TYLER DEBELLA

Baltimore Convention Center

Tyler DeBella serves as director of operations at the Baltimore Convention Center, where she treats the city itself as part of what every event delivers. Folding the region’s art, food and cultural character into the programs she runs, she pushes back on assumptions visitors arrive with and builds real ties between them and the city.

Her signature professional moment came in 2017, when Successful Meetings magazine named her Convention Services Manager of the Year. The honor followed her work guiding a major client’s Baltimore program through the instability that accompanied the Freddie Gray uprisings. Leadership and clients placed greater confidence in her afterward, which widened her reach past the boundaries of her job description.

Driving change, in her view, starts with naming an objective plainly and then telling people what it will take to get there. Uncomfortable questions are her starting point, and she presses against accepted practice so that unfamiliar viewpoints get a hearing. She has deliberately chosen roles in fields that have long shortchanged women, moving from an industry segment staffed largely by women into logistics and operations, where men dominate and less than 15% of her colleagues are women.

In her community, she does not chase titles, though people reliably turn to her when something has to get done. They expect candor from her, and they expect her to act honorably.

She completed a bachelor’s degree in business administration at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University’s Pamplin College of Business in 2009.