Debbie Garcia, CMP
Founder, CEO
Virsitour
Debbie Garcia, CMP, has worked in many facets of the meetings and events industry but she started her first career as a video editor and audio engineer in New York City working for MTV, Grey Worldwide Advertising and Westwood One Radio Networks. Her career changed in 2007 when she started doing Wedding Planning as a secondary job.
Planning events was very similar to video and audio production and she fell in love with event planning. After a merger, she was released from her position after 12 years and began her journey starting at Dick's Last Resort in downtown Nashville as the first Event Sales Manager. In the following years she was Operations Manager at GAGE, a DMC owned by Grand Avenue Transportation, opened the Bridge Building, Conference Service Manager at Hilton Garden Inn Vanderbilt, Senior Sales Manager at Chef's Market and opened CAMBRiA Downtown Nashville hotel as Catering Sales Manager.
Debbie also worked for two tech start ups, one called Goodybag for an online catering and eva an online platform for booking entertainment designed for event planners. During her time at eva, she also crossed to the planner side as Director or National Accounts for Global Cynergies, a third party planning service winning Newbie of the Year and Rising Star in 2019.
In March of 2020, the pandemic changed everything. Debbie was released from eva, had to move or cancel all the events for Global Cynergies. Out of a need, Debbie started virsitour in April 2020 to be an online place for meeting and event planners to visit virtually, an online platform connecting planners to destinations and also virtual services to plan in-person, hybrid and virtual events. The platform changes the way we source by planners seeing the properties first and then sending vetted RFP's to destinations.
Debbie was awarded Smart Women in Meetings Innovators of the year and Smart Meetings Event Professional of the year as well as MPI Tennessee Presidents Award and a Woman to Watch on Courtney Stanley’s list in 2022. She also won the first Founder’s Live Competition in Nashville and a two time semi-finalist for Codelaunch. She resides in Donelson with her husband and two children, Max (10) and Maisie (5).