Canada: FORREC Executive VP Anthony Van Dam Retires

After more than 34 years, Anthony Van Dam, Executive Vice President of FORREC, will retire effective October 1, 2022. Van Dam, who began his career as a Junior Designer with the Toronto-based themed entertainment specialist in 1988, was instrumental in opening up the Chinese market, which has now become one of the most important ones for FORREC. “FORREC has been my home for almost 35 years, and I feel incredibly lucky and proud of the small part I played in helping to grow this company into the world-class entertainment design consultancy it is today,” said Van Dam, Executive Vice-President, FORREC. “Through it all, we have managed to maintain our greatest asset, our culture, through integrity, humility, comradery, and hard work. I will always remember my mentors who supported me along the way, and I am excited about the current crop of leaders, who are as strong as we have ever seen. FORREC’s future looks bright indeed.”

During his career at FORREC, Van Dam was also a shareholder for 25 years, part of the board for 20 years and Head of Global Business Development for 10 years. In addition to his position with the company, he served as a board member of the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) from June 2013 to November 2019.

“Anthony is an industry veteran and recognized global leader in large scale entertainment planning and design,” said Cale Heit, President and CEO of FORREC. “As a senior executive and leader of FORREC’s global business development efforts, Anthony’s big picture, strategic thinking and strong leadership in an ever-evolving world marketplace is highly sought after. We will greatly miss his expertise and intuition, which helped FORREC build some of the best, most rewarding client relationships.”

Since 2016, Van Dam has acted as Chief Representative of FORREC’s newly formed Representative Office in Shanghai. Steve Shah, Vice President of FORREC, has been announced as seccessor in this position. (eap)