Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545782
B M & T ••• July/August 2026 ••• www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com 15 In April 2026 Kireem Swinton capped his nearly nine-year tenure at Visit Baltimore with his appointment as President & CEO. He spent the previous months as the interim top leader of the bureau. Along with steering Visit Baltimore's strategy for bringing more tourists, meetings, conventions and other events to the city, Swinton views educating the community about the industry's importance to the local economy as a major responsibility. "People sometimes look at a convention center like it's a build- ing, and I keep telling everyone, stop looking at it as a building, it's a gateway," Swinton says. "There's no other time you can get 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 people to come through one space and disperse into all the different parts of the city and create such an economic impact." Swinton attended Howard University on a football scholar- ship. His post-college football career ended after brief spots on the roster of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Baltimore Ravens. With a semester left to complete his BBA in hospitality management, he decided, at his grandfather's insistence, to go back to school. During that time he also started working at the Marriott Hotel in Greenbelt, Maryland. After four years, Marriott transferred him to Raleigh, North Carolina, an involuntary career move he initially found disappointing, to say the least. "I went sobbing like a baby to Raleigh, because I went to school in DC and was thinking, 'There's a ton of hotels here, of course I'll stay here," Swinton says. "But I met probably one of the best men- tors I ever had in my life there, which was Bobby Vaughn. He was a titan in our industry and has brought a lot of us young Black pro- fessionals on and mentored us in high-level positions throughout Marriott." Through Vaughn, Swinton became involved in hotel sales to the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association's basketball tour- nament, a role that led him to relocate first to Charlotte and then Baltimore. After 11 years with Marriott, in 2013 he left the compa- ny and headed west to spend nearly five years as national accounts director at Visit Seattle. In the fall of 2017 he had his homecoming: a post as Visit Baltimore's director of convention sales development for the Mid- Atlantic region and tradeshows. He rose through the ranks to become director of sales, vice president of sales and customer experience, interim president and CEO and, finally, president and CEO. Years earlier Swinton had met his predecessor, Al Hutchinson, at an American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) trade show in Toronto. Hutchinson invited him to join the team in Baltimore, and the path to where he is today was set in motion. With a staff of just under 50, Swinton heads a leadership team at Visit Baltimore that also includes Chief Financial Officer Craig D. Walters-Vay, Chief Marketing Officer Trish McClean and Interim Vice President of Sales & Customer Experience Aurelia Welsh. Together, they work to ensure that the bureau's mission statement is fulfilled. "Visit Baltimore's mission directly aligns with my own, which is to improve the quality of life for the city's residents," Swinton says. Swinton notes that Baltimore, with a population that is 60 per- cent Black, was one of the first U.S. cities to offer visitors a coupon pack for discounts at African-American businesses and attractions. The local version is called a BoP Pass, which he says incorporates a slang term for an upbeat song or a bouncy dance move. Visitors A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H KIREEM SWINTON BY SONYA STINSON "Visit Baltimore's mission directly aligns with my own, which is to improve the quality of life for the city's residents,"