AUSTRALIA - The international meetings and exhibition industry is mourning the loss of Gabrielle Stephens, who passed away peacefully on 4 December after a “long illness” in Melbourne.
The 48-year-old was the event and tradeshow manager at Exhibitions and Trade Fairs and worked on the Australian Business Events Expo, an industry tradeshow for buyers and sellers of meetings, conferences, exhibitions and corporate incentive programmes.
For many, Stephens was best known for her work on Reed Exhibitions’ Asia-Pacific meetings and incentives tradeshow, AIME, while at the Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau as event manager. She also worked at experiential marketing agency, George P Johnson, and Tradevent Registrations.
During her career, Stephens was awarded the MEA national award for Event of the Year for AIME 1998 and the EEAA national award for Best Tradeshow under 10,000sqm for ABEE 2009.
An online legacy forum has been set up for people wanting to pay tribute.
One tribute published in national newspaper, The Herald Sun, said: “Gabrielle was a valuable, long term employee of Diversified Exhibitions Australia (formerly Australian Exhibition Services) running the PC Shows for approximately 10 years. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Stephens family at this difficult time. - All the Staff at Diversified”.
