Chuck Ghoorah has always been a believer in the power of connection. It’s fitting, then, that for more than two decades, he’s helped build one of the world’s largest platforms dedicated to exactly that. As Co-Founder and President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Cvent, Ghoorah has been instrumental in growing the company from a two-person startup to a global force with more than 4,800 employees, 21,000 customers, and a mission to “bring people together, power the human connection, and transform the meetings and events industry through innovative technology.”
“We started out as a single-point solution for online event registration,” Ghoorah said in a 2020 interview. “Then, we realized event organizers needed onsite support, venue sourcing options, pre- and post-event marketing capabilities, a mobile event app and the list goes on.” That list now includes an entire virtual event platform—launched in the early days of the pandemic—that helped more than 60,000 virtual events run on Cvent’s technology in 2020 alone.
A child of immigrants, Ghoorah credits his family’s history—marked by “a multi-generational struggle that involved indentured servitude and poverty”—for shaping his perspective. That foundation, combined with years spent weathering business highs and lows at Cvent, prepared him for moments like the dot-com crash, near-bankruptcy, and eventually ringing the bell at the company’s IPO in 2013. “Trying times make you realize what’s really important,” he reflected. “And to me, that’s leaning on the people you trust and love most. That’s first and foremost my family, and then my Cvent family.”
Before Cvent, Ghoorah built a different kind of foundation. He worked as a corporate attorney specializing in venture capital and technology transactions at Hale & Dorr (now Wilmer Hale) and served as an associate director at the Advisory Board Company, delivering presentations to senior executives. It’s no surprise, then, that his skills as a speaker are well-known. “He’s a debate stud,” said Brian Ludwig, one of Ghoorah’s longtime colleagues. “I think I’m a better manager and leader because of what I’ve taken from him.”
Cvent returned to the public markets in 2021, only to be acquired by Blackstone for $4.6 billion in 2023. Through it all, the goal has stayed the same. “The future of meetings and events is bright,” Ghoorah said. “The power of events has never been greater.”
