PIETER SWART, CMP, CMM

Business Events Strategist

Pieter is the Founder & Managing Director of Conference Consultancy South Africa (PTY) Ltd (ConfSA) since 1998. He has 31 years of experience in meeting management.


He was in the first group of South Africans to obtain the designation of Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) from the Event Industry Council (USA) in 2006 and in 2010 became the first and only person in Africa to obtain the Meeting Professionals International (MPI) Certification in Meeting Management (CMM).


Pieter was awarded the prestigious Global Meeting Executive of the Year in 2015 by the Professional Convention Management Association, a global body for Business Event Strategists at an award ceremony in Frankfurt, Germany.


ConfSA was awarded Best Conference & Events Organiser by peers from The Southern African Association for the Conference Industry (SAACI) in 2016, an award for which the company has been nominated also in 2015 & 2014.


Pieter directed the planning and management of more than 150 conferences ranging up to 9,000 participants and has been involved in more than 400 events as strategic advisor, consultant or project manager. The largest conference was attended by more than 25,000 people and the largest event by more than 110,000 people.


Pieter has worked on conference project assignments in 18 international destinations. He is project lead on a number of successful high profile international bids which, among others, includes the World Summit on Sustainable Development, The World Petroleum Congress and The World Social Sciences Congress. He frequently consults to local and international clients on strategic business event assignments and protocol matters. As former Assistant Director and Head of the United Nations & Commonwealth Unit in the South African National Health Department, he planned and managed the first multilateral Government hosted conference since South Africa’s return to the international community in 1994.


Pieter is the author and lead on several event management competence development programs facilitated through the Event Architecture™ Series, such as the Event Architecture™ Premier Workshop on Strategic Event Management Principles & Techniques and also the Event Architecture™ International Master Classes, presented by recognized global thought leaders on specific event management domains.


Pieter is a member of the Tourism Program Advisory Committee of Department of Tourism at the University of South Africa and at the Tshwane University of Technology. He is a Member of the Professional Convention Management Association Global Advisory Committee, The Southern African Association for the Conference Industry and the Tshwane Tourism Association. He has a passion for classic cars and historic airplanes and is a patron of the Harvard Aero Club of South Africa, stationed at the oldest operational Airforce Base in the World, Swartkop AFB, in Pretoria. Pieter is married to Maryna and together they raised their daughter whom just started her career in Landscape Architecture after graduating from the University of Pretoria.