Helena MieleCERC - CERC-NY Director Helena MieleHelena Miele, CITEHelena Miele is a professional incentive travel and meeting consultant, and a green member of The Society of Incentive & Travel Executives (SITE).Her personal commitment to the environment inspired her many efforts to 'green up' the incentive travel, meeting and convention industry.Helena's 15-year career in the industry began with Virgin Atlantic Airways.Since then she has worked with many segments of business tourism including tourist boards, trade shows, Richard Branson's private island, Necker and the trade press.From 1994 to 2002 she authored the "Green Heart" column for SITE's trade publication, InSITE. She is past chair of SITE's Environmental Committee.There she was instrumental in developing SITE's definition of a Green Incentive Travel program and guidelines for such a program.In addition, she served on the Convention Industry Council's (CIC) Green Task Force, which composed CIC's "Green Guide Lines" for the entire Meeting, Incentive, Convention and Exhibition industry.In 1997, the American Hotel & Motel Association awarded Helena the "Pearson Award for Excellence in Journalism" for her article, "Eco-Meetings: Green by Association," published in Corporate & Incentive Travel in April 1996. In January 2000 Ms. Miele received the designation of "CITE" (Certified Incentive Travel Executive) from The Society of Incentive Travel Executives.Her research paper for certification - "The Greening of Incentive Travel" - explores the incentive and meeting industry's impact on the environment and the growing environmental awareness within the travel industry at large. Recent projects include overseeing The Motivation Show's Green project that includes organizing The Motivation Show's IT&ME* Green exhibition stand, creating green education seminars, and editing the "IT&ME Green Directory." In addition to directing CERC-NY, Helena is founder and principal of Earth Mum, an environmental consultancy to provide green meeting, incentive and convention planning, sell green merchandise and assist travel and tourism companies in becoming more environmentally responsible and to market their green triumphs.

"The impact is phenomenal," adds Miele.Here are some green tips that Miele says convention-goers should consider."It's become so common in our daily lives to see the word green," says Helena Miele, a green consultant and former president of the New York branch of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions, (CERC), a non-profit organization.Miele who has seen the trend towards large scale green events bloom over the last decade believes that this year's pair of conventions will serve as models for the future.