To the casual observers who engage Glenn Morel in conversation at Landini’s, his favorite hangout, Glenn appears to be a successful professional on the way to accomplishing great feats. Only in his early forties he already has a successful career as the Senior Manager for Production at Global Business Travel Association, which promotes itself as the world’s premier business travel and meetings organization, with over 5,000 members and headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.  And he can regale an audience with interesting stories about working with former presidents, George Bush and Bill Clinton, well known celebrities such as Bono, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Bob Newhart, Jay Leno, and sports personalities, Muhammad Ali and Charles Barkley.  So I was surprised that as he explained his job as a video producer to me, the first photo he showed me was of his son and the second was the braised short ribs he had cooked the night before. I was expecting photos of Clinton, Ali, Penn, etc.

 

 

Glenn’s path to senior management in the association business and exciting travel around the world has had a circuitous route.   By-passing a college education, he obtained a real estate license in Florida at the age of eighteen, but had been bitten by the acting bug and so moved to New York where he worked as a model and actor and even was the stand-in for Gregory Harrison.  To financially support himself while waiting for his big break he worked as a bartender.  However, it didn’t take him long to realize that on a movie or television set the only people receiving regular paychecks were the crew members.    He began to learn the technical requirements for cameras, lighting, set production and graphics in order to make his transition to behind the camera.

 

His next stop was Washington, DC where there were several production studios and hundreds of associations all promoting themselves and their messages with videos and conventions.  Fortunately, he lived with a friend and supplemented his income by working as a bartender at the former Virginia Beverage Company on King Street, until landing a position with a production company as a producer.  About three years ago, he joined the staff of Global Business Travel Association and finally, Glenn had the American dream; prestigious job, famous travel destinations, working with glamorous personalities, and a wife and son living in the Northern Virginia suburbs. 

 

 

Traveling over 220 days a year enabled Glenn to be successful in his job, but in his words, “traveling is not good for married life”.  After divorcing, he found himself and his dog living in the suburbs not knowing any of his neighbors.  Many men would have filled this void by just working longer and harder, but Glenn sought solace in his Christian upbringing and was inspired by reading  “The Hole in Our Gospel,” by Richard Stearns, CEO of World Vision.  And since then has become an active member of the Fairfax Community Church and chairman of Young Life Capernaum in Northern Virginia.

 

 

 

Currently, Glenn is successfully meshing his demanding job of association production with his new commitment to serving his community both locally and globally.  For the 2011 annual convention of Global Business Travel Association, Glenn convinced the convention planners to invite Sean Penn as the keynote speaker, not because of his celebrity status but for his commitment to rehabilitating the people of Haiti from the 2010 earthquake.  Glenn traveled to Haiti to visit the camp established by Penn’s organization, J/P Haitian Relief Organization, to learn firsthand about the progress made.  He learned that in the past year homes have been built for about 25,000 of the 50,000 original inhabitants and the organization is dedicated to finding homes and work for the remaining people.  While in Haiti, Glenn also visited an orphanage in Mirabella that he will revisit in February, 2012 to film a video to promote awareness about the work accomplished there and the need for additional funding and support.

 

What Glenn likes most about his life now is spending time with his son, cooking, working with great teams of people with his job, keeping up with his over five hundred friends on Facebook and meeting his Old Town friends at Landini’s, his version of “Cheers”.

 

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