Experience Olympia & Beyond is already looking for new CEO after quick exit
Michael Day — who started July 7 as the new chief executive of Experience Olympia & Beyond, the area’s visitor and convention bureau — is no longer with the organization.
Experience Olympia & Beyond announced the transition on Tuesday.
“This decision was made after thoughtful consideration and in recognition that the role was not the right fit for either Michael or Experience Olympia & Beyond,” said Board President Sue Falash in a statement. “We are grateful for Michael’s contributions and wish him the very best in his future endeavors.”
“Plans for new leadership are already underway,” she said. “SearchWide Global will conduct the national search, and additional information will be shared in the coming weeks.”
Day is from Edmonds and attended the University of Washington, The Olympian reported last month. He most recently was the corporate sales manager for North America at Crystal Cruises.
Day’s departure grabbed the attention of Lacey City Council, which was set to hear from Day at its work session Tuesday evening until Lacey Mayor Andy Ryder announced he would not be coming.
“We have been notified that Michael Day, the CEO they just hired, was let go,” Ryder told the council.
The council conversation quickly turned critical of Experience Olympia & Beyond.
“I think what we need to talk about is what our expectations are of (Experience) Olympia & Beyond going forward, because I’m not comfortable with the (hiring) process they just went through,” Ryder said. “And it sounds like they’re gonna go back to that same process again and come up with a better solution, which is the definition of insanity to me, you know, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.”
Council member Nic Dunning, the city’s representative to the Experience Olympia & Beyond board, said he is largely in the dark about the situation.
“I know just about as much of this as you do,” he said. “This caught me off guard yesterday.”
Council member Lenny Greenstein said it’s troubling that a board member should know so little about the CEO’s departure. He criticized the structure of Experience Olympia & Beyond, which has a board but also a separate executive committee, he said.
“They (the executive committee) did the hiring and told them (the board) who they hired,” he said. “Now, they fired the same person and told them (the board) they fired him, but with no input, no conversation, no process that involved the board.”
Greenstein has long had concerns about Experience Olympia & Beyond, he said.
“They’re spending tax dollars collected by the city through the hotels or whatever other avenues that we’re funding them with and yet the elected officials from each of the cities have no say in how the money is spent. It doesn’t make sense to me, and it never has,” Greenstein said.
Council member Robin Vazquez said there is value in having jurisdictional representatives be part of a hiring process.
“It is baffling to me that (Experience Olympia & Beyond) is not including the elected representatives in these big decision-making processes,” she said. “And I think the clear message then needs to be, when you do the next hiring process, you need to include everybody and give them a real voice in the process. And if not, then we should re-examine whether or not we continue to participate in (Experience Olympia & Beyond), and what that looks like for Lacey.”
Council member Dunning said he believes Experience Olympia should have hired an interim leader before they made their CEO hire.
“They basically, you know, split responsibilities between two of the board members,” he said. “And so there wasn’t, there wasn’t really a way to truly evaluate what the needs were.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
