The Millennium Alliance

If your idea of a great job includes loud sales pods, laughter, C-suite connections, and a built-in winter break, you’ll want to hear this one.

The Millennium Alliance designs intimate, five-star events where buyers and sellers actually sit down together behind closed doors. Jena chats with VP of HR, Victoria Albuquerque, about the company’s 12-year journey from three events to dozens each year, the “team sport” mindset that drives performance, and why they’re gearing up to double in size.

What you’ll learn:

• What The Millennium Alliance actually does for buyers and sellers at their events
• How the company grew from three events to 40–50 in the US and 10–12 in Europe
• What it’s like to work on a loud, open sales floor with leaders “in the trenches”
• How early-career salespeople build real relationships with Fortune 500 executives
• Why internal mobility, hands-on coaching, and recognition are core to the culture
• How the team is preparing to double headcount in the next 12–18 months

The Millennium Alliance highlights:

Founded: 2014 
Team Size: <200 employees globally
HQ: New York City
Work Model: Primarily in-office with employees across the US and Europe
Culture: Supportive, fun, high-performing, “team sport environment,” ambitious and human

Unique Perks & programs:

• Heavy focus on sales and leadership training and development
• Real internal mobility: entry-level sales to running departments over time
• Daily access to senior executives and decision makers as core to the role
• Co-founders on the sales floor and leaders “in the work” with real-time coaching
• Weekly shoutouts, employee-of-the-month and year-end awards
• Team events, offsites, company outings, volunteer days
• Dedicated employee for culture and engagement
• Wellness initiative: extra 20 minutes at lunch for the gym or personal time
• Company-wide shutdown over end-of-year holidays without using PTO

To learn more about The Millennium Alliance:

• Careers Page (They're hiring!)
• Linkedin Page
• Victoria's Profile

Transcript

Jena Dunay: Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of Culture Uncovered where we go behind the scenes of the coolest companies to work for all around the country, all around the world, of different sizes, stages, ages. And we are so excited today to welcome the VP of HR of The Millennium Alliance, Victoria Albuquerque. So thank you so much for joining, Victoria.

Victoria Albuquerque: Hi Jena, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Jena Dunay: It's so exciting to have you. I am super fascinated by what your organization does, and so I think that's a great way for us to kick off. Why don't you tell us what The Millennium Alliance does, what it is?

Victoria Albuquerque: Great. We are an international multimedia company that has created a platform, via our numerous digital properties and live in-person events, for the C-suite technology enterprise community and businesses of all sizes who are looking to get access to them. So we bring them together for networking, executive education, and peer-to-peer engagement.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. So can you give us an example of an event that you would put on? I think this is super interesting in the world of sales right now, especially in enterprise level. It's really hard to break into. It's really hard to get your, if you're a newer company that maybe isn't as popular, to get your face in front of maybe the potential buyers that you want to be in front of. So it sounds like what you do is you help organizations get in front of the buyers that they need to in ways that are much more natural and not so cold-emailly.

Victoria Albuquerque: Exactly. We run these events in all different sectors and different industries, whether it's digital marketing or supply chain or financial services. We'll bring together buyers and sellers over a two-day period at a five-star hotel. We'll have executive education sessions, workshops, panel discussions, roundtable sessions, bring in a big keynote speaker, lots of networking opportunities.

We also arrange private business meetings for these folks on site. They get to sit down and engage one-on-one. They’re not just getting access to the decision makers, but they're able to really sit down and engage with them in a closed-door private place. It’s very different to a typical trade show or exhibition-style conference where you're just kind of walking around and hoping you come across someone that's relevant. This takes a lot of that legwork out of it.

Jena Dunay: I think it's a genius idea, and I really do think that it's going to blow up. In the age of AI, people are getting more and more craving the human interaction. Honestly, when I saw what you guys did, I was like, “I need to interview her because I need to know what they do.” And I think this is a great place for someone to work because I know you guys are growing also, which is a great company to want to be in in 2025 into 2026. Am I right? I am right. So why don't you tell us, how old is your company to begin with?

Victoria Albuquerque: So we're almost 12 years old, which I can't believe. We were founded in 2014. We're going to be 12 in March.

Jena Dunay: Okay, you're like in your pre-teen time. And how big is your company right now, employee-wise?

Victoria Albuquerque: Just shy of 200 employees globally.

Jena Dunay: Okay, nice. So globally. Tell us a little bit about that. Where are you located? Where is your team mostly located? You mentioned globally. Walk us through where people are in the world.

Victoria Albuquerque: We're headquartered in New York City. That's where I'm based. We do have employees sprinkled throughout the US, but we also have an office in London that oversees our European operations. We have big plans to continue to grow globally and enter into new markets. That's a big plan of ours now.

Jena Dunay: So fun. If you were to think about your organization, talk to me about different departments. I always think that's helpful for people just to understand what makes up your organization, because every organization is a little bit different.

Victoria Albuquerque: A big part of our workforce is sales. I'd say the majority of our employees are in some type of sales capacity, whether that's working in the sponsorship sales division or working on the delegate acquisition on the attendee side for our events.

But of course, we have all the support departments, whether that's marketing, client services. We have a customer success department that's totally dedicated to working on the post-event side of things and ensuring that our clients are seeing an ROI from attending our events or community dinners or working with us on the digital side of things.

We have a digital team, of course, the podcast that we run, an IT department, finance team, HR team, the people team. We're continuing to grow. And the cool thing about Millennium, because we've up until now grown organically from three people in 2014 to now 200, we have been able to allow people to grow into different roles and different departments. Someone may come in in an entry-level sales role and, 10 years later, they're running the ROI department, the customer success team, the client services team. Those are real opportunities for people at Millennium.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, internal mobility upwards. Upward mobility.

Victoria Albuquerque: For sure. I love it. Internal hiring is great for everyone, for the company, for employees. Even for myself, I started 20 years ago in a sales role and now I run HR. Nothing wrong with that.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Okay, so let's go to that story then. Tell us a little bit about how you came across this organization in the beginning.

Victoria Albuquerque: The two co-founders, Alex and Rob, I actually knew them personally and professionally. I worked with them at a different events company years ago. So when they started Millennium, I had the opportunity to join them. For me, it was a no-brainer because I knew them personally and professionally. I knew whatever they were going to do was going to be successful. And at the same time, from a values perspective on the HR side of things, we were totally aligned. In terms of how the culture was going to be and how employees were going to be treated, that was all exactly how I had envisioned I wanted the company to be and where I wanted to work.

So it was all such a great fit from the beginning, and I knew we would grow and I knew it would be something great. I didn't really expect it to grow so quickly and become so big as quickly as it did. So it's all really exciting.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, so what I'm hearing is you just knew these people in the industry, which is great, building those personal connections. I love to hear people's story of how they enter into an organization, because I think it's helpful for listeners to think, who do I potentially have in my network, who should I be building relationships with, because you never know what could happen. And it's not like you put on your career vision board, “I'm going to go here, and then I'm going to join this company with these people that I know are going to build a company one day.” You probably didn't think about it like that. It happened because you built relationships and kept those relationships going. They trusted you. And then you've been with the organization for how long now?

Victoria Albuquerque: Almost 12 years. I started that first year.

Jena Dunay: That is crazy. You started that first year. Okay, so why did they start this company to begin with?

Victoria Albuquerque: To be honest, I know they felt like they could do it better in terms of providing a better service for clients, doing the little things the right way, delivering on the expectations from a client's perspective, but also from a culture perspective. That was really important, just treating employees well. And it's wild because I hear so often in the interview process, in stay interviews and exit interviews, it's doing the simple things, the little things, listening to people, ensuring that they feel heard and valued. It's not that common, and it's not that difficult to provide a space for that. So that was important to them.

And they just felt like they could do that. They didn't have any investors. They didn't take out any loans. They were really successful from a sales perspective and good at what they did, and they kind of broke off and did their own thing. That first year was a gamble, obviously. There were maybe seven or eight of us and we ran three events.

After that first year, we all kind of sat around a table and were like, “Oh my gosh, we did it. We pulled it off.” And then it was like, all right, let's go, let's start hiring some people, let's get a real office and let's just grow. It went from three events to nine events, to 20 events, to 30 events. And now here we are. We have two offices in New York and London, 200 people, and we run 40–50 events a year across the US and 10 or 12 in Europe and a whole suite or portfolio of offerings. This is really just the beginning because we're really scaling now at a pace that we haven't done before.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, that's so awesome. And what a fun journey for you to get to be on from the very beginning, to get to see this evolution. Tell me, you mentioned about wanting the culture to be different. So tell us, how would you describe the culture?

Victoria Albuquerque: It's supportive for sure, but also a lot of fun. Everybody on the senior management team, this is our passion, this is our career, this is not a job to us. Every department head, this is what we've dedicated our lives to. We enjoy it and we want to be around people that want to do this as well. We want to have fun doing it. We want to create an environment that people enjoy going to work, but also super ambitious. We want to be around people that are driven, are self-motivated, and want to be successful, whatever they determine success is for themselves. So it's very much a team sport environment is how I describe it to people.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, team sport environment. I love that phrasing. And I would imagine too, being a largely, like you mentioned earlier, a sales force, a large part of your workforce is a sales team, right? You’ve got to have some fun because, let's be real, sales can be a grind. And the events business, I would just imagine in general, like things go wrong. You've got to be flexible. You've got to be resilient. You've got to have fun in the hard because it's not all easy. And growing the business isn't easy, like all of the above.

Victoria Albuquerque: For sure.

Jena Dunay: I love that fun is a part of the DNA. Tell me, what are some of the unique benefits of people that get to work there? We've had some people talk about certain L&D opportunities, professional development opportunities, or just weird, quirky benefits that nobody has. Whatever that looks like for your organization, I'd love to hear about that.

Victoria Albuquerque: For sure. Obviously, I think there's a ton of benefits for employees at Millennium that are unique. Top of mind, from an L&D perspective, training and development is so important to us, especially in sales. You have to keep growing and learning and innovating the process and the approach to the sales process.

Continuous training from onboarding to leadership is really important to us, ensuring the team has real playbooks, role-specific development, and of course outside learning is encouraged. But also the access and relationships that they're building with their clients is certainly unique, because the level of executives that our employees are building relationships with and working with day to day is incredible. I always say to them, “What 24-year-old can say they got a text from the CIO of a Fortune 500 company or got a shout out on LinkedIn from a client that just attended an event, who happens to run IT for a major retailer, thanking them for inviting them to an event?”

I geek out on that stuff. I think that's super cool.

Jena Dunay: But it is, though. I think you need to pause on that, because that is such a perk, especially from a sales perspective. As somebody who has been in the career space and leadership space for a long period of time, people do not talk enough about the connections that you're going to make at an employer being a benefit to working at said employer. I'll give you an example. I used to work at the New York Stock Exchange. I was the 24-year-old, I think we talked about this before. I was the 24-year-old who was in the room with all these IPO’ing companies. I'm like, who invited me here?

And so having that on my resume and having those connections and having that Fortune 500 experience or the IPO experience, getting to be in the room where it happens, it catapulted me in my career because it allowed me first to realize people are people. Executives are still people with problems and they're not that scary, which is such a good skill to learn early on in your career and to not let fear overcome you. I would actually triple click on all of that. If you're a young person in your career and you're looking to get into the sales world, this is a huge perk because it gets you exposure, experience, and allows you to humanize people that are really important in the industry. So I'll let you keep going, but I felt like that was really important to talk about.

Victoria Albuquerque: No, totally. Absolutely. It's certainly something that we talk about in the interview process and onboarding and the training. It sets you up professionally and personally. Not only does it open doors for you, but like you said, you're gaining skills in life that will help you. I had some similar experiences when I started out in sales, going to these events and being so nervous talking to these C-level executives and then realizing they're just people. And then having that confidence to be able to go into any room and talk to anybody and know that I also belong here. That helps you in your career. It helps you apply for that job, helps you have that conversation or put yourself out there.

I think especially today, in a post-COVID world, where a lot of these students that were in college during COVID, they didn't get a lot of the experiences, or were early in the workforce and had to be remote, didn't get those experiences, were affected by that. We saw that with people coming into sales roles. So I certainly agree, and we see that as a huge benefit.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I love that. Okay, I'll let you keep going on some of those other perks, but we could linger on that forever.

Victoria Albuquerque: For sure. One of the other things I think is a big benefit at Millennium, in terms of our culture, is the hands-on leadership. Our management team, our leadership, no matter what position you're at in the company up to the co-founders who are still in the office every day out on the sales floor, leaders are in the work. There's real-time coaching, mentoring, and unblocking. People can grow quickly. They are seen, their work is recognized. And when challenges come up, especially from a sales perspective, it's not like numbers are just getting thrown out there and KPIs have to be hit and this is coming from the top. They're in the trenches, they're at the events, they're talking to clients as well. They really understand the market, they understand what's happening. It's very much a “roll up your sleeves and help out regardless of your position” type of culture. I think people value that.

We provide recognition a lot; weekly shoutouts, employees of the month, year-end awards. We love celebrating milestones, both personally and professionally. As you mentioned earlier, sales can be tough and it's a grind. But also recognizing the support roles as well; the client services team, the marketing team, the people team that helps get the new hires in and is talking them down when they had a bad sales quarter. Every single person is doing their job to ensure that the events are run well and that the clients are happy. So we want to recognize that hard work.

We think the culture goes beyond work. We provide team events and offsites and company outings and volunteer days. Lots of bonding and giving back to the community is important to us, keeping the culture positive and inclusive. That's all super important. So much so that we have an employee dedicated to culture and engagement. That's all really important to us.

Little unique things like we give an extra 20 minutes at lunch for our wellness initiative. We want people to go to the gym, take a class, do whatever you have to do. So we'll try little perks like that to give people some extra time. We shut down as a company over the end-of-year holidays. Every single person can travel, go home, be with your family. You don't have to use PTO in between holidays.

That's a good time to relax, reset, and then come back in the new year fresh. People love that. I always joke that I never left college. I've had a winter break for 25 years. I don't know what I would do if I had to work somewhere that made you use PTO.

Jena Dunay: It's hard. I've worked at those places and it is difficult.

Victoria Albuquerque: So yeah, that's a fun perk that people seem to like.

Jena Dunay: I love it. Tell me, who does really well when you think about an employee coming in? Let's even just talk about the sales team, because I know that's an area where you guys are going to be hiring. What's the type of personality that does really well at your organization either holistically or specifically on the sales team. And what personality probably wouldn't work very well?

Victoria Albuquerque: Ambitious, driven. Like I said, our culture is very much a team sport environment, high-performing but human. We've built an environment where people do thrive as a team. We have clear goals and personal accountability. If you aren't willing to put in the extra effort, work hard at a fast pace, it might not be the right place for you.

We have a big wide open sales floor. You look down a huge hallway of pods and standing desks and people are on the phone and moving around, there's music playing, people are chatting and hanging out, there's maybe a pool table. If you don't like noise and you don't like mingling and you don't like laughter, it's not the place. Of course we have quiet rooms and offices people can go into to get busy work done and things like that, but if you're someone that doesn't like that type of environment, it's probably not the place for you.

When we speak on a more granular level, we hire a lot of former athletes, people that have done service industry work, former recruiters coming into this type of sales, people that have gone out and done door-to-door sales. We love people that have put themselves out there and done difficult, challenging sales, faced rejection. We love it. And anyone who's maybe just had a tough go and they've shown grit, we're like, “Yeah, all right, let's go. Come on in.”

Jena Dunay: Yeah. You know who you should hire? I just had this idea for you. You should hire the people that get stuck at the Verizon booth within Target that tell you, “Hey, hey, hey, how you doing?” And I'm like, I'm sorry, I've literally talked to you five times already because I felt bad. They would be perfect for this role. That's who we should be poaching for you. They just came to my brain. Just here to help you, Victoria.

Victoria Albuquerque: That's hilarious. That's funny. Thanks.

Jena Dunay: Love that. Love hearing all about that. Now, obviously no organization is perfect. So I think it's important to ask: what are some areas of growth for you guys? What's an area of opportunity where you feel like, “We're just kind of missing the mark on this, and we want to do better,” as it relates to culture or just the strategy in general?

Victoria Albuquerque: I think for us right now, the biggest challenge is ensuring that we stay true to our culture as we scale and grow. We are going to double in size over the next 12 to 18 months. We're going to be opening new markets, going into new markets, opening new events, new products, hiring a ton of people.

With that comes a lot of growing pains, and we want to make sure we have the resources for our team. We're not stretching people too thin, and that we stay true to the culture and what's gotten us to where we are now. That is really important to us.

We expect people to work hard and put in that effort, but we don't want to burn people out either. So that's the challenge right now, but I think it's a good challenge to have. I hope that doesn't sound like a cop-out answer either, but yeah.

Jena Dunay: No, I don't think so, because you know that it's about to come. You know that that's going to be a challenge because you guys are in a growth mode. So why don't you share a little bit about that growth mode, why you're in a growth mode, and what you're going to be hiring for over the next 12 to 18 months?

Victoria Albuquerque: This past summer, we were fortunate enough to have some investors come in and partner with us, which was really exciting.

Jena Dunay: Which is the first time, you said, right? Which is crazy. Bootstrapped for 12 years, the success that you've had to 200, that’s really impressive.

Victoria Albuquerque: Yeah, so thank you. Yes, we are really excited. Boston Ventures was the private equity firm that invested in us this summer. Now we've partnered with them. It's fantastic. They are going to help take us to another level. Up until now, as I mentioned, we've grown organically. With their help, we can really scale in a way that we haven't done so far.

So not only opening new events, new product offerings, growing our digital side of the business, opening new offices, going into new markets. We're looking into the Asian market and other areas globally. It's just a really exciting time.

We'll be hiring all different sales positions, both in London as well as in New York. We're open to remote positions as well for entry-level as well as experienced. We'll be looking at expanding our digital side of the business as well, possibly hiring positions for that too. We're just super excited about it.

Jena Dunay: I love it. That's very exciting and just great for our listeners to hear about and to think, “Okay, I'm interested in this organization. I'm either entry-level and I'm interested in maybe a sales role, or I'm interested in exploring these other more corporate functions that you guys are going to have as you continue to grow.” Where is the best place for people to learn more about your organization?

Victoria Albuquerque: They can either go to our website at mil-all.com or they can go to our TikTok page, which I love. That's probably the best place to get real insight into the company culture. It's a lot of fun. Our director of culture and engagement oversees it, but the team has a lot of fun with it. You can see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis. You can check out what happens at our events, but also just all the fun activities that we're doing in office and outside of the office. You can apply through there or on any of the job boards, but also you can email us at careers@mil-all.com as well.

Jena Dunay: I love that. I love that you guys have a TikTok account because it's not common for organizations to really have much of a presence beyond LinkedIn. Everyone pretty much gives me the generic, “Check out our careers page on LinkedIn.” I love that you guys have a TikTok page and I am going to personally download TikTok again. I go through phases where I delete it, have it, delete it, have it. I'm going to download again just to see these TikTok clips. So kudos to your team on building that out. That's so fun. I love it.

I would be awful if I didn't ask this question to a VP of HR. How does somebody get their resume seen? Say they're super excited and they're like, “I really want to, I like what this company is doing. I want to be a salesperson here.” How do they make sure they get their resume seen?

Victoria Albuquerque: I think you have to go to the decision maker. You have to message the hiring manager directly. That's how we train our salespeople. You've got to go right to the decision maker. So send your resume in, apply through the normal way, I suppose, but if you don't have a connection, if you don't have a referral, just go right to the decision maker, go to the hiring manager. There's no harm in sending a message saying why you're applying for that position.

You don't know how many times the owner of the company will email me or text me and say, “Hey, this person, you need to interview this person.” Meanwhile, it's one of 500 people that has applied and hasn't already been interviewed. But because they messaged the owner of the company, like “I've applied for this role,” they stand out. It makes a big difference and you can get to the top of the list by getting to the decision maker.

Jena Dunay: You know, it's so funny. We literally say this every single time I ask this question. Ninety-five percent of people always say to do that. So many people are like, “What should I do? Why isn't my resume getting seen?” It's amazing how many people don't do this because they feel like it's a waste of their time. But it's more a waste of your time to send a resume that's going to go off into the abyss if you're not also coupling it with a differentiation factor, like reaching out to somebody at the organization. Especially for a sales role, I think it shows your gumption if you do it.

Victoria Albuquerque: Definitely, absolutely. And with the ATS, you don't know what's getting seen and not getting seen. Of course it depends on the role and the size of the company that you're applying for and all of that. But I mean, it's not going to hurt you to message someone.

Jena Dunay: Yes, exactly. Well, this was super fun. I loved getting to learn more about your culture, Victoria, at The Millennium Alliance. I'm super excited about what your organization is doing. I would highly recommend that anybody check out your organization on your careers page and then, hey, send a message to somebody senior at the organization if you're interested in working there. But thank you again, Victoria, for your time. It's been a pleasure.

Victoria Albuquerque: Thanks so much.