{"id":9016,"date":"2026-06-10T18:05:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T23:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/?p=9016"},"modified":"2026-06-14T16:36:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T21:36:35","slug":"omaha-interview-adam-straight-president-and-ceo-of-meca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/omaha-interview-adam-straight-president-and-ceo-of-meca\/","title":{"rendered":"Omaha Interview: Adam Straight, President and CEO of MECA"},"content":{"rendered":"

OmahaNebraska.com’s Interview with Adam Straight, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority (MECA)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Adam Straight with CWS Media Food Tasting Offerings in background at Charles Schwab Field Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OmahaNebraska.com here with…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adam Straight, President and CEO of MECA.<\/p>\n

Please tell me a little bit about yourself and what brought you here. I loved hearing all the wonderful things you said about Omaha earlier<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, great. Well, first and foremost, I love it. My last five and a half months have been some of the best of my career. And that’s from the genuine nature of the community and their welcoming of me, an outsider of sorts, into the community. So it’s been great.<\/p>\n

I’ve been in the business for 25 years. I started actually as an electrician at the University of Maryland, working in the shop and providing support around campus. I was asked a couple of questions one evening, and one of those was \u201cDo you like sports?\u201d And I said \u201cYes.\u201d And the next one was \u201cDo you like overtime?\u201d And I said \u201cAbsolutely. I’m your guy.\u201d So that kind of really spawned into just me supporting the athletic department throughout all of their events and all of their sports… 27 sports. I got to be able to do a number of different things to learn the business, not just being a commercial electrician, but understanding audiovisual and scoreboard maintenance and scoreboard controls and electronics and everything it takes to put on an event just like this one. So that got me into the business, and I quickly moved up the ladder.<\/p>\n

I spent 11 years at the University of Maryland. I started as an electrician and left as the director of all their athletic facilities. That took me to an opportunity in Georgia to run the Georgia Dome, the day-to-day operations. I did that for a few years. We realized that we wanted to decommission that building and build a new stadium, so my president at the time put me in charge of that project. I was the executive in charge of Mercedes-Benz Stadium literally from day one to day zero when we opened it in three and a half years. Again, I learned so much about the business: the different sides of the business that I wasn’t familiar with, like the project management side and the financial side, the stewardship to the community side\u2014to engage them and to understand how it affects all the stakeholders. I spent eight years in Atlanta in various other roles.<\/p>\n

After the stadium opened, I declined the offer to run that. I knew what it took, and I wanted to start a family, and it just wasn’t the right time. So my president then put me in another broader role in charge of the entire campus. I still had oversight of the stadium but not direct day-to-day operation oversight. I did that for eight years.<\/p>\n

I got a call one day from a recruiter about a job in New Orleans, and it kind of checked all the boxes. It was a big risk. We had just started a family, had a one-year-old, so there was another opinion in the room. Maybe they couldn’t voice their opinion yet, but still, they were another opinion. So we respectfully declined that position several times, and then one day they flew my wife and I down, and I don’t know, it must have been something in the air, and we said, \u201cLet’s go ahead and do this.\u201d It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. The best decision of my life was to join the military right out of high school, and that’s what kind of put all this together and got me to Maryland. But this was probably the next best decision because it put me in a position of leadership to really prepare for what none of us knew was going to happen, and that was COVID.<\/p>\n

I had reported to the COO in Atlanta, but then I was the COO in New Orleans. So I was able to take our organization and lead us through that pandemic effort and all of the things and all the nuances that changed daily, hourly, however you want to remember it, but it gave us a really good opportunity. And then on the development side, we had a lot of work to do in New Orleans to get back up to par level with our competitors. We saved a lot of money. The previous administration had saved a lot of money, but it was time for us to start spending that and start doing projects that made sense. So it allowed me to do that.<\/p>\n

I oversaw basically a $2 billion capital strategy through my time in New Orleans, and that included $760 million renovations inside and some development outside. But again, at every stop, I just got to learn more and more and more. And when I got the call for this job last summer, I was literally sitting on a beach and I looked at it and said, \u201cOmaha, Nebraska… I don’t know anything about Omaha, Nebraska.\u201d I kind of put it down and picked it up later that night. And as I read through the job description, I knew it was fate. I gave it to my wife and said, \u201cYou got to tell me this job wasn’t written for me,\u201d because it was college athletics again with our partnership with Creighton. It was stadium management, it was arena management, it was development, it was park management. It was all of these things that I’ve done in the last 25 years. The culmination of all, that to be able to lead such an effort, was just a no-brainer for me.<\/p>\n

It must be so hard overseeing all of this. Are there things that were different maybe than other places? I’m sure with your background you were really ready to adapt and pivot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sure, yeah. I mean, as an operator, we don’t like to use the word hard<\/em>. It may be a challenge sometimes, but that’s what we prepare for, right? It\u2019s your separations and preparations is what I always like to say. It’s how you prepare for events like this. You know, this just doesn’t happen. We don’t start preparing for this yesterday. It\u2019s an annual preparation to put on a show like this, but it’s chunks of everything that I’ve ever done that’s kind of set me up to be successful, and the team here is amazing. It’s not just me; it’s about all of us. We have a bunch of amazing people that are really dedicated to their job and dedicated to the brand and the reputation of MECA. And I’m just here to up that standard a little bit, maybe a lot bit. But again, it’s helping people understand what MECA does for not only our campus, but for the extended community.<\/p>\n

What are you looking forward to for your first game?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just the excitement around the event. Again, I’ve been part of multiple Super Bowls, Final Fours, college football, national championship, WrestleMania. It\u2019s like all of these different events. Sitting back and capturing and just embracing the moment is what makes it all worth it. It’s the fan experience and the fan engagement. It’s seeing the little kids. play with their dads or their moms or whatever the case may be, but everyone really enjoying themselves. That’s what I’m built for. That’s what brought me to this hospitality profession and community. It’s just creating those compelling experiences and knowing that they’re going to last for decades.<\/p>\n

MECA is more than a College World Series. Tell me a little bit about what you see going forward with MECA and Omaha in the area.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, absolutely. You hit it right on the head. It’s more than just two weeks in June. It’s an organization that encompasses so many things throughout the year, and it’s multiple layers of things, right? We have the arena asset, we have the convention center, we have the park, we have this facility.<\/p>\n

And your staff at the park is amazing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it’s a great park. I couldn’t get my kids away from the park when we visited when they first got here, but it’s understanding how we need to program those assets to benefit the larger community, right? It’s not just about what MECA does to help MECA. It’s what MECA does to help Omaha. And that’s the importance of everything that we do: to bring people here, to have them sleep in our hotels and eat at our restaurants and drink at our pubs and just patronize everywhere they can around the city so they can go back to their communities where they’re from and tell them what a great experience Omaha was. Because nine out of 10 times, anyone I ask, have they been to Omaha, the response is, \u201cIt’s phenomenal, the best experience of my life.\u201d You ask those that haven’t been, they just don’t know anything about it. I wouldn’t say it’s a negative reaction; it’s just not really a reaction at all. So the goal is to get more people, more eyes on it, so then that can organically grow a subset of fans, right? Raving fans that’ll come to our city just to visit. Not necessarily for an event or a convention, just to come visit for leisure.<\/p>\n

One more question. Is there something you would have liked me to ask that I didn’t ask, or something you want to tell people?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want people to know what MECA is and to understand our mission and our vision. It’s a newly created mission and vision. It’s not necessarily an adaptation of a mission and vision. We never really had one moving forward in written words, so my leadership team created that mission from a bunch of responses that we got from the entire team. And a lot of those adjectives that you see used in the mission and vision and the strategic goals and values, those all came from the staff by just having conversations. And you’ll see that those are very meaningful not only for what we do as an organization, but how we enhance everyone in the community. A rising tide floats all boats, right? What we’re doing here has a genuine impact and an elevated impact on what the city can be in total. If we have decided to expand the facility, that’s going to generate more business, which is going to, again, float all boats. If we decide to build a headquarter hotel in the future, that’s going to generate more opportunities to get more events of a higher scale, and again, float all boats. It’s what’s happening with the Union Omaha Stadium. It’s what’s happening with the growth of Creighton. It’s everything. This is going to turn into a thriving district. And one of the things I’ve said in the past is we have the Old Market, and everyone loves the Old Market. Why don’t we create a New Market and have this over here in northeast Omaha?<\/p>\n

Thank you. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OmahaNebraska.com’s Interview with Adam Straight, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority (MECA) OmahaNebraska.com here with… Adam Straight, President and CEO of MECA. Please tell me a little bit about yourself and what brought you here. I loved hearing all the wonderful things you said about Omaha earlier. Oh yeah, great. Well, … Continue reading Omaha Interview: Adam Straight, President and CEO of MECA<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,36],"tags":[950,321,947,319,331,949,945,946,142,948],"class_list":["post-9016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-omaha","category-omaha-event","category-omaha-interview","tag-adam-straight","tag-college-world-series","tag-creighton","tag-cws","tag-meca","tag-metropolitan-entertainment-convention-authority","tag-new-market","tag-northeast-omaha","tag-old-market","tag-union-omaha-stadium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9016"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9089,"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9016\/revisions\/9089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omahanebraska.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}