RainFocus Honors Event Innovators at Annual Innovation Awards Ceremony During INSIGHT 2026

Clients and partners were celebrated for their forward-thinking and excellence in their use of the RainFocus platform

LEHI, Utah, Jan. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — RainFocus, provider of the next-generation event marketing platform, today announced the winners of the annual Innovation Awards. Award recipients were recognized on the first day of RainFocus INSIGHT, the company’s flagship event hosted in Salt Lake City. INSIGHT brings together events, marketing, and technology professionals to discover valuable trends, data, and solutions that enhance event impact and provides an opportunity to build meaningful relationships with peers and thought leaders.

The prestigious Innovation Awards recognize industry leaders and their achievements in driving impactful results for their customers. To be considered an award winner, nominees must have a solid understanding of attendees to create better experiences; innovate and have a forward-thinking use of the RainFocus platform; make good use of data and insights to understand, pivot, and improve events; merge offline and online efforts to grow the company and events; or demonstrate efficiency improvements such as saving time or resources.

“This year’s Innovation Award winners represent some of the most forward-thinking brands and marketing teams,” said JR Sherman, CEO of RainFocus. “We have the honor of partnering with clients that deeply understand the value and impact events have within orchestrated and seamless customer journeys. We’re proud to work with these companies and we’re excited to see how they continue to lead, leveraging RainFocus to transform their event marketing programs and connect authentically with their customers.”

The 2026 Innovation Award winners are:

• Most Innovative Attendee Experience: 
  • The Pokémon Company International
  • ATWM and GitHub
• Most Innovative Use of Content Management: SHRM
• Most Innovative Use of Exhibitor and Partner Activation: Ellucian
• Most Innovative Use of On-Site Technology: Broadcom
• Best Citywide Conference – Multiple Venues: NVIDIA
• Best Event Program for Scale: 
  • Trimble
  • Databricks
  • Red Hat
• Best Roadshow Series:
  • Red Hat
  • Microsoft
• Best User Conference: Esri
• Best Meetings Program: Salesforce
• Best Ancillary Event: AnitaB.org
• Unified Events and Marketing Team of the Year: Workday
• AI Innovator of the Year: Salesforce
• Sales Accelerator of the Year:
  • Informatica
  • SAP^®
• Agency Partner of the Year: Opus Agency

Several 2026 Innovation Award winners shared their thoughts:

• Adrienne Grec, Founder & Managing Partner, ATWM: “Working with GitHub on Universe 2025 was an incredible experience. From building out their speaker portal and complex workflows, to creating an acceptance process that truly delighted speakers, the collaboration showcased innovation and attention to detail at every step. Together, we brought their brand vision to life through advanced branding and elevated the entire event experience. We’re proud to have partnered with GitHub to make this vision a reality and can’t wait to keep building amazing things together.”
• Michele Cole, Director of Global Event & Experience Marketing, Esri: “We are proud to be recognized by RainFocus as the Best User Conference Innovation Award winner, honoring our strategic, end-to-end use of the RainFocus platform to manage Esri’s annual User Conference in San Diego. By streamlining registration, content, and on-site operations through a single integrated solution, we improved operational efficiency, increased data visibility, and delivered a more seamless, attendee-first conference experience.”
• Tracy Wells, Events Digital Experience Director, Global Events, Microsoft: “We are honored to be recognized with a 2026 Innovation Award for the Microsoft AI Tour.  RainFocus was highly collaborative, helping us meet bold and complex event requirements to achieve impactful outcomes. We realized significant improvements in attendees’ and marketers’ journeys and pushed the boundaries of our event technology experience at Microsoft.”
• Mindy Matullo, Director of Global Marketing Events, Trimble, and Nicky Zaayman, Director of Customer and Partner Marketing, Trimble: “Trimble is building a global framework that turns event experience, design and scalability into a year-round delivery of measurable business outcomes. This award highlights our impactful collaboration with RainFocus, which empowers us to scale our vision and deploy technology that moves at the speed of our customers.”
• Brooke Hall, EVP, Event Technology & Registration, The Opus Agency: “The Opus Agency team is deeply honored to be recognized as RainFocus’ Agency Partner of the Year. Through collaboration on numerous projects, we have built a strong foundation of mutual trust and respect between our teams. We’re grateful for this seamless collaboration and the innovative solutions it enables us to produce for our clients. The RainFocus tool’s extensive capabilities give our team of self-proclaimed event tech nerds everything they need to support even the most complex of events. We look forward to continuing this great partnership.”
• Katie Armstrong, Marketing Operations Manager, Ellucian: “We are incredibly proud to see Ellucian recognized with the 2026 Innovation Award from RainFocus. This recognition is a powerful reflection of the dedication, creativity, and countless hours our team has invested in thoughtfully integrating our sponsors and partners into Ellucian Live, our annual flagship conference for higher education technology leaders. RainFocus’ close collaboration and partnership continue to play a key role in the event’s ongoing success.”
• Brenda Darden Wilkerson, President and CEO, AnitaB.org: “RainFocus recognized that this collaboration reached far beyond our organization or any single event. At its core, it is about empowering the communities whose voices are too often overlooked or unrecognized by systems and ensuring they had access to an inclusive, modern digital experience that truly reflected their needs.”
• Chris Brown, Director, Global Esports and Events, The Pokémon Company International: “The Pokémon Company International is delighted to be recognized as a winner of the 2026 Most Innovative Attendee Experience award by our partners at RainFocus. It is a testament to all of the hard work of our teams and partners from around the world, and of course the enthusiasm of our fans, whose passion for Pokémon brings these events to life.”
• Jamie Bosley, VP of Event Experience, SHRM: “We are honored to receive the 2026 RainFocus Innovation Award. It reflects our commitment to improving the event experience. Utilizing a centralized ‘Human + AI’ hybrid scoring model within the RainFocus platform enhanced our ability to select and highlight sessions, resulting in events that are even more engaging and relevant for our community.”
• Melissa McConnell, Sr. Director, Marketing Technology, Red Hat: “We are honored that RainFocus recognized Red Hat in its 2026 Innovation Awards for both Best Event Program for Scale and Best Roadshow Series! RainFocus is core to our event technology strategy and creating premier experiences for our customers. Our marketing technology team is pushing the boundaries of event tech innovation with RainFocus’ native integrations and Adobe partnership, maximizing event data to drive personalized journeys across all channels. We look forward to continuing our partnership and success with RainFocus.”
• Keegan Hooks, VP of Global Events at Informatica: “We’re honored to be recognized by RainFocus for driving innovation through their platform in ways that truly accelerate business impact. Our team, led by Natalia Vasquez and Summar Baldridge, partnered closely with RainFocus to push the boundaries of what’s possible—integrating real-time data and performance insights into a next-generation model for sales and event engagement. What we’ve built together represents the future of event-led growth, and we’re proud that the intellectual foundation and innovation originated with our team at Informatica.”
• Beau Beckner, Head of Corporate Event Technology & Production, Databricks: “Databricks is thrilled to be recognized for our innovative build, execution, and delivery of the Data + AI World Tour once again. With rapidly growing events of scale, we must be collaborative with our RainFocus team to find ways to scale through automation, replicability, and creative solutions. In the last year, we’ve been able to reduce each city’s build and deploy times by 75% so that our regional partners can take their events to market more quickly for our customers, while also ensuring data is easily moved to our systems. We thank the RainFocus team and our agency partners for their support and recognition in helping us make an impact for our business and customers.”
• Julia Cornish, Senior Director, Strategic Events – Event Operations & Digital Experiences, Salesforce: “We’re honored to be recognized by RainFocus as a 2026 Innovation Awards winner for both Best Meetings Program and AI Innovator of the Year. This recognition reflects the strength of our partnership with RainFocus. Over the past year, our teams have scaled a global meetings program and advanced AI-driven experiences across the attendee journey, delivering greater consistency, efficiency, and impact for both attendees and the business.”

RainFocus also introduced RainFocus Nexus, a framework that supports a series of specialized AI agents to act as teammates to event marketers, planners, and sales reps.

To learn more about the RainFocus Innovation Awards and submit a nomination for 2027, visit rainfocus.com/insight/innovation-awards.

About RainFocus
RainFocus is the next-generation event marketing platform built to capture and analyze unprecedented amounts of first-party data for exceptional events and optimized engagement throughout the customer journey. RainFocus powers flawless experiences with secure, scalable solutions to support the entire event lifecycle. The platform integrates with sales and marketing technologies, simplifying event registration, content management, and exhibitor activation across in-person, virtual, and hybrid experiences, all from a single dashboard. Leveraging real-time data, RainFocus provides actionable insights to drive personalization, accelerate qualification and lead conversion, and close deals. For more information, visit www.rainfocus.com.

Additional Resources

• Join the conversation with RainFocus on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
• Visit RainFocus.com to learn more about our event marketing and management platform. If you’re ready to get started, request a demo.
• Discover RainFocus On Demand, the go-to learning destination for event industry leaders to discover the latest trends, thought leadership, and best practices, delivered on demand – any time, anywhere. Learn more.
• Are you interested in joining the RainFocus Partner Program? Apply today.
• Grow your career and help reshape the events industry at RainFocus. Apply here.

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