left the organization in 2016 to become the Deputy Executive Director and Director of Events for the Marine Technology Society (MTS), a leading international community of ocean scientists and engineers, practitioners, policy makers and educators. During her time with MTS, she worked on shaping the enterprise vision and implemented strategic plans for the organization as well as serving as the liaison with the local organizing committees for their bi-annual international programming. From there she joined Interel, a global public affairs consultancy as their Director of Meetings where she led a team of five event planners on the execution and delivery of conferences, meetings and expositions for 12 clients as well as managed her own portfolio of high-profile clients and international meetings.
With the closure of the DC based offices of Interel and the Covid pandemic, Sly was excited to be invited back to Navy League as the Senior Director of Meetings & Events in September 2021 and she was promoted to her current position of Vice President of Meetings in June 2023.
Sly received her Certified Meeting Planner (CMP) designation in 2003 and her Digital Event Strategist (DES) designation in 2020. She currently lives in Arlington, VA with her family.