Joyce Landry is CEO of Landry & Kling Inc. She and her business partner, Josephine (Jo) Kling, formed the company in 1982 as the first to specialize in corporate events at sea.

Joyce began her career in the cruise industry at the age of 23 when she implemented the first air/sea department for Holland America Line. Prior to launching Landry & Kling, she also served as regional sales director of Delta Queen Steamboat Company.

Landry & Kling pioneered the use of cruise ships as floating hotels, and Joyce has been at the forefront of many projects involving dockside charters including the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Super Bowl 2005 in Jacksonville Florida, the 2007 Cricket World Cup in the West Indies, and most recently the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

Over the years, Joyce has shared her passion for cruise ship events as an industry speaker for organizations such as the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners Association (FICP), Meeting Professionals International (MPI) and the Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE). She has served on several cruise line advisory boards, and was instrumental in persuading cruise line executives to incorporate meeting facilities into new ship designs.

Joyce has been nominated for several prestigious awards from organizations like the Athena Foundation, which recognizes women for their professional excellence and community service. She was named to the Women’s Hall of Fame by the City of Miami, as well as one of the Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry by Meeting News magazine. Joyce is a founding board member of the Deborah Natansohn Foundation which awards scholarships to women in need, to advance their journalism and tourism careers.

CLIA (Cruise Line International Association) honored both Joyce and Jo when they were inducted into the CLIA 2009 Hall of Fame. The honor recognizes their accomplishments and innovations, including advancing cruise ships as viable meeting venues since 1982.

Joyce is an avid adventure traveler, and has visited six out of seven continents for business and pleasure. She enjoys photography, hiking, and competitive sports. After learning how to row in 2006, she won her first gold medal two years later in the women’s master’s 1,000 meter race at the Miami International Regatta. Joyce has trekked solo in the Himalayas and recently, she and her husband Gene were married on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

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In 1982, entrepreneurs Josephine Kling and Joyce Landry founded Landry & Kling Inc., a new breed of travel company, and the first to specialize exclusively in cruise sales. The company provided the first distribution channel between cruise lines and corporate America by selling and operating incentive cruises and meetings at sea for Fortune 1000 companies such as GE, Radio Shack, AFLAC, Motorola, Miller Brewing, EDS, and others who use incentive travel to motivate peak performance.

Kling and Landry started their venture in New York City, with Kling responsible for marketing/media relations, finance, retail sales and administration. In 1988 the business relocated to Miami, Cruise Capital of the World. From a $26,000 start-up, annual sales grew rapidly by focusing on full-ship charters for corporate groups cruising in worldwide destinations,

As a pioneer of corporate cruises, Kling became a virtual industry spokesman, developing a reputation with journalists as a reliable source for consumer and trade publications, speaking to MPI, SITE, Seatrade and other industry groups, serving on cruise line advisory boards, writing a regular column for “Incentive” magazine, and appearing as a cruise expert (twice on NBC’s Today Show). Landry & Kling Inc. is now one of the most highly visible and widely imitated companies in the incentive cruise industry.

In 1998 the company was sought after and purchased by a public company, Travel Services International, the first specialized distributor of leisure travel to be traded on Wall Street. And in May, 2005 the partners completed the buy-back of Landry & Kling Inc. with plans for growth well underway.

Kling started her cruise career as marketing & sales coordinator for Royal Viking Line in San Francisco. Later, moving to New York City, she worked as an advertising account manager for Scali McCabe Sloves; then joined Holland America Line as director of program planning & passenger research, where she developed the business plans of 5 vessels in worldwide destinations, and started a long friendship with Joyce Landry.

She serves on the advisory board for The Commonwealth Institute of South Florida, a non-profit organization founded to help women entrepreneurs build successful businesses. She’s also a family partner for Habitat for Humanity and helped launch their first Women’s Build in Vero Beach, FL. In 2004 Kling was a delegate to the Riga Women Business Leaders Summit in Riga, Latvia, a business development initiative in the Baltic sponsored by the US State Department. Kling Also serves on the board of directors of a steel fabricating business in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Cyndi Murphy, Vice President Corporate Planning, began working for Landry & Kling in 1989 shortly after the company moved to its Florida location. As a member of the L&K team since the start of its sole focus on corporate and incentive business, Cyndi has had a hand in a number of company “firsts” and has been instrumental in establishing company procedures and in developing and streamlining the company’s program operations, finance, contracts, HR and IT departments.

Cyndi plays an important role in the company’s strategic planning and management, revenue analysis and forecasting, contractual negotiations and corporate policy and process development.

Over the past 20 years, she has negotiated cruise program contracts with over 20 different cruise lines for a wide variety of clients; from Fortune 500 companies to themed groups to governmental and city-sponsored host committees – including five full-ship charters in 2005 for Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, a 30-day full-ship charter for the 2007 Cricket World Cup games in the Caribbean, two full-ship charters for both the 2009 Fifth Summit of the Americas and the 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Trinidad. She also created the accommodations pricing models and managed the financial aspects for these global events.

Her extensive experience in spearheading contractual negotiations within the cruise industry (particularly for full-ship charters), has made her among the most knowledgeable with cruise program contracts.

Within her continually growing role at Landry & Kling, she has also gained significant experience in managing and overseeing the program operations, customer service and financial aspects for cruise programs and continues to make a significant contribution in developing procedures and policies for the company.

Cyndi has traveled extensively to a variety of international destinations – both by land and sea – including Turkey, Greece, Russia, Scandinavia, the Northern Mediterranean, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Australia and throughout the Caribbean. Cruising with her husband aboard a 60-passenger catamaran, along with their first scuba diving experience, through the Great Barrier Reef and their more recent spa getaway trip to Iceland are among her most memorable trips.

Besides cruising and traveling, Cyndi enjoys spending quality time with her family and being actively involved in community service. She helped establish and run a non-profit organization that raised funds to hire classroom assistants for her kids’ elementary school; served as a Cub Scout den leader for 3 years; served as the Volunteer Coordinator for the Dalai Lama’s 14th visit to South Florida in September 2004 for a 3 day series of public and private talks promoting World Peace and Buddhist teachings; and for the past 4 years she’s served as a Committee Member and Treasurer for her son’s Boy Scout troop.

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Brad has been a leader in business-to-business technology marketing for over 23 years, and since 1995 has been a leader in web marketing and technology.

His technology career has encompassed numerous firsts with respect to Internet technologies including serving as VP of AppsOnline.com with Interliant, Inc. (NASDAQ-INIT) where he conceived and ran the world’s first small business application service provider(ASP). While with Equitrac, Inc.(NASDAQ-ETRC), his team developed the world’s first tabbed web browser.

Brad cut his teeth in marketing, sales, and public speaking by selling human beings early in his career… as a political campaign manager. He credits those experiences with giving him the courage to try anything, along with the skills to survive startups and the dotcom bust.

He lives in Miami, FL with his wife Karin, their 2 young children (Amanda and Zachary), and their 3 dogs (Betsy, Dilbert, and Barkley).

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In 1990, (the “pre-email” era), after spending most of the 80′s working at Rogal Associates (incentive travel trailblazers), Karyn bid goodbye to cold Boston winters and embarked on a new adventure to sunny South Florida.  Her first position upon arriving in Miami was as Director of Sales for Landry & Kling, where she remained until 1995. Realizing how much she was missing involved in the cruise industry and excited about being part of introducing the first online platform for cruise event sourcing, she happily rejoined the company in 2008 as part of the executive team to launch Seasite.com.

Karyn’s role as vice president of business development at Landry & Kling and Seasite.com touches many areas. One focus is on building and maintaining relationships with cruise line partners and other participating suppliers. An additional key role is introducing the idea of cruise sourcing via Seasite.com to meeting professionals and group cruise buyers plus helping to inspire meeting and incentive travel buyers of all types to consider a cruise or to at least include a cruise option when they are also considering land based venues.

Prior to returning to the Landry & Kling/Seasite family, as Vice President, National Accounts, Karyn was part of the team that launched Starcite.com, a one of the first online site selection companies in the US. During her time at Starcite, she was also managing her own marketing and production company, CenterPeace, Inc., which produced the nationally recognized Wise Women Weekend.

From 1995-1998, Karyn was the regional director of sales at McGettigan Partners (now a division of Maritz Travel). But her passion for cruising and her love of the incentive travel industry began in the early 80’s at Rogal Associates, incentive travel pioneers and one of the first companies to ever charter a cruise ship for a corporate sales meeting back in the late 1950s.

Karyn has served on meeting planner advisory boards for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism and Meet Aruba, the executive board of the South Florida Chapter of Meeting Planners International and as Education co-chair of the SFMPI South East Educational Conferences (MPI SEC) in 2004 and 2008. She is also an active member of SITE Global and the Direct Selling Association. Presently she is serving her second term as the Vice President of Communications for the South Florida Chapter of MPI.

You can find Karyn at industry conferences and trade shows, chatting about the amazing rewards of orchestrating an event at sea and inspiring planners to imagine the possibilities of a cruise program. Watch for her at an event location near you very soon – and be sure to stop by and say hello!

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Ramon Santos, Vice President, Global Events, has been a member of the Landry & Kling team since 1991. During his tenure with the company, Ramon worked as a Senior Program Manager in the Operations Department before moving to Sales as a Sr. Account Executive. Later he was promoted to Director of Sales & Business Development, and most recently held the position of Vice President Business Development.

In his new role as VP Global Events, Ramon is responsible for developing the dockside charters or “floating hotels” concept which L&K pioneered in 1987 when it chartered two cruise ships for a city-wide corporate convention in Boston. Most recently, Ramon played a crucial role in negotiating four ship charters to be used as hotels for the government of Trinidad & Tobago – two ships chartered for the Fifth Summit of the Americas in April 2009 and two more ships for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 2009. Both events were held in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Previously, he spent five years with Norwegian Cruise Lines handling reservations, group sales and coordinating incentives.

Ramon says he has enjoyed the move from “cruise line to corporate” because now, not only can he work directly with clients, but also see their ideas turn into a successful finished program.

Ramon played an important role in orchestrating a Spanish language trade show at sea. The mini-trade show was staged for a major financial institution who wanted to educate their Caribbean and Latin American bankers on new products and services.

During his years at Landry & Kling Ramon has become an expert in exotic cruise destinations, handling many programs and full charters in Alaska & the Greek islands. Ramon says one of the highlights of his career was the logistical coordination of an outdoor concert in the magnificent ruins of Ephesus, Turkey.

When Ramon is not working, he enjoys spending time outdoors or on the beach.

Born in Puerto Rico, Ramon was raised in the Dominican Republic and currently lives in Miami.

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When it comes to orchestrating events at sea, Jeanna Steele, Vice President of Operations, is a seasoned pro. Prior to joining Landry & Kling full time, she helped plan and operate 20 programs on cruise ships, including 14 full-ship charters.

Jeanna is no stranger to Landry & Kling, either – in fact, she’s been a valued member of the L&K family for years! The relationship began during her years as a meeting planner at Colonial Supplemental Insurance, when Jeanna and the Landry & Kling team joined forces to plan and operate two cruise programs together.

Jeanna’s professional career began when she joined Colonial Supplemental Insurance as a junior meeting planner. Within six months, she had taken over the planning of board, management, and training meetings; and within a year was a senior member of the meetings department. After four years as a planner with Colonial Supplemental Insurance, Jeanna left the private sector and put her expertise to work as Events Manager for the national non-profit organization, Southern Institute on Children & Families.

Jeanna continued to hone her meeting planning skills, and after several years, she was primed for a career change. In 2005, she and her business partner founded their own events management company, Steele Thomas, LLC, where she handled logistics for both cruise and land-based events. One of Jeanna’s first calls was to Landry & Kling, and the company was thrilled to welcome her back to support their operations team.

Landry & Kling first brought Jeanna onboard as a Trip Director for the 2005 Jacksonville Super Bowl dockside ship charters. She also helped operate the Cricket World Cup charter (30 days on a ship in the Caribbean). Ultimately, Jeanna joined the L&K operations team on more than a dozen corporate cruise events and ship charters, but she is most proud of her role during the 2009 Summit of the Americas and Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings. As operations team leader for these two prestigious global events, Jeanna oversaw three dockside ship charters.

In her current position as Vice President of Operations, Jeanna now oversees all aspects of Landry & Kling cruise program operations by providing leadership to the operations staff, while managing client and supplier relationships.

When she is not on the road or sailing on a cruise program, Jeanna resides in Columbia, South Carolina.

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