Floral Update: Let Me Introduce Myself

February 26, 2025

We are sharing this latest edition of the newsletter as many of you, like me, have just returned from The Floral Conference in Miami. We are excited to share with you all more of what happened at the conference, but one of the highlights for me was being able to officially introduce myself as the new Director of Floral. I certainly know more of you after this week, and I’m grateful for your warm welcome, but for those of you whom I have yet to meet, I’d like to share a bit about me.

My name is Colleen Fagundus. I live in Southern New Jersey with my husband and our one year old. I was born and raised in the Philadelphia area, and so I am a huge Philly sports fan. I will say that I was happily surprised at how many fellow Philly fans we had in attendance at the Floral Conference this week!

I have been with IFPA for almost 10 years and I am honored to now be working with the floral community.

My previous IFPA experience was in the Expo and then the membership team. I know how important the Global Show is to our members, and I also know how you can get the most value for your membership outside of our incredible events.

As someone who wants to learn from industry leaders like you, I was very happy to announce this week that we will be welcoming back our Floral Executive Leadership Council. This group, in addition to our Floral Council, will continue to provide us with the insights, questions and feedback that help us strengthen the entire supply chain and provide you all more value.

This group includes: Carlos Oramas, of the Gems Group; Bas Pellenaars of Dummen Orange; John Simko of Sunshine Bouquet Company; Erin Esensee of H-E-B; Maxwell Sherer of Green Circle Growers; Laura Perkins of Albertsons Companies,and Remi Davalos of Colour Republic.

Feedback from our industry and members is incredibly important to us. The Floral Conference going from two coast to coast events to a singular event in Miami was directly a result of member feedback!

We also recently sought member feedback on the recent announcement of the Floral Segment being located in the North Building at this year’s Global Produce & Floral Show. I joined Kyle McMillian, IFPA director of trade shows, on a call with members earlier this month to discuss the details of the move, some early look at logistics and gathered ideas and feedback from you all to create more value and opportunity for the segment at this year’s show. I hope you’ll continue to share those ideas going forward.

I wanted to thank you for those of you who attended The Floral Conference in Miami this week. If you were unable to join us, you were missed and I hope we can meet in person this year in Anaheim!

Floral Update: Let Me Introduce Myself

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