Massachusetts Convention Center Authority appoints Marcel Vernon as executive director

The board of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority on Monday selected a local chief financial officer, Marcel Vernon Sr., to lead the quasi-public agency, aiming to move past controversies surrounding its diversity practices and a failed deal to acquire land next to its site to be redeveloped. flagship facility in South Boston.

The board last week narrowed the group of finalists for the executive director position to two: Vernon, currently the chief financial officer at Bay Cove Health Services in Boston, and Hootan Kaboli, a senior vice president at Events DC, its counterpart MCCA in Washington. . Ultimately, the vote on Monday was unanimous in favor of Vernon, the local candidate.

Vernon spent the past decade in Massachusetts, where he served as CFO for the state Department of Revenue and the judicial system and then for the University of New Hampshire before joining Bay Cove in mid-2023. Local connections gave Vernon an edge. “The uphill hill of getting to know the area, the ins and outs of the state, is the only negative against (Kaboli),” said board member Cindy Brown, CEO of Boston Duck Tours. “Marcel checks the box in that regard.”

Vernon’s supporters on the board also pointed to his work in the hospitality sector as a casino industry executive in the early 2000s, and they generally viewed him as a more experienced executive, with a broader range of experiences and financial acumen.

MCCA board member Sheena Collier, who led the executive search committee and worked with headhunting firm Koya Partners to vet candidates, cited Vernon’s “overall leadership qualities that he would bring that would really move the MCCA forward by, frankly, building the confidence to the people who work here.”

Collier was referring to the clouds hanging over the MCCA when the previous executive director, David Gibbons, who was appointed during the administration of Governor Charlie Baker, abruptly left almost a year ago. Governor Maura Healey had already wiped out a majority of the board members earlier this year and replaced them with her own members. Gibbons, a veteran hotel executive, left amid two controversies in his final year: concerns over the way he handled the tender to redevelop more than six acres in the shadow of the MCCA’s flagship Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, as well as an external audit by law firm Prince Lobel Tye that found the MCCA deficient in its diversity practices for hiring, promotions and supplier contracts.

After Gibbons left, former board chair Gloria Larson, the former president of Bentley University, returned to serve as interim executive director while the board conducted its search; Larson served as chairman of the board from 1999 to 2010, a period that included the construction of the BCEC and its opening in 2004.

As interim executive director, Larson earned an annualized compensation package of nearly $300,000, including a potential bonus, similar to Gibbons. On Monday, the board voted to enter into compensation negotiations with Vernon.

In addition to the flagship convention center in Southie, the MCCA also operates the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay, the MassMutual Center in Springfield and the parking garage beneath the Boston Common. Vernon would oversee a staff of more than 400 people and a budget of nearly $100 million. He currently manages a budget roughly twice the size of Bay Cove’s CFO.

During board interviews on Monday, both Vernon and Kaboli were asked about their views on the future of the MCCA. Vernon said he would engage private sector leaders to find ways to get more hotels built in Boston, and he would try to generate additional revenue by coming up with new uses for the BCEC at times when it would otherwise be idle.

Vernon talked about how he attended business school at Syracuse University with the goal of completing an MBA and then finding a job as a CEO. He said it didn’t go the way he expected.

But thanks to the board’s vote on Monday, he finally got the CEO job he dreamed of as an ambitious, young business student. “At 24, I thought I was going to be a CEO,” says Vernon. “Here I am at the age of 54.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.