Two disciplines, one team.

Convene OPS was founded by Sara Olán-Peterson, built from 15 years of hands-on experience across nearly every seat in the industry. She started as a server and barista, then moved through hotel roles from housekeeping to banquets, before moving into third-party event planning and, later, an in-house planner role managing 22–26 events a year nationwide, all while working as a brand ambassador and night-llife on the side. When COVID hit, she pivoted to AV production, then helped build an event program from the ground up at a 25,000-square-foot entertainment facility, running both sales and execution, before growing her own consulting business into what is now Convene OPS. She holds CMP, CGMP, and HMCC certifications and is an active member of MPI, PCMA, and SGMP. A tech and AI/automation advocate, she's seen the same operational problems from nearly every angle of the industry, and built Convene OPS to solve them.

Convene OPS's Head of Operations, Ryan Peterson, brings over two decades of hands-on experience in fast-paced, customer-first environments. He built his foundation managing bars in Chicago, Boston, and Denver, and sharpened his operational instincts at Starbucks before co-founding Teakoe, an iced tea brand, where he served as VP of Operations. That mix of floor-level hospitality experience and startup operations leadership shapes how he runs things today: systems that actually hold up under pressure, and a team that knows exactly what's expected of them.