Associations NOW Presents

Why Associations Must Rethink Learning and Community Together

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions sits down with Kurt Heikkinen, CEO of Forj, to explore how to connect learning, community, and member value into one cohesive experience. Drawing on member experience research, Kurt highlights a core insight—members join and stay for two primary reasons: to learn and to connect with peers. When those experiences are separated, engagement suffers. The conversation unpacks how expectations are shifting, particularly among early-career professionals who expect personalized, always-on access to content and community, not just isolated touchpoints like annual events or standalone courses. Kurt makes the case for rethinking how associations deliver value—moving away from fragmented systems toward unified, AI-enabled platforms that bring learning and community together. He shares real-world results from EcoAmerica and offers a clear takeaway for association leaders: start with the member experience, break down internal silos, and design for connection, not just content.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/J0QxOGuP6Ks
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
 
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to Association NOW Presents: Industry Partner Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, director of Partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot Solutions and implementation partner, and your host of this series throughout the year.
Today, we're exploring how associations think about learning and how that connects to renewal. I'm joined by Kurt Heikkinen. Kurt has built and exited multiple SaaS companies, led mergers and acquisitions, and raised more than $150 million in venture and private equity capital. He's helped companies grow from startup to over $50 million in recurring revenue, and today he's focused on helping associations and organizations rethink how they serve and engage their members.
Kurt, welcome 
Kurt Heikkinen: Sharon. Thanks so much. Excited to spend this half hour with you and the audience. 
Sharon Pare: Absolutely, [00:01:00] and thank you so much, Kurt. You've spent much of your career building companies in fast moving markets. I'm curious what drew you to the association space? 
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, great question, Sharon. As I entered the space and started to learn more about the mission driven nature of these organizations, I was just compelled to help.
After meeting with dozens and dozens of executives, I heard both. Their passion and mission, but also the challenges they face. And so after a couple decades serving the corporate space, I felt compelled to jump in and really help leaders of mission-driven organizations realize their full potential. 
Sharon Pare: Why don't we jump into it?
So when I hear association leaders talk about value, connection, and education, it always comes up. I think renewal conversations are still happening everywhere, and sometimes I think about it like Netflix versus Instagram, right? Netflix gives you a huge library of content and [00:02:00] then Instagram keeps you coming back for more because it feels dynamic.
It feels social, even though I think the influencer community might be dying a little bit. So I'm wondering if associations sometimes operate more like a content library than a living network. So my question for you, Kurtin, from where you sit, what truly keeps members coming back year after year and what do associations tend to overestimate?
Kurt Heikkinen: It's a really great question, and I think you can see some of the parallels from an experience standpoint between Netflix and Instagram. But when you think about the core of associations, many of them view themselves as the trusted place, the trusted resource for their members, as some describe themselves as that community of practice.
Their members truly care. They want a sense of belonging and they want a place where they can not only progress in their career, but share and give back. And so we do research every year. We call it the state of member [00:03:00] experience, a research report, and we launch it every year at the annual ASAE annual event in August.
And for the last five years, the prevailing answer to the question, why do you join and why do you stay, has been. One for the peer-to-peer connections and two for the ongoing learning. And so that is at the core of the member value proposition. Do I belong and can I connect with peers like me? And is this an environment and a place where I can continue to learn and grow?
And so those are the key factors that drive engagement and ultimately retention. 
Sharon Pare: If learning and community are structured separately, what does that do to the member experience? 
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, it creates a fractured and siloed experience. When you think about our own experience as consumers, when we're interacting with a company or a product, and the experience is different from the time we bought it to the [00:04:00] time perhaps we're asking for service.
It becomes frustrating if they don't know us and they don't demonstrate that they understand who we are and what our needs are from one step to the next. And so having those experiences separate can only lead to frustration, and that's what we hear over and over again. So what's the difference? What's the answer?
An experience that is seamless, that's personalized, that's unified, where the member, the learner, feels like you know them throughout every step of the journey. 
Sharon Pare: So are you saying that one of the shifts that you're seeing is mostly generational in how they're learning now? 
Kurt Heikkinen: I think by far one of the shifts is the expectations of early career members.
You think about the expectations of early career members, the concept of membership is even foreign to them. They've grown up in an on demand consumption, subscription based world. That's their world. Whether that's in academia or whether that's from an entertainment standpoint. [00:05:00] You cited Netflix earlier, so that is one of the major shifts.
But for all of us, regardless of what generation you're in, where you are in your career. The last 10 years has informed our own expectations regarding experience and what does a modern experience look like, and personalization is at the core of that. If we as consumers, let's just separate learning and look more broadly in our everyday life as consumers, if we don't experience something that's fast and easy and relevant where the entity we're interacting with.
The service provider or the product company doesn't know us and doesn't demonstrate they know us and understand our needs immediately and guide our experience, we opt out. And that's regardless of age. Anyone who has been using a mobile device for the last several years has experienced that and now knows what good looks like.
But furthermore, back to career [00:06:00] stages, we've also studied a lot. What are the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of professionals by stage. There are expectations that early career members have. They wanna know immediately, do I belong here? Can I connect with peers like me who have solved and encountered some of the things that I'm.
Experiencing early in my career for those individuals mid-career, they wanna know how can they take the next step in their career? How can they climb the ladder? How can they advance in their domain? Um, they might be considering a pivot. And how will this community help them learn and grow vanguard? And many times for those latent career they wanna give back.
They wanna share their wisdom and their expertise from the last two or three or four decades, and they want a forum, a learning community to do that. So when learning and community aren't together, when it's fractured and siloed, you miss out on so many opportunities to engage your learners, your professionals, your members that meet them where [00:07:00] they are, and truly tap in the power of community.
Sharon Pare: So it sounds like continuity may matter more than isolated moments, and having these two together really matters more. So I think it raises a bigger question about how learning actually works. And you've already mentioned that adults and different generations don't learn in isolated events. It tends to happen over time, conversation in context.
Again, as you mentioned, a lot of this education is still structured around single programs. What do you think leaders most often misunderstand about learning value is actually created today? 
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, it's interesting, Sharon, because we meet with hundreds of clients every year and prospective clients, and I think intuitively they understand.
That the learning paradigm has shifted. I think they do understand that it is more social in nature. It needs to be more on demand. Micro learning needs to become a part of this, that individuals don't have the time or energy [00:08:00] and to sit down and take hours of courses by themselves. They are looking for that connectedness, but some of them are struggling to understand how to make that happen or they're.
Largely dependent on a couple primary sources of revenue for their organization. A single annual conference, a couple main courses that drive 60 or 70% of their revenue that consumes their time and energy every year. That prevents them from moving beyond and innovating beyond that, and most often and why organizations come to Forj is because the technology they're using is holding them back or experience how today's technology better enables that breakthrough.
Better supports that type of more dynamic social cohort based learning through the concept of a learning community as opposed to isolation. And there's still a place. There's still a place of course, for so many of these courses that lead [00:09:00] to credentials and certifications that help ensure that individuals are qualified in their field.
But there are many opportunities to engage in learners and advance their career. Capture their expertise outside of those in single one-time events. 
Sharon Pare: What would you say are some of the risks that will show up when learning is treated with those one-time transactions, that annual event, that one big main course, what risk will usually show up for an association?
Kurt Heikkinen: I know our clients are already seeing that. In the form of churn in membership, many organizations in the association spaces have retention numbers that aren't what they want them to be. Their retention might be 70% or 75 or 80%. So that's the first place to look is if you're not delivering a continuous always on engagement, that's the first thing that's gonna be impacted.
Where in your one primary course that they are mandated to take [00:10:00] is the breadwinner. You've invested so significantly in other pieces of content. We hear this problem statement over, and it sounds like this. We have great content, but it's underutilized and under consumed. We hear that over and over again, and so the way to help our clients reimagine.
A move away from a one-time experience. We ask them to talk about what makes their annual event so great. Or we ask the more broad question, what is the highlight of community vibrancy or vibrancy in your membership throughout the year? And inevitably they highlight their annual event or confide. They describe with superlatives how great it is, how individuals are connected, how they're sharing best practices, how they're learning, they're growing, how excited they are, and they can't wait for it to happen next year.
And then the risk is if you're over indexed on that single event, that single source of revenue, you miss out the other 360 days a year. [00:11:00] And why not? Why can't you? And you can, our clients are. Creating that always on engagement, where that same sense of vibrancy, the same sense of engagement, that content that you've invested in that gets overlooked, is being unlocked.
It is being captured. It is being founded. It is being utilized 365 days a year. That's the power of a learning community. 
Sharon Pare: So really it's less about delivering content, more about creating that context. 
Kurt Heikkinen: That's just it. It's all about relevancy. Most of our clients don't need more content. They need a form and they need technology to enable it, to ensure that content is served up through a personalized experience in a relevant way.
So members don't have to go search for it and find it. And think about how frustrating it is when you have to go two different places to search, let alone one, but you shouldn't have to search. When you think back about our consumer experiences, whether that's on Netflix or Spotify or Amazon, how much searching do we do versus [00:12:00] how much serving up is done?
How much content is presented to us based on the fact that we're known? That same thing should exist in a learning community. Members deserve to be known to understand past behaviors reflected, and whether that's content or connections or conversations, that's the power of an AI driven learning community.
So it's no longer about searching across two different sources where you have to log in twice, but it's more about the relevancy of content, connections and conversations being served up to me. 
Sharon Pare: So you're talking a little bit more about conversations and communications and connections, and this just brings us directly to community.
Let's use Peloton for an example, right? I don't do it a lot, but when I do, there's something fun that I love about it. You do the workout, but there's this leaderboard in community, right, where you just stick to it. So it's not just you doing the workout, but now you're like, you know what? I've gotta beat Callie Girl [00:13:00] 3 1 2, because she's on the lead award and she's number two and one. Right? There's just a sense of engagement that you get from that type of experience, and there's a shared experience there. So I think what I'm saying is associations have already potentially built that within their members, but it's not always activated intentionally.
Right. Kurt, my question for you is, why does pure connection create a kind of learning value? That content alone simply can't deliver. 
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, I think you said it. You used the freight shared experience. If it were just about you getting on the treadmill and consuming a course or content, it would be different than knowing that you're going through that experience together and in associations more than just general social communities.
There is a passion around the subject matter itself. There's a deep passion around advancing the body of knowledge, and so communities unlock shared experience and shared [00:14:00] expertise and done right. It's not just about dipping in and dipping out and taking a course or reading a document. It really is about how can I learn side by side from my peers.
Informally as well as formally, and how can I also contribute to that body of knowledge or that community of practice? 
Sharon Pare: Is there something that separates organizations that truly leverage community from those that just simply provide the space for it? 
Kurt Heikkinen: I think that's a really great question. Really, when we first start working with a client, these are organizations who have come to us who are not yet clients of Forge.
We see really three different profiles. We see individual organizations who have never used community before. They're just exploring for the first time. Maybe they had a listserv, but not truly a community. We have organizations who have tried to adopt community, and in their minds it's a check the box member benefit.
They have it because their members ask for it. [00:15:00] So they check the box and they say they have it, but they wouldn't describe it as vibrant. And they often say We struggle with engagement. And then we have organizations who come to us where they would describe their. Community as having engagement, but they struggle to really associate, tie it to the member value proposition.
And they're wanting to think more broadly about the value of community and tying it to business outcomes. And we're seeing a shift. Those who really get it, think about community through the lens of what business outcomes does. A vibrant community. Generate. And if you can quantify and measure engagement, truly measure it not by logins, by vibrancy in your community, and tie it to outcomes such as retention.
Attraction of new members, the generation of additional non-dues revenue, or the increased consumption of content that you've had for [00:16:00] some time that has been stale or under consumed. That's really where the power of community and learning community comes in, and that's how we see more and more leaders thinking about community.
Not a check the box member benefit, but a real driver for value and member value proposition. 
Ad Break: Let's take a quick break with a word from our sponsor. Do you have members who finish a course and then just kind of disappear with Journey by Forge? Learning doesn't stop at course completion. The real ROI of learning happens after the course.
Members move seamlessly from formal coursework into a connected community where they can apply what they've learned. Ask real world questions and continue the conversation with peers who understand their challenges. It's not just an LMS, and it's not just a community platform. Journey by Forge brings learning conversation and insight together in one seamless experience.
So [00:17:00] instead of isolated courses, you create an active social learning environment where growth actually happens to see how it works. Visit forge.ai. That's F-O-R-J-dot-AI. 
Sharon Pare: You worked with EcoAmerica where courses and community originally lived separately. Could you walk us through what was happening there?
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah. They train thousands of climate ambassadors every year. When you think about that these individuals are there 'cause they have a passion for the cause. They're not required to fill this role. This is not a course that they have to take to maintain a certification in their field and to maintain their employment.
So experience matters in those instances, A as in most. And so they had two separate experiences and what they know they were really trying to drive not only [00:18:00] education, for someone to be deemed and qualified as an ambassador. Create a sense of how best to fulfill that role through the learning from your peers.
And so previously what would happen is they had a community and they had this course, and individuals inevitably would go take the training 'cause they wanted to support the cause and get the certification to be an ambassador. But that's when the experience would stop. They would never log into community 'cause they saw no purpose or meaning for that.
And many times they didn't come back to update or refresh their training. And so through the power of Forge by unifying community and learning together, that's where we unlocked great potential. And so now you look at an experience where a pre, during and post, you're actually engaging in conversation with your peers.
It makes learning social, it makes it interactive. It's not just a course that you check the box on. You have a [00:19:00] shared experience and a shared purpose. What has happened now as a result is their community has grown significantly. They're recruiting more and more climate ambassadors and in, and a higher percentage of those individuals are coming back over and over again to update their training.
So really great testament and story around the power of community and learning, uh, being a unified experience. 
Sharon Pare: So it sounds like learning became something that the members were a part of, not just something that they finished, not just stripped off the box. Kurt, why is it important for associations to understand and evaluate the difference between integrating community learning and technology intentionally built for unified community and learning?
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, that's a great question and one of the things that I think is really good news for our industry is we've seen a rise in RFPs, request for proposals, that ask for community and learning together from a technology standpoint. And thankfully we've also seen [00:20:00] competitors in our space talking about it as well.
And there's really been an increase in understanding of the why behind the value, and I think it's really important that. Buyers are able to discern the difference between integrated solutions and those that are intentionally built to unify that experience. And so here's probably the simplest way and the word of caution that I would offer.
If you have an integrated solution where it's two separate technologies still, yes, you'll get the benefit of single sign. You may get the benefit of a basic personalized experience because now you can tie a discussion thread to a course or a course to a discussion thread, but you're missing significant opportunities that only get unlocked when it's a single unified solution.
It starts with a unified experience. It continues with AI driven personalization and a unified experience. [00:21:00] We know every click. We know every conversation. We know every piece of content that has been consumed. We know every area of interest, and it gets back to serving up that experience, guiding that learner or that member through their journey.
You also get deeper insights that don't exist when you have two separate solutions that are simply integrated. And those insights unlock understandings of your members, their needs and their interests in ways that you didn't previously have access to, or other content ideas or program ideas. 'cause now you know.
What your members are talking about and what they really crave and how they enjoy learning. Beyond that, you simplify your tech stack and you reduce your costs. And so the difference between integrated. Integrated gets you partially the way there. A fully unified solution is where the true power is unlocked.
Sharon Pare: So what organization or mindset shift most often unlocks this kind of connected experience? I know you've touched a little bit about it, but can [00:22:00] we dig deeper into that? 
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, please. I actually grew up on the client side buying and selecting and implementing software from vendors and I talk about my experience.
I say I stopped 29 years in counting. It's my 29th year over and over again. So I've been around a little bit, and there's data that shows regardless of buyer community or technology vendor, upwards of 40% of B2B buyers. That's what we're talking about here. B2B, buyers associations buying services or technology experience, purchase regret within the first 60 to 90 days.
Why? Because now that they're going through implementation, they're realizing that the solution they purchased. Doesn't adapt to their current or future anticipated needs. And so to your question, what is that though? Does that mind shift or organizational shift? It starts with one, start with a member experience in mind.
Don't dust off your old RFP from the last time you bought an [00:23:00] LMS or community solution. And use that as your requirements. Start with a mindset shift around member experience in the moments that matter too. Identify a business champion as the stakeholder. It is great. They do a great job of helping to validate how things will work.
You really should have a business owner driving and sponsoring the evaluation and tying it to business outcomes. And third, break down the silo. Stop buying technology where it's just one department or the other. Don't buy an LMS without engaging the membership team. And don't think about an upgrade to your community solution without engaging your learning team and your marketing team in that experience as well.
Sharon Pare: You bring up three really great points, and I think a lot of associations are still measuring learning by how much the content they offer, but as you said, that's just not the most meaningful metric anymore. So what's one assumption leaders should seriously [00:24:00] rethink right now? 
Kurt Heikkinen: Yeah, and I meet with dozens of CEOs a year and over.
I hear a concern around future relevancy. It's not. This year or next year, it's five and 10 years out. So the risk isn't assuming that you'll always exist, and the risk isn't assuming that your members will always want to be members. And so the biggest fundamental way of rethinking about your future is the challenge of competition that has increased exponentially over the last five to 10 years in so many industries.
Your members have mind share and wallet share that they're making choices around every day, and if you do not create the experience that is meeting their expectations, you will lose relevancy and you will lose your place as the trusted place for them to come and stay. 
Sharon Pare: Kurt, I really appreciate the conversation.
It feels like the future of association learning [00:25:00] isn't just more content, it's more connection. I appreciate you sharing your perspective today. 
Kurt Heikkinen: Thank you so much. And if I could leave one quick thought, because I know change is sometimes hard. It could sound overwhelming. Many of our clients have a staff of 10 or 20 or 30, and so the thought of changing sounds like too much.
Here's a mind shift in terms of changing vocabulary internally instead of saying our LMS. Or our community or our education, start to adapt the vernacular of our learning community, whether that exists for you or not today. Start using that vernacular, our learning community and see how it starts to change the conversations inside of your organization and how you receive the feedback from your learners and your members.
Sharon, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it. It's been a great, great time together. 
Sharon Pare: Thank you, Kurt, for the final words. Appreciate it. Learning community. You've heard it from Kurt. Thank you. Thank you. 
And that does it for [00:26:00] this episode of Association NOW Presents:  Industry Partner Series. We'll have these special episodes throughout the year, and please make sure to join us each month overall as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US and the world.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Visit associations now online at associationsnow.com. Thank you everyone.

Examining the Changing Legal Landscape for Associations

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE, CEO of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, speaks with Jerry Jacobs, Esq., partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, about three major issues facing associations today: artificial intelligence, DEI, and misconduct at events. They explore why many organizations are adopting AI cautiously and the importance of guardrails, institutional licenses, and transparency when meetings are recorded or summarized. Jacobs also discusses legal considerations around DEI programs amid increasing scrutiny and evolving interpretations of civil rights law. The conversation concludes with a look at rising concerns around inappropriate behavior at events and why clear policies and enforceable codes of conduct are essential for associations.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/6YBt9suvV2U
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Tom Arend, CEO of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. Prior to serving as CEO, I was also general counsel of a large association. And prior to that, I served as a practitioner in the association law space in Washington DC.
Joining us today, we're excited to welcome Jerry Jacobs. Jerry is a partner at the firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pitman, LLP. Jerry has for decades been recognized as the dean of the association law world, both in Washington and across the country. He is a frequent commentator, author, contributor, and speaker on association law topics, and recently came out with the seventh edition of the Bible of association law, the Association Law Handbook.
Welcome Jerry. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Hi, Tom. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: So there's a lot going on in the [00:01:00] world right now, but we're gonna try and focus primarily on three topics. First topic has to do with the use of artificial intelligence in associations and by associations. Then we'll move on to the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion in associations, and particularly the recent changes in the federal law and the sort of broader federal posture with respect to the use of diversity, equity, inclusion in governance and decision making by associations.
Finally we’ll turn to another topic that causes a lot of angst among association executives, which is bad behavior among staff, among members, and among others in the association space, and how associations can most effectively deal with those situations. So in the area of artificial intelligence, actually, particularly today, here we are.
In the third week in February, 2026, and we're [00:02:00] reading today, yesterday, over the weekend, doom and gloom scenarios around the use of AI from a number of consulting firm newsletters and other experts in the field, and AI is clearly becoming a very complex, difficult issue for everyone to deal with. How in particular do you see artificial intelligence impacting associations, Jerry?
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: It's gonna affect us all sooner than later, from everything that I can understand. Last year we had a role in the transition of what's arguably the leading AI company in the United States and the world Open AI from its historic founding as a public charity to more emphasis on a taxable business corporation.
And I had a chance to look on the inside of the workings of a large AI company. And what I learned is that it's being utilized with new creativity and new efficiency in different ways by different [00:03:00] users. The association community, almost by definition, is a person-to-person field. There's advocacy, which is often one-on-one.
There's professional education that's often very personalized. There are communications networking that's always personal, and so I'm wondering whether AI is moving more slowly into the association community than elsewhere because of the personalization required to be successful in association management. But we're seeing association clients use it effectively for preparing content, for communications, for summarizing meeting discourse, for cleaning or mining long lists of members, prospects, vendors, et cetera.
And we've seen some. Fairly creative, but so far very limited uses by comparison as lawyers in the [00:04:00] law firm community, we're going headlong in use of ai and I'm not seeing that as often among associations. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah, I would agree with that. What I've seen both personally within the association that I work for and some of my other colleagues experiences in the last, I would say three to four years, is a, a slightly slower adoption than in some other spaces in the commercial area. But I do see that accelerating significantly, and I see both use cases internal to operations and management of an association, almost similar to any other large organization and then external use cases. And maybe we can talk about those.
I think in both cases, it's important at the beginning to set some guardrails, to set some policies and procedures, some very clear expectations about how it's going to be used by your internal staff. For example, in our case, initially, I recall we had different groups [00:05:00] using different platforms. We'd have one, the marketing group, for example, maybe using anthropic, and you'd have the finance folks using ChatGPT, and you'd have the comms people using something else.
And we ultimately got to a space where we said, hey, we've got to figure out, first of all, a uniform tool that we're all gonna use, that we all can become conversant on. And then importantly, we'll all have a corporate license for and we can use appropriately. And that ideally will help us better integrate what we're doing across the organization in ai.
And is that, what are some of your thoughts on setting up those appropriate? 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: That actually makes sense. You're providing computers and in many cases, ipads and phones to employees. So you have every right to restrict what apps and software are used on those machines. And many organizations are picking one or two buying institutional licenses, which will sometimes allow confidentiality of use of these tools, which is a, [00:06:00] a big advantage.
And yes, everybody is struggling with “What are our policies going to be?” A continuing question is what about members who wanna use AI to summarize meetings they attend? Yeah. Whether governance meetings or educational content meetings. I would think that in our experience so far, we see more associations come down on the side of denying and forbidding politely and diplomatically use of meeting summary AI tools by attendees simply.
Because it's better to have one official record of what happened, especially at governance meetings. But I really appreciate that the exigency of membership relations, you may not be able to hold out. The members may just demand it. And I have seen some pretty darn good summaries of meetings produced by these programs.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah, that's an interesting case. And that's exactly a case [00:07:00] that you can compare to. This is the new technology we have. In some ways, the outcome of that technology is not a lot different in kind than the outcome. Twenty years ago we said, oh, can we record this meeting? Can we do an audio recording of this meeting?
And for the reasons you articulated well, we don't necessarily wanna have, we don't wanna killl the debate among board members or committees or what have you, by them thinking, oh, some somebody's gonna look at, listen to this in three weeks or three months, and maybe I misspoke and I didn't correct it.
And to your point, we want the minutes to be the official record. And so that, my recollection is the universal recommendation would be no, you shouldn't record meetings as a general rule now. I agree with you and just I see the progression that we've taken and some of my other colleagues and other associations, almost every call I'm on it.
We just automatically record it. And the governance people, the staff people use that summary to then [00:08:00] create their own summary and then a set of minutes and it's just become so easy, not error free, to your point, it's always critical to review, have a human. Review everything, but it's hard to stand in the way of that progress from a governance entity.
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: That's absolutely correct. And one final point, if we're gonna move on to another subject, we can't remind users often enough that right now AI's programs all hallucinate, they all make up. And, and so to develop something based just on AI and send it out to the members and find that a key fact or even an insignificant fact is just incorrect, will embarrass the association.
And so you've got to check the facts, although we are always surprised with the ability of AI programs to come up with things that we hadn't thought of or data points that we didn't know existed. But very often, not every once in a while, very often they make them [00:09:00] up and so you have to be sure and double check them all.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. Jerry, what about to this point? Everyone's on a Zoom meeting now, even when you are in person infrequently now, andwe all know it's being recorded by AI and will be used later. This notion of transparency around when we're using AI and then disclaimers to that effect. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: I think certainly when it's happening at a meeting, the attendees have a right to know that someone is recording what they're saying or proposing or objecting to.
So by all means, I think just membership relations again dictates transparency and openness, even to the point, does anybody object if we use this program in order to record and summarize this event in order to be more efficient in our work? 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: What about confidentiality concerns? I'm thinking of a board meeting.
A pretty standard agenda item is often executive session. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: One of Jacob's theories of Association [00:10:00] Law and Policy is that there's no such thing as a confidential association meeting because your volunteers are unpaid or just because this isn't the same as their employer. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: For whatever reason, it's virtually impossible to maintain complete confidentiality when you're making a major transaction and you're having it reviewed, or you're considering legislative or litigation advocacy alternatives or major budget issues, or you're evaluating the board itself.
Or senior employees of the organization, or obviously if you're listening to advice from your lawyers or investment advisors or others, confidentiality is important and it's a value to the success of the association, but it's very hard to maintain and, and it gets harder if people are recording meetings and you have no control over what they're doing with the recordings.[00:11:00] 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. I've seen a, for lack of a better word, a diminution in the value of confidentiality and their respect for it. Over the years, I don't know, because everything is now just out in the open and transparent and accessible to everybody. People don't think as much about confidentiality. But yeah, that's definitely a challenge.
What about intellectual property concerns when you're using AI? Internally as well as for a lot of associations like ours, we have, we have journals, right? We have clinical practice guidelines, we have other documents, content out there, and in some cases we found they're already being used or have been incorporated into some kind of AI platform without our permission.
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: It's the essence of what associations do to corral joint action for the improvement of this or that. Tocqueville remarked about it in the 1830s, how uniquely American it is. It's a [00:12:00] kind of barn raising mentality, offshoot, and from an intellectual property point of view, what. We have to worry about is, if six people or 16 people or 116 people together create something, they actually all own it unless they sign away their rights.
And yes, you need to be careful about creating content in a group, and you need to manage ownership of that. And if that means asking the participants to assign away any rights that they might have in it, usually as part of some other. Document, maybe on confidentiality or decorum for our meeting or agreement on what we're trying to achieve here.
And then you tuck in. And by the way, I agree that the association owns anything that's the output of this event and have 'em sign it. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. And then I know there a lot of significant cases right now before the courts around certain AI providers having gone into. Large news organizations and scraped [00:13:00] their archives.
And like I said, we've seen that with some of our clinical materials, journal articles, that sort of thing that are owned by us or in a lot of association cases. They might be owned by the publisher, but they haven't given any permission to do to use that and that, and 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Of course all of that is in litigation in a dozen cases.
And so far AI is winning. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Alright, last two questions on this area, then we'll move on. What about any insurance to try and protect yourself against liability, mitigate that risk. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Many associations now carry privacy disclosure data, privacy disclosure hacking damage insurance. I haven't seen the insurance community react or respond to risks from use of AI yet, and I'm guessing it's just too new.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: And then finally what I'm hearing is that there should always be this human oversight, this human intervention, whenever and wherever we're using it as an association.
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: [00:14:00] Absolutely. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Alright, let's move to another topic that's very timely and also it can be very challenging for a lot of associations, and that's the changing legal landscape, federal policy.
Changes or almost a change to some degree in the zeitgeist of the country on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and the impact on associations and those programs. I recall that there was a case brought by, I think it was Students for Fairness or something to that effect, versus Harvard and University of North Carolina.
And the Supreme Court found that it was illegal, I think, contrary to the equal protection clause, to use any kind of race consciousness in admissions decisions. And then that decision has then been used to justify, essentially what we hear from the federal government is almost a blanket ban on using any diversity, equity inclusion criteria in [00:15:00] decision making, in awards, in contracting, in education.
At the association level, what have you, can you speak to that a little bit? 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: There's a tension. There's a tension between the scientific evidence that suggests that a greater range of voices, ideas, input, can contribute to a more successful output in almost any endeavor. On the other side, there are civil rights laws that have been in place since just after the Civil War that prohibit treating people uniquely because of their race, uh, and by extension from the civil rights laws in the 1960s based on other protected gender, ethnicity, that sort of thing. 
And so how does one resolve that tension? Up to now, it's been step by step, the 2023 Supreme Court case that you mentioned.
The court was careful to limit the purview of its decision to college admission decisions, period. I. [00:16:00] And yet the principle has been taken up, especially by this administration, and extended toward the policy view that essentially all diversity, equity, inclusion, even more broadly, environmental social governance, where and if it.
Results in treating any class unfairly, including those not specifically. Not in a protective class is wrong. Right? In fact, more than once, the administration in various contexts has said it's illegal, but without explaining what it is that's illegal or on what basis it's illegal. In addition to the Supreme Court case, though, we ought to be aware of one federal circuit.
Court case, 10th Circuit, in which a private foundation had a program that provided scholarships to black owned businesses, women, black owned businesses, and it required the recipients of those scholarships to sign a contract on [00:17:00] how they would use the money from the award. And that was challenged in court.
In the 10th Circuit, Alabama, Georgia, Florida purview concluded that violated the post-Civil War, civil rights lawon contracting based on race. What we have so far is college admissions and contracts, but there is a view. By extension of the Supreme Court decision and perhaps the 10th Circuit decision that any kind of benefit or favoritism based on any protected class, if your association has a women's caucus or if it has anAsian Engineers networking group, or Asian American networking group, anything that appears to provide a special privilege or benefit based on participation or non-participation in a protected class in the view of some. Certainly this administration [00:18:00] is problematic. In indeed the rhetoric of the administration is it's illegal.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. Yeah. I know you mentioned just as an aside, ESG, the corporate model of environmental, social, and governance. Using those rubrics and the impact an organization has in those three spaces that's really almost been lumped in now with these DEI prohibitions and I've seen a lot of organizations either abandoning their ESG efforts altogether, or significantly downgrading them or recharacterizing them, refashioning.
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Yes, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the majority of associations that since the second Trump administration began, or taking a look at how they describe various programs and whether there are ways to achieve the same result without using what are potential. Trigger words that could be picked up by a bot somewhere, and if not getting you in trouble, at least [00:19:00] shining a spotlight on you that you'd rather have shown on you.
So we have a lot of clients that are changing diversity to community, but without changing anything else. Query whether that's really worth the trouble because you might offend some folks in doing in your group.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Exactly. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: And even that, but it's going on a lot. One incident that's, that's too long and complicated to go into in detail, but the Department of Education confronted 45 or so colleges and universities for their sponsorship of a particular organization and required that they report back to the Department of Education on what they're doing to mitigate and moderate. Essentially, they wanted these schools to commit to not any longer supporting that organization and one of them. University of Kentucky actually published what had reported back to the federal government, and it went ahead and screened.
We don't know how, they don't [00:20:00] explain how they screened 1600 nonprofit organizations. The University of Kentucky somehow contributed to most cases, probably paying faculty or staff dues for a membership in an organization, purchasing publications or whatever. The University of Kentucky then excluded for from consideration 400 of those because they felt they really needed that.
Nonprofit credentialing organizations or whatever, but the other 1200, they basically put on a watch list and asked DOE what to do about it, because in those 1200, they found evidence of potential civil rights violations based on DEI. Mm-hmm. What they found. But the very number of 1200 means they must have used AI to just 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah.
Yeah. That, that's what we've been hearing as well, that they're using. Keywords. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Yeah. So the point is, do you want your association's website [00:21:00] to be called out impropriety illegality and have to defend it, or does it make sense to change some terminology? 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: So it seems like we're in a very murky environment right now, and even though a lot of times you hear this is absolutely illegal.
Whether something is legal or illegal is still somewhat being adjudicated right now. Formally that said, prudence wisdom probably dictates making some modifications. I've heard the expression used for organizations that feel very strongly about these issues. You don't wanna be deemphasizing, DEI, but at the same time, you wanna be de-risking your association and taking some prudent steps to at least get you out of the crosshairs of the federal government and some of these agencies that are looking for examples [00:22:00] right now.
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: I think to conclude we ought to watch two things carefully. We ought to be careful as associations to not find ourselves in a position where we're actually entering into contracts such as scholarships that specifically involve preferential treatment to people based on race. We've got a late 1800s law that prohibits that, and we've got at least one for federal circuit court that said it's illegal.
So that's an area. We need to be careful of if you have a scholarship program where the benefits are based on racial characteristics, for God's sakes, don't ask the scholarship recipients to sign an agreement because that could get you over the line in terms of not just impropriety, but illegality, and then perhaps I would say softer.
Are you providing anything that could realistically be characterized as benefits or advantages to portions of your. Association constituency based on any protected [00:23:00] class characteristic. And it's just worth cataloging those and looking at them and asking yourself, does the culture history and success of your organization depend on perpetuating those or not, and make your decision.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. Yeah. Good points. Alright, let's move to our last topic, which is under the very broad category of bad behavior, bad behavior by members, bad behavior by staff, vendors, consultants in the context of association activities like an annual meeting or a board meeting or an educational course, and I think both of us over our many years combined have seen a lot of these in various different forms.
I will say what I find interesting, and I think something to keep in mind is how you deal with it. Also depends on what the dynamic is. Is it a member to member issue? Is it a staff to member issue? Is it a staff to staff issue? Is it a member to [00:24:00] vendor or external consultant issue? And we've had experiences with all of these various kinds.
How do you first set up? Again, going back a little bit to the AI adoption issue is the environment, the guardrails, the policies and procedures first to hopefully create an environment where you can at least discourage that and set up ways to address it if and when they do happen. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: I hope our behavior here has been beyond reproach, um, yours at least.
Jerry, has the problem accelerated in recent years? Is it COVID when everybody was cooped up? Is it just so much on the internet that everybody has access to right now? I don't know, but it is undeniable in our practice that we get far more frequent calls than we used to from our association clients about.
Bad behavior problems, usually at events, but not always. And it's almost appalling. Old fashioned sexual harassment is up [00:25:00] not down. And you would think that at this day and age we've gotten beyond that. Supreme Court has said that the sexual based conduct that makes a person reasonably uncomfortable is illegal.
And that an organization that does not have a written harassment policy is essentially defenseless against a claim, and that's basic. There's even a case in New York in which a member of an association asked to borrow an office while in the city from the association, and while there allegedly engaged in harassment, the association attempted to defend arguing that.
They had no control over this individual. He was just visiting the office, and the court said, no, you have an obligation to protect your workforce from this sort of thing by extension. That means that your associations have an obligation to protect your staff from attendees at events, engaging in improper conduct, specifically sexual harassment, but [00:26:00] also member to member to vendor staff, to vendor to staff, et cetera, et cetera.
I think we all know enough about sexual harassment to know what it is, how to help prevent it, what policies we need to have, et cetera. This is an issue that's been in the courts for the Supreme Court's Major decision was 20 years ago. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: But. What's new and unique we think is, is just extreme impoliteness.
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Individual dominating a board meeting and kind of not listening to other views and demanding the microphone far disproportionately to what is reasonable. Or individuals walking up to a long line at a registration desk and starting yelling, this is unreasonable. I don't have time to waste standing in this line.
Yeah, I paid my registration or I paid my dues, and those kind of situations are really difficult to deal with. One thing you pointed out that we find amazing is it really does depend who's offending whom [00:27:00] as to what the result is. We've seen associations where their leader, the elected chair, was accused of pretty significant wrongdoing, basically bearing their head in the sand and saying, he's one of us.
We'll talk to him, but no, we shouldn't offend him. He's one of us. A boorish vendor at a trade show booth, it's a lot easier to just throw the bone out. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Right? Yeah. I think I've, I'm aware of examples where, because of a lack of appropriate process, and I would say process and policies that specifically address the different contexts in which harassment, bullying, just poor behavior can occur.
I think how you deal with it. Internally and who deals with it is very important. In other words, if it's a member to member issue, my view is that you absolutely have to have peers, members primarily leading that charge. It's usually not well received [00:28:00] when staff are seen as the. Prosecutors, for lack of a better word, similarly, if the dynamic is between a member and a staff person who, whoever is potentially the individual at fault.
That's a little bit more of a tricky dance because I think you need to have some kind of a collaborative approach to it. There has to be a senior staff person, a CEO, or somebody at that level along with a member addressing it, because I think either way, if you. Turf it entirely to the membership or turf it entirely to the staff leadership.
You're gonna get one party saying, Hey, that's not fair to me. Those are I, my interests aren't gonna be represented, so I 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: You made a good point about having a baseline. Yeah. Too many of these situations arise in circumstances where the association has nothing to point to. It's really not a code of ethics issue.
Yeah. Not a business code issue. It's a behavior issue. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: It's a behavior, yeah. It's just you're being [00:29:00] a jerk. You're being rude, you're being disrespectful, you're being bullying. Whatever. 
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: More and more we are seeing associations develop a good behavior policy, having it have it approved by the board, and then have it click through for every single registrant at every single event I have read and understand the policy on behavior at this event and to move on.
Everybody's gonna click through it. Nobody's gonna read it, but if bad behavior occurs, you can point to that and say, look, you agreed to follow our code. There's ample evidence that you violated our code. We have to ask you to leave. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Yeah, no, absolutely. You've gotta have those codes of conduct on both sides, on the staff side as well as the member side and the vendor side, or consultant side as well.
Jerry Jacobs, Esq.: Yeah. Remember the Oscars award show a couple years ago when there was the famous slap? There was actually no code that dealt with that. 
Tom Arend, Jr., Esq., CAE: Unfortunately. There was something even. Awful. That happened recently at another award show that, yeah, it's, yeah, human [00:30:00] behavior always seems to exceed the battles that are set for it at some point in time.
Thanks, Jerry. We've covered a lot of ground from artificial intelligence to diversity, equity, inclusion to unfortunate and bad behavior within associations. Appreciate as always your thoughtful insights and counsel. Look forward to speaking again in the future. And in the meantime, I wanna say thank you to all of our listeners for this episode of Associations NOW Presents.
Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field. And highlight the significant impact associations have on our economy, the United States and the world. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Please visit Associations NOW online at associationsnow.com. Thanks [00:31:00] everybody.

Why AI Certification Matters for Association Leaders

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Dave Will, co-founder and CEO of PropFuel and host of Association Strong, is joined by Jason Oxman, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, and Amith Nagarajan, AAiP, chairman of Blue Cypress and co-founder of Sidecar, to examine the growing importance of AI certification for association leaders. They explore how AI is rapidly moving from experimentation into everyday workflows and why the real risk is not job loss to AI, but falling behind peers who know how to use it effectively. Amith discusses the challenge associations face in keeping pace with AI’s accelerating evolution, while Jason shares ITI’s practical, bottom-up approach to adoption, starting with small use cases such as meeting summaries, email drafting, and research, supported by clear acceptable-use policies and disclosures. The conversation also highlights how AI can strengthen member engagement through personalization, support board and staff education, and enable associations to develop new products and services for their industries.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/Xf3G-LmxEAM
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Dave Will: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Dave Will, co-founder and CEO of Prop Fuel, as well as the host of the Association Strong podcast. If you're listening to this, you'll love the Association Strong podcast.
You can find that at associationstrong.com. Today topic's all about AI certification and whether or not it's a valuable program for association executives. Spoiler, it is. So to dig into this a little further with me, I wanna welcome Jason Oxman, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), and Amith Nagarajan, chairman of Blue Cypress, and the co-founder of Sidecar.
Jason, welcome. 
Jason Oxman: Thanks, Dave. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on. 
Dave Will: Of course. And Jason, I just learned you are the host of the Download on Tech podcast as well, right? 
Jason Oxman: That is absolutely [00:01:00] right. We focus on public policy related to AI, so a little different than our conversation today, but a great opportunity here.
Conversations about advancements in tech. 
Dave Will: Who doesn't wanna hear more from government officials and Amith you. That was demeaning. I'm very sorry, Jason. I'm sure it's riveting. Talking to the government officials. Amith, welcome to this podcast. So Amith, you have the Sidecar Sync Podcast. 
Amith Nagarajan: I do.
It's a weekly podcast at the intersection of all things associations and artificial intelligence. We love doing it and the association community seems to enjoy it. 
Dave Will: So while we're on Sidecar, Amit, gimme 15 seconds on what Sidecar is all about. 
Amith Nagarajan: Sidecar is on a mission to educate the association world on ai.
It's very simple. We think that the catalyst to driving transformative change in associations is all about education. If we can educate 1 million or more people by the end of the decade, which is our mission at sidecar, [00:02:00] specifically in the association market, we think we're gonna make a big difference.
So our goal is to move the needle considerably on AI adoption, but AI adoption in the pursuit of driving transformational change. 
Dave Will: Was Sidecar originated with that intent or was, did Sidecar more or less embrace AI as it came to the forefront? 
Amith Nagarajan: Sidecar has been around about 10 years. It has not always been exclusively focused on AI, although AI has actually always been on the agenda for sidecar as a major item.
Up until about four years ago, we had a number of other things we covered, but we decided about 2020 1 22 that we were gonna go all in on AI and do nothing. Other than ai. So that's the shift we made. But the broader theme of sidecar is how do we help associations through change, through significant change, of course.
And right now, AI is the biggest driver of that. That may not always be true. And sidecars commitment is to be here for this community. Regardless of what the changing forces are at the moment, it really is about ai. [00:03:00] 
Dave Will: And Jason, before we dig into the AI talk too much, gimme 15 seconds on ITI. Why does ITI exist?
Jason Oxman: We are the oldest and largest trade association of the technology industry. We're founded in 1916 and we represent 80 of the world's largest technology companies, policy development, advocacy around the world, the regulatory and legislative environment obviously impacts the ability of the tech industry to offer innovative services to their customers.
And so the team at ITI, 60 people strong, spends all day every day advocating for public policy that helps advance innovation. Our member companies are all companies you would've heard of ranging from semiconductor manufacturers, data center operators, components manufacturers, big tech companies to the companies advertising in the Super Bowl against each other, the whole tech stack, if you will.
Dave Will: Yeah. Those are entertaining. Uh, the philanthropic and going after, was it Chat GPT, philanthropic going after Chat [00:04:00] GPT for the advertising? Yeah. We could have a whole podcast on advertising and AI. That'd be interesting to talk about. All right. Let's get into the topic, Jason. I've heard that 2026 is the year that AI becomes a productive tool for organizations.
I think what that means is AI has moved from this experimental phase where we're playing with it to making it more deeply ingrained in our operations. And so why the shift? What do you think changed in people's perspective of AI in the last year? 
Jason Oxman: I think what's interesting is AI is a technology tool, and I wanna oversimplify it.
It's software that does a lot of things very well, but it is still a technology tool. So every time we have technology innovation, we have questions about what it means for jobs and the dialogue around AI as a tool. Up until this year has been, I think, a positive and one perhaps driven by [00:05:00] curiosity, what is this gonna mean for my ability to do my job?
And that quickly became, what is this gonna mean for my job? And so if you look back over time, it's interesting to think about. MIT did a study on this last year. 60% of the jobs that people have today did not exist in 1940. Certainly a podcaster is a job that didn't exist in 1940, but overall, 60% of the jobs.
Out there in the country right now did not exist just a few decades ago, and that's because of changes in technology and we all have to adapt to that. I think our conversation today is important because it's a reminder that. My job might not be taken by ai, but it might be taken by somebody who knows how to use ai.
So I think it's more important to figure out how to use the tools to make yourself more marketable as an employee to make your organization more efficient and more effective than it is to view AI as something that's gonna cause. Such disruption that it eliminates jobs entirely. That's why this certification [00:06:00] conversation we're having, this education conversation we're having, particularly for the association community, is so incredibly important.
Dave Will: Did you say when you were introducing ITI, did you say it was 1960? 
Jason Oxman: 1916. So we're 110 years old. Our founding members were companies that made business equipment, so IBM, which used to be called the Computing Tabulating Recording Company, founded us in 1916. Back then, they made punch clocks and scales and adding machines.
NCR. Still with us today, one of our founding members made cash registers. So we used to be called the Association of Business Appliance Manufacturers. And I like the fact that you like old technology too. 
Dave Will: So I just pointed, if you're listening to this, I just pointed at an NCR cash register that's behind me.
I'm very proud of that. Actually, my grandmother was an entrepreneur. She owned a health food shop. When her husband died, she opened a health food shop and she had an NCR and I used to love playing with that. So she gifted it to me when she closed the shop and retired that [00:07:00] 1916. So I think back and at Thanksgiving and the holidays, I have conversations with my father-in-law who was a.
A developer back in the sixties and a developer back in the sixties used punch cards and yeah, it's just fascinating to think about the progress and the change. And so I take it based on what you're saying, you're not too worried about job replacement. Is that a fair summary? 
Jason Oxman: That's a fair summary. I'm not worried about job replacement.
I'm worried about people not recognizing that jobs are changing. 
Dave Will: Changing. 
Jason Oxman: Yep. And the tools that they need to be familiar with in order to adapt are very important to learn. 
Dave Will: Yeah. Amith you've been working in the association space for 25, 30 years. 
Amith Nagarajan: Yeah, it's been a while.
Jason Oxman: Yeah. And the association space is about, people are called associations because we bring people together to associate with one another.
There was this idea that [00:08:00] Zoom, which we're on right now, which is a great platform, and one of our member companies was gonna kill trade shows because people didn't need to travel anymore. But there is no replacement for the in-person contact with one another. The handshake, the eye contact, the conversation.
That's why trade shows continue to thrive, and the association community continues to. To thrive. AI is going to make it easier for us to develop content, to make use of that content, to bring people together, to research, to market all of the things that associations need to do. But it's not gonna replace that in-person contact.
And I think it's the same with jobs. We're gonna make jobs better. We're gonna free up time, be more efficient to do the things that only humans can do, but it's not gonna replace us. 
Dave Will: Yeah, it's not gonna replace my warm embrace when I see you at ASAE this summer. 
Jason Oxman: I look forward to that. Dave 
Dave Will: Amith, in your decades, which, by the way, you look amazing for having spent so many decades working with association. But if in your decades of working [00:09:00] with association you've seen a lot of change, when you first started working with association's, AMS weren't around. You started Aptify back in the day. LMSs weren't around.
I came out with one of the first LMSs back in the early two thousands. The rate of change though, that we're seeing with ai. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before it, it's unbelievable. How do you think the association space is responding or will respond to such dramatically fast change? 
Amith Nagarajan: Honestly, I'm pretty worried about it.
I think the association space is looking at this as another technology for the most part. I do think people are taking it seriously now as we enter 2026, which is great. I don't think they're taking it seriously enough. So I'm probably gonna come across a little bit negative, some of my comments, but I wanted to kind of reassure people that there's time to adapt, but the issue is that the speed at which this technology [00:10:00] is driving change is the problem.
It's not that we're not used to technologies driving change in jobs, and I agree with Jason, that's an excellent stat. 1940 to now 60% of the current jobs didn't exist. That should give us a lot of comfort. On the one hand, the flip side of it is that's 86 years. And the speed at which things are happening now is more like 8.6 months, right?
Is driving radical change. I agree with what Jason's saying that jobs are not likely to completely go away. But first of all, I don't know that any of us really know that to be true or untrue because we've never, none of us have ever been through this type of exponential change. What I will say is these systems that we have, whether they're systems of economy, politics, social systems, there's incentive reward systems in every aspect of life, in business and in personal life.
And the issue is that if you can substitute one product for another or one service for another, and one service is perhaps equivalent in value, but is dramatically less [00:11:00] expensive, or perhaps is even better in value and dramatically less expensive, you will at least seriously consider it, if not flocked to it, right?
It's unlikely that people will hire the jobs. To put it in, in labor economics terms that could be fulfilled by AI or could be 90% fulfilled by AI. So you think about jobs like customer service, a favorite one to pick on and say, is customer service currently being delivered in an extraordinary way universally across all companies everywhere in the globe?
I don't think anyone would say yes to that. That's why I say it in such a ridiculous way. Would most companies say that they love the customer service experience? They provide their own customers or what most associations say, they think the customer service they provide their members is extraordinary.
I don't think most people would agree with that statement. And if they could do that, and it's not about hiring tons more people. Maybe it's about taking the current people they have, but empowering them and that that's exciting. But most of the time when you're talking about like businesses, if you're saying, Hey, we have 5,000 people doing call center work.
I don't know that you're gonna keep 5,000 people. Maybe [00:12:00] not all the jobs go away, but a large number of them could. Now, that doesn't mean that those people can't be retrained. It doesn't mean that all hope is lost for those folks. I'm actually quite optimistic about retraining. I just don't know what those other jobs are yet, and that's what makes me nervous about this sector.
Coming back to it. I think associations have an extraordinarily important responsibility to themselves, internally and to their staff, but moreover to their sector, to their profession. Associations need to lead the way in terms of AI education for everyone, for themselves, and for their industries to help people figure this out, I definitely do not have all the answers.
I just think that the challenge is perhaps the steepest one we've ever faced when it comes to job retraining and readiness. 
Dave Will: So now a big part of that is the mission behind sidecar, and you guys have hands down, in my experience, become the leaders in AI education and now you've partnered up with ASAE there.
You and ASAE are working closely on this association, AI professional certification, otherwise known as [00:13:00] AAiP. If you're on LinkedIn and you're seeing any of your peers, it's unbelievable the number of people that now have AAiP next to their name. Can you walk me through a little bit of this training?
What does it entail? What's involved in the certification education process? 
Amith Nagarajan: I'd love to. The history behind it is we've been providing AI education in one form or another to this market for years, and about a year and a half ago, we decided that we wanted to produce a certification program so that professionals in this market could demonstrate that they have a strong level of competence in both ai, but also association use cases. How do you actually make AI practical for your association, right? Not just understand the theory behind it, but understand how to put it to work for you. And that's what the certification program is all about.
It was we need to teach you the basics so that you understand not just how to prompt ChatGPT. Sure, that's important, but we want you to [00:14:00] understand why certain things work. Why certain things do not work. We want you to be able to adapt and learn over time. So we also update the content extremely frequently.
Like every single month we're updating the content. To answer your question, Dave, we have seven courses that form the foundational layer of the AAiP certification, and those courses cover everything from foundational knowledge of what is AI and how does it work. We try to dispel a number of myths. We also try to provide some fundamental knowledge that we think is important for everyone to have.
Not deeply technical, but it does stretch your mind a little bit. I think in terms of understanding the technology, we want people to not look at it as a magical creature or a black box or something. We want them to have an idea of what's actually happening under the hood. We've touched, I think it's something on, on the order of about 110,000, 120,000 people that we've touched in some way.
Not with the AAiP program yet, that's over a thousand people now. But I'm talking about overall with our webinars, with our podcast, with our newsletters, with all the stuff that we do. We've touched a lot of [00:15:00] people. What we found is that people are both really curious, which is super cool and that the least technical association staff all sometimes are actually the best users of this technology, which I love 'cause that's not true for any other technology I've personally been exposed to.
It's normally the people that are most technically adept and the reason that's the case. Is because AI is so counterintuitive for technologists, right? We're trained to think in these very deterministic ways about how software and technology works, and AI is just this weird thing. It's non-deterministic, right?
It doesn't always produce the same outputs, given the same inputs, and a lot of times people that are more creative, people that have different backgrounds just find their way to getting more use out of it. In any event, the main point of the program is really simple. We want people to, number one, gain those skills and then we want them to have a valuable badge to be able to apply to their names so that they are recognized for their skills, for their knowledge, and for the value they can provide in our organization.
And we were surprised last year when we thought we might have a couple hundred people [00:16:00] get certified, but it blew up. And we love the partnership with ASAE. I've been good friends with. A number of people at ASAE and the organization as a whole since the nineties when they first started using my old company software.
And so I've known them forever and highly respect ASAE. And so partnering with ASAE to broaden the reach of the program is super exciting. So that partnership was launched in the fall and we're out there promoting it together. ASAE members do get a 10% discount. On the program, which is cool, and I can tell you more about it and double click on any of that if you'd like, but it's, we're very excited about it.
Dave Will: A number of my teammates at Prop Fuel have been certified with the AAiP and I'd love to see the rest of my team get certified as well. 
Ad Read: AI is transforming associations, and you can help lead the change at your organization. Through ASAE's partnership with sidecar, A SAE members get discounted access to Sidecar's AI Learning hub, both at the team and individual level.
Whether you're [00:17:00] upskilling your entire team or advancing your own expertise, you'll receive 10% off your subscription and access to the AAiP. Association AI Professional Certification. Get started today at sidecar.ai/asae and bring AI education to your organization today. 
Dave Will: I've been thinking about the evolution of AI usage recently, and I break it down into three tiers, and there's probably gonna be more tiers over time. In fact, I suspect you guys could probably expand on this, but the way I see it is, first it was treated like a fancy Google, one-off questions or help with creating content, writing a blog post, an email, making my email better, more concise.
The next tier is bigger projects that may require an MCP or multiple systems contributing data to do a [00:18:00] better analysis. And usually that's a collection in a multiple exchanges with one or multiples. And then the third tier, and this is the part that I'm most excited about implementing at my company, which is embedding ai.
Into continuous processes. And to me that's the holy grail when you've got it now baked into the way you do things. And I'm sure I could probably continue on. You guys more likely could continue on and say, then it's gonna do this, and then we could do that. But Jason first, someone working inside with that foundation, with somebody working inside an association.
Where does AI fluency. Create the most immediate impact. Is it operations? Is it member engagement, strategy, governance? Like where do you see AI playing the strongest role as the CEO of ITI? 
Jason Oxman: The biggest challenge any [00:19:00] association faces is engaging members, and imagine particularly for professional societies that may have tens or even a hundred thousand plus members.
The biggest use case that I see for AI is. The hyper personalization, if you will, of engagement with members, making sure that you're tailoring and making members aware of the offerings that are tailored for their specific use case. So I do think how members experience associations is what AI can really improve, and that's why it works.
Dave Will: You would think I fed you that answer. Coming from PropFuel, you would think I set that up for you, but it actually wasn't the case. But thank you for that. 
Jason Oxman: It was absolute not the case. 
Dave Will: Totally agree with you. 
Jason Oxman: I'm so glad to hear that. That's how I get invited back as a guest. But I do think that's an important use case.
And I also think it's important for associations to see this as a tool that can. Again, back to your jobs question [00:20:00] earlier, improve the efficiency of the way in which members interact with associations. So if you are in the customer service business and an association and you're getting dozens of inbound inquiries from members a day, you're gonna be able to respond to them more quickly.
You're gonna be able to find the information they're looking for more quickly. You're gonna be able to provide them, in fact. The tools they need to find the information themselves. So I do think there are improvements, as you noted to all of the operations of an association, but I do think that hyper-personalized experience, the one that AI can do better than anything else.
Think about an association like ITI that's 110 years old and think about how much material we have and how much content we've developed over the more than a century, and then think how hard it's to access that. A lot of it historically has been in a box, in a warehouse, but AI can make that all accessible in, in ways that are really useful to uh, members.
So I think that's the best use case for, uh, for associations for ai. And I'm really excited. Let me just say in response to what [00:21:00] ETH was talking about, I'm really excited about the work that he's doing with ASAE's job as an organization. Its whole reason for being. Is to help the association community do business, much as associations themselves, help their members do business.
The technology industry for us, and if I think back over my association career, what has ASAE meant to me? I'm a certified association executive, CAE through ASAE. Why did I do that program two decades ago? Because it helped me get my first job as a CEO and as an at an association because I could tell them that I got the education from the association of associations about how to run an association.
And going to ASAE's program with Sidecar to get educated about how to use AI in an association is just a great opportunity for all associations to take advantage of these tools. So I'm excited about that partnership as well. 
Dave Will: Boards are starting. Boards have noticed AI, so boards, for better or worse, [00:22:00] I think we have in the association space.
What I've witnessed in my work with associations is that boards are incredibly helpful and valuable and also very difficult and frustrating at the same time. Because essentially for staff members, you're working in the operations of the business. Probably know what you wanna do next. Now you gotta convince the board to jump on the bandwagon with you, and sometimes that's difficult to do.
As the boards are starting to ask more questions about ai, how do you think the certification helps professionals lead those conversations? Talk. Maybe you don't even have to answer that question. Just talk to me about how do we convince boards. To get on board with AI and specifically the certification.
Amme, take that one. 
Amith Nagarajan: Happy to. So I've been asked to speak to a number of boards by CEOs who believe that AI is going to drive change, but they're books don't buy it yet. And so what's 
Dave Will: your email [00:23:00] address Amith? 
Amith Nagarajan: It's Amith@bluecypress.io, just a Amith@bluecypress.io. Feel free.
Dave Will: I figured that might be a good time to plug that in there in case somebody wants your help and convince you for it.
But go on, tell, what do you tell? 
Amith Nagarajan: I love doing that, Dave. And hit me on LinkedIn too. I'm on LinkedIn a little bit too obsessively, but I've been asked to speak to a bunch of boards over time and speak at conferences and stuff, and when I do this. What I typically am sensing in the room is that the board doesn't yet really buy into the vision of their staff that they've hired that, whether it's the CEO, others, and part of that is because they don't think that those folks necessarily know that much about ai.
It was a year or two ago that boards generally themselves that didn't have much of an idea of ai, but now I'm finding that boards, they're not necessarily super well educated in ai, but they have a. Much better sense of it than they did a year or two ago, but they're not necessarily feeling that their staff is prepared.
And so when they bring in an outside expert to say, okay, this is the way AI can shape the association, that is helpful. But it doesn't matter how many outside [00:24:00] experts you get, we've got tons of them over here. Our business includes chewing, lots of consulting. We've got software companies that produce AI products.
We think, obviously they're all great, but they will make absolutely zero difference to your association by themselves if you don't educate your own people. And so the point of the certification is to bolster confidence in yourself that you know a good bit about AI and to showcase to your community, including your board, that you're prepared to do this.
And so that's just step one. Now I will say two quick things about education that are really important. And I think this is true for all education. It's extremely true for AI specifically, and that is you have to start small. You can't just start, you can't swallow the elephant in one bite, and two is you have to maintain your knowledge.
You cannot assume that just because you have earned a certification, whatever certification it is that you're quote unquote good on AI because AI is changing at this ridiculously fast rate. Even those of us who spend basically all of our waking hours trying to learn this stuff, deploy it, build solutions with it, we're all overwhelmed if [00:25:00] we tell you the truth.
It's extremely overwhelming. The technology is doubling in power at roughly a six month interval. So just think about that for a minute. Every six months that this technology doubles in power, that makes Moore's Law, which we benefited from and still benefit from for decades. Quaint in comparison. Moore's Law basically stated that computing would double in power relative to price roughly every 24 months.
And it did like clockwork for years and years. And the compounding of that resulted in actually what. Powers ai, but it was actually a very slow curve compared to what's happening now. So the point is that knowing what you think you know about ai, if your knowledge is circa 2025 and it's 2026, you're outta date.
And so from our perspective, the way we try to approach it is to get you started with small, consumable bites and then to keep feeding you over time. So our program isn't a one and done. Yes, there's the certification. Most people earn it in about six to eight weeks of time. It's about 20 hours of total time [00:26:00] commitment to earn it.
But the key to it is that to maintain your certification, you have to do work every year. You have to do a certain number of additional education. This is very common in association certification programs. We provide a couple courses a year that are what we call refreshers that update your knowledge. So that you can understand what's changed every six months.
And then in addition to that, we ask you to complete some additional coursework, either from us at sidecar or from anyone else that you choose, that you bring to us and we authenticate. So I think it's really important to think about both of those dimensions. It's a start small because otherwise you'll be overwhelmed by it.
You won't do anything. Most people I know, they say, I really wanna get started with ai, but I haven't had time. And I ask them, okay, what about 15 minutes tomorrow morning? Do you have 15 minutes tomorrow morning? And they say, yeah, I could probably make 15 minutes tomorrow morning. I'm like, okay, cool. Do that.
And then what about the next morning? You have 15 minutes and so on, right? And it's, the idea is if you carve out a small amount of time, it can take you 15 minutes. If you've got a half an hour, even better. But do something every day. Listen to a [00:27:00] podcast, play with some type of software, read a book, watch a YouTube video.
There's so many resources. Obviously Sidecar has great content that's at this intersection, but if you do something consistently, that's when you're gonna become an expert. You have to stay at it. 
Dave Will: Jason, tell me about your experience. As a CEO there leading the charge with ai, and tell me what was relevant, whether it was your exchange at the board, or your influence of your employees, or maybe it's the interest started at the staff level and they brought you along.
Tell me about your experience in embracing AI at ITI. 
Jason Oxman: Yeah, and I think as we've been talking about, there's some natural hesitancy to overcome because people are worried about what it means for their jobs. 
Dave Will: Were you hesitant or was your staff hesitant? 
Jason Oxman: I think the staff was hesitant. Okay. The board was certainly, and our board is not made up of technical experts.
Ironically, given who we represented as an industry, the board conversation was more about [00:28:00] just making sure that the tools we use are beneficial to the membership. But we took a bottom up approach to it. We didn't take a top down approach because the board was not driving the conversation about AI usage.
It was more about people on the staff being familiar with the industry. We represent all of the large model companies that are making these AI tools available. So it's obviously part of our daily life here at the organization, but not the technical side. Again, we are a government affairs policy focused organization.
So that bottom up approach meant we had a staff team that we formed, a staff working group who were interested in using AI to develop the. Policies and procedures for the use. 'cause that's important to have on board the acceptable use policy. How do we use it? How, what do we disclose about when we're using AI with a membership?
But also just looking at what kind of tasks were amenable to using AI to improve. So we started with use cases. Small ones that were actually pretty easy to deploy. Summaries of meetings, for example, email [00:29:00] drafting, for example, research on behalf of our members rather than trying to revolutionize everything at once and take on AI capabilities for everything.
And that bottom up approach led to the rest of the organization saying, oh, I see you can actually use AI in a way that makes it more efficient. You can do minutes of committee meetings a lot more quickly and move on to something else that's more strategic. So that approach really worked to help the rest of the staff.
See this as an opportunity. See the tools as something that could, IM improve the way they were able to do their jobs. 
Dave Will: Jason, what's the best way to reach you if people wanna connect with you? 
Jason Oxman: I'm on LinkedIn at J-O-X-M-A-N, Jason Oxman, or my email address is joxman@itic.org. 
Dave Will: Amith. Jason, thank you for the time today.
Is there anything that's in the back of your mind that you wish I asked? Is there anything you wanna say before we wrap it up? Amith, why don't you go first if you have something. 
Amith Nagarajan: I have a quick thing, which is the question people often don't [00:30:00] ask, but are probably thinking, which is, why should I do this right now?
Yeah. My answer to that is very simple. The speed at which this is moving will leave you behind if you don't get started. It is totally something you can do no matter where you're at today, but that won't always be true if you just sit on it. You have to go take action. I think every leader at every level needs to do this. This is not a thing for staff. This is a thing for CEOs. This is a thing for boards. This is a thing for everyone, and on the everyone comment I'll end with. I think that if you do not provide your staff with both the opportunity and frankly the mandate to learn AI, you're not only really underserving your own organization, but you're hurting your people.
The question you should ask yourself is those who are not. Very skilled with AI within six, 12, certainly 24 months. Will they be sought after as employees by you or by any other organization? And the answer is a pretty clear no. That you will not be employable [00:31:00] if you don't know ai. So as a leader, it's really your responsibility to make sure your team's future is bright with you and perhaps beyond your organization.
And so that's why I think this is such a serious topic for us to jump on. 
Dave Will: Amith, you said an interesting word, “mandate,” and I gotta say, at least in my company, granted we're a software company, but I don't think it's about software. We get so excited, like we get so worked up and excited about the things we're doing differently using ai.
I do not need to mandate. The interest. We, I don't need to force it down people's throats. People love digging in. And the more, like most things, the more you get passionate about something, the more you want to do it over and over. And it's incredible the passion we have on our end around ai. Jason, anything you want to add before we wrap this?
Jason Oxman: The only thing I'd add to your excellent questions, Dave, is the question of [00:32:00] associations thinking about how to improve their own practices and procedures using ai. We've been talking about that kind of the inward looking questions, but also encouraging some outward looking questions. Associations have customers who are their members, they represent industries.
What can associations deploy these tools on behalf of their members, make capabilities available that serve their members or the industries they represent. And obviously, Amith has done exactly that with the partnership with ASAE, ASAE's customers, their community, their members are other associations. So these tools that Amith has has deployed on behalf of the association community are what ASAE is providing to their customers.
But of course, there's an association for everything. So we should all be thinking about how we can help our members and our industries. Also use these tools to help satisfy the challenges that they have through AI education. 
Dave Will: That's a great point, Jason. Some of the most innovative associations that I've worked with in the past have built their own software companies or [00:33:00] invested in software companies or come up with incredibly creative.
Tools or services for their members that drive additional revenue? Uh, yeah, that's a great point, Jason. 
Amith Nagarajan: I agree completely with that. I just wanna say that that's where associations looking at the industries they serve are going to thrive because those are the services and products that people want to buy from you, that they're not yet buying from your associations.
And it's also. A completely achievable goal. We actually help a bunch of associations create branded, tailored content just for their industries, and there's lots of ways to go about that, but it's an achievable goal, and it's something I think associations are perfectly positioned to go after and both capitalize on and deliver extraordinarily value to their members.
Dave Will: And to add to the list. I'm Dave Will, also on LinkedIn. My email is dave@propfuel.com. Thank you, Jason. Thank you Amith. And thank you to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Join us each month as we explore key [00:34:00] topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US, and the world.

Practical AI: How Associations Are Putting It to Work

In the first episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare, Director of Partnerships at HighRoad Solutions and co-host of the Rethink Association Podcast, sits down with Lance Wiggins, CEO of the Automatic Transmission Rebuilders Association, and Layla Masri, Vice President of Customer and Product Intelligence, AI Strategy, and Adoption at Higher Logic, to explore how associations are using AI in meaningful and unexpected ways. Lance and Layla share their professional journeys and discuss how AI is being applied to real-world association challenges—from improving efficiency and reducing errors to strengthening member engagement. Lance highlights how AI tools have reshaped technical support and training within his organization, while Layla emphasizes the value of starting small and building confidence through early, impactful wins. The conversation also addresses the importance of using trusted platforms, like Higher Logic, to adopt AI securely and responsibly. Throughout the episode, the guests underscore how thoughtful AI implementation can free up staff time, improve service delivery, and deepen relationships with members.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/T_L5q9QcfDA
This episode is sponsored by Higher Logic.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to the inaugural episode of Associations NOW Presents Industry Partner series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, director of Partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot solutions and implementation partner, and your hosts of this series throughout the year.
This episode today is sponsored by Higher Logic. Today we're excited to welcome Lance Wiggins, CEO of Automatic Transmission Rebuilds Association, and Layla Masri, VP of Customer and Product Intelligence, AI Strategy and Adoption at Higher Logic. Layla, Lance, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to be with us today.
Lance Wiggins: Thanks for having me. 
Sharon Pare: Well, before we dive in, I'd love for each of you to give a quick introduction for our listeners a little bit about who you are. The organizations you represent, and since we're talking about AI today, I wanna know, this is a little bit of an icebreaker here, but [00:01:00] what is one way professionally or personally that you've unexpectedly started using ai?
Layla Masri: All right, so yeah. Thank you Layla Masri. So I am a new hire to Higher Logic, but come from a very deep association marketing background. Many of you in the association space know me from 20 plus years that I ran my own digital agency. Worked with tons of different membership associations doing web and app development, interactive.
Capabilities and so I'm very excited to help Higher Logic, head up AI practices, and build out what is looking to be an extremely robust pipeline for 2026 and beyond. I have used AI most recently in some really fascinating ways. I have used it. To craft jokes to send to my kids really bad Dad jokes. I have used it to create the proper ratio for hanging photos on a [00:02:00] wall.
I have most recently used it. I am going on vacation shortly and I used it to help me strategize my itinerary where a couple friends were joining in the middle of a trip. So I had to optimize the key sightseeing moments, but then also build in a really robust amount of things around it. Super geeky, very helpful.
 
Sharon Pare: Love it. How about you Lance? 
Lance Wiggins: I am the CEO of the Automatic Transmission Rebuild Association. I have been with this company since 1999. The company has been in existence since 1954, celebrating our 70 plus birthday here shortly. We are the only association in an entire planet Earth that does this.
We are a facility that we do research training for transmission shops internationally. We have a little over 2000 shops in the United States. From coast to coast, north to south, we have rebuilder and [00:03:00] warranties that go from Canada, all the way through, the United States. We have chapters that are in Canada, chapters that are in Latin America, chapters that are in Australia, Asia, Australia, chapters that are formulating now currently in the UK as well.
Primarily our goal is to help transmission shops fix your vehicle. There are billions of vehicles out there right now with automatic transmissions in them, how to diagnose 'em, how to fix 'em, how to repair 'em, how to, and also to make sure that we are servicing the customer. We are all servants here at the association, so our culture is of that.
I've been a coach for 25 years, so I know how to coach people. I know how to coach other things. Believe it or not, we've actually been using AI in the automotive industry since, I'm guessing it started back in 19 96, 97 when we had adaptive strategies for transmission. So [00:04:00] adaptive strategies on any vehicle.
Once you rebuild the vehicle, rebuild the transmission, it doesn't know who's the, who the driver is. It doesn't know what the baselines are. It's basically when it gets rebuilt and reinstalled, you can consider it. A toddler, it doesn't have any idea how to walk or shift, right? Or who the driver is. Some drivers are leadfoot, others are soft foot.
You adapt the transmission and once the shifts start getting better and you start getting smoother, then you give it to the customer, and the customer say, it didn't shift this smooth before. I liked it when it shifted. A little bit firmer. Typically, we will tell 'em, give it a couple weeks and come back for your checkup.
If in a couple weeks it's still the same way, we'll take a look at it, but more than likely, it's gonna adapt to who you are. We currently use AI for our technical hotline through Hire Logic, actually, and or one of our partners. We've, we've named our AI assistant techie go figure, and in we can ask it [00:05:00] all kinds of cool questions about automatic transmissions.
It pulls everything from our 90,000 pages of data and it's really helping our association and our members gather information a lot faster than making the phone call and going through that, that, that pro, that process. 
Sharon Pare: I think that's incredible. Lance, in the nineties, adaptive strategies and AI existed before I think we even knew what AI was.
So love to hear about this in the podcast today, and we're going to dig into the six points that Layla has shared about AI adoption that has come up again and again in conversations across our industry. So I think the perfect time to unpack them. Is today from both the technology and the association perspective.
So let's kick it off. And Lance, I know you're about to just get into this here too, but there are so many organizations that are getting stuck thinking they need some type of full strategy before they can even start. So Lance Layla, I'll leave this open for both of you, but how are you identifying that [00:06:00] first meaningful use case for ai?
And Lance, if you wanna dig into this phone line system, or Layla, how you help them implement this, that'd be a great start. 
Lance Wiggins: Sure. So we have had technical department. Since the late eighties, and typically you want to go, for those of y'all that don't know about faxes, fax mill was a big thing back in the day, right?
And so if somebody would call with a problem on a vehicle, we would go through the different scenarios, fax them over a check sheet, or, or a fix, or definitions or specifications, whatever the case may be. That's how that would go. Then email became a thing, and then now with our AI, what the way we use it is actually a lot more efficient, a lot faster.
It's freeing up our technician's time. Even when the phone call comes in, we actually, our technicians go to the AI assistant with [00:07:00] 90,000 pieces of material that we've done in over the course of 35, 40 years. Nobody knows where everything's at, and this is, it's literally, this is like going to a library back in the day.
If I date myself at 55 years old, back in the day, you actually went to a Rolodex and you opened it up and you pulled out the card and you went over to the location where it was at. This is exactly the same thing, just a heck of a lot faster, and we found that the timing that we have to actually do more research on vehicles.
It's unprecedented. We just have a lot more time to, to actually dig into real world problems that prior to that we just, we didn't have that much time. So it's working for us. 
Layla Masri: That's a perfect use case and a great way to dip your toe into the water is to figure out what you have already on hand and or what things you're struggling with.
If there's something you're doing, your staff are doing 50 times a day or a week, [00:08:00] those are things that are just absolutely slam dunk opportunities to look and see if there's a way that AI can optimize and assist with those types of repetitive tasks. It frees up your stuff to do the more needy subject matter expertise, like really digging in with personalized service.
I've found that that has been a really great way to dig in there. Associations somewhat stereotypically, I will say, have. Often been somewhat risk averse and we've seen so much technology come our way of faxes, right? Websites, apps, all of these things like I have lived through the development and creation of those things.
I've helped people implement them, and I think any new technology is gonna come across initially is big and scary. You're worried. Do I have the time, the people, the budget to learn one more new thing to implement this. But there's also that balance of understanding that your members are expecting you to go places with them and to be somewhat forward thinking.
So the [00:09:00] thing that is so promising about AI is that this is the lowest risk technology pilot that I've seen in 20 plus years. You don't need extra budget, you don't need extra people. You can bite off just the teens CS piece and especially using tools like Higher Logic where they're built in. And for our customers, they're free to charge as well.
It's great to just test your, you put your toe in the water, test them things, and then iterate and build from there, which is exactly what Lance and the team are doing. 
Sharon Pare: And I know a lot of folks are still feeling really intimidated by ai, but I love that toe in the water analogy that you just mentioned, Layla.
So. What does that actually look like for associations who are starting to explore ai? I know you started talking about it a little bit, but what are some of those smaller, low risk ways that they can start experimenting with it now? 
Layla Masri: Sure. I can give you two examples that we actually have inside of our Higher Logic Thrive software that are already going gangbusters and are gonna be built out with a lot more functionality in 2026.
So one of [00:10:00] them is the idea of an ai cis. Right. We're at this point, a lot of us are using things like chat, GPT. Lots of us have already used chatbots in various ways across different websites, not just in the association space, but whether you're traveling or whatever. A lot of the kind of back and forth with a chatbot, and that's the lowest I think, hanging fruit that you can implement right now.
And the wonderful thing about using an assistant. Is that you can create a closed wall garden of your content because certainly a lot of associations, of course, we're investing in our own content. We are curating, and that's part of what your membership value is, getting that specialized content that you can only get with a membership.
So we don't wanna put that out into the world. You don't wanna feed that into the chat GPT and let everyone have it. It devalues the membership. It devalues the importance of that research and the exclusivity of your content. With chatbots like the AI assistant, you can actually have that [00:11:00] walled garden where you can say, I would like you to search within my, my repertoire of all of my documents Lance was saying.
Go through that look and see what's available. You can send me to relevant documents. You can suggest events. You can basically pull from all of the things in your learning management system and your content management system, and you can quickly get people to places. However, we all have seen the Yeah, but you might not have the right thing that I want.
And I think one of the best things that we have been implementing is this idea of. Ask my fellow human if I don't get the right answer, if I'm not seeing what I want, or, this is interesting, but I want more. That's the real value is not replacing the human being, but giving you access to information and then allowing you to pose that back to your member community, to then richen the experience and truly.
Take what you've learned from that initial pass with a chat bot, for example, and then take that out into the world and see what your fellow humans are actually experiencing. So it's a really [00:12:00] nice blend of, again, trying out functionality, but also ensuring that you are getting the best of what your colleagues and your professional network have to add to that.
Sharon Pare: And Lance, I've got one for you. And I know that the A TRA has been familiar with AI for quite some time here now, but was there something that made it feel. More manageable for your team instead of overwhelming that you can recommend. 
Lance Wiggins: So for us, it's interesting. I have to digress back to my, my history really as a coach and a football coach, I'm used to change.
Literally you change every half. Sometimes you change in the quarters, sometimes you change of practice. So the whole aspect of new, to me, it's like it's, I'd live it. Our culture here is very much the same. We love technology. We absolutely thrive in technology, right? We, we looked for ways to do things more efficient [00:13:00] and to be better, to better serve essentially our members.
The internet was a big deal back in the day when we launched, we actually launched. ATRA online back in the late nineties, early two thousands. It was like, oh man, look at, this is magical. And it was pages and pages and pages and nobody minds scrolling. Nobody. You'd search for something, you'd scroll and scroll and scroll, and you'd finally find something, maybe you didn't.
Then we decided to add some descriptions, and then that was a big deal, right? And then we decided to add just the transmissions, and then that was a big deal. Now. When you go to the internet, we the company, we don't go to the internet. We go to an ai. We either go to Gemini or we go to chat GBT, or we go to Gro or we go to Techie.
So if we're inside of our higher logic profile, we go to techie. We ask that question in techie, and if he doesn't know. With a [00:14:00] few adjustments that we made because Allis want to give you an answer. They all, it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong, they want to give you something, feel compelled to just give you something which we appreciate.
But in our world, if we give them something that is inaccurate, that could cost 'em thousands of dollars, it could cost some customers, it can cost us thousands of dollars and customers on our end, we've worked really hand in hand with. Higher logic to, to try to finite our material because it's 275 different types of transmissions out there at any given time.
Uh, 2000, if you go back to 40 years from now, and each one of 'em, while they're different, they work the same internally. The rules virtually the same. And if we don't have the information, we want them to go ask a human, along with what Layla was saying. If somebody goes on and says, I have this transmission with this problem.
And our AI assistant gives them an answer, [00:15:00] but it's not what they're looking for. They can simply ask a human, and then, and now they have a chance to ask 12,000 different individuals, including our technical department and the, and now the answers that come in are. Become part of the AI as well. So it's gonna continually keep learning and learning where that did not happen before, but that wasn't even a part of our thought process.
Now, to give our members an opportunity to see this, to give our own technical department an opportunity, and I want to say this, there were times where we didn't really know what question to ask, and with the formulation of ai. You're asking questions, you didn't even, because you're getting an answer, wait a minute, and then you ask another question, then it, and then another question, and then all of a sudden, four hours later you find yourself, ah, that's the answer I'm looking for.
But it's a wonderful tool that we're currently using and, and I just, it's gonna enhance our association. It's gonna propel us into another [00:16:00] sector, another sector that we've never been in before, actually. 
Sharon Pare: I think that's a really great point, and I think this brings us to one of our next key points.
It's, we're talking to ai, it keeps iterating with us. But I wanna ask this, Layla, but where do you see AI helping associations, reducing those human bottlenecks or operational slowdowns? I know that's a another key point that you mentioned has been brought up time and time again, but is there, what do you see there?
Layla Masri: Yeah, I mean, there is a concern that people have that, like Lance mentioned, it is very important that you can validate that the information that people are getting suggested to them by AI is what will be helpful. It is the right answer. So that's always a key concern. Of course, knowing that the information is coming out of your system makes it a very trusted experience.
But ironically, avoiding AI sometimes is often riskier than using it, presumably because it can help catch mistakes. It can help reduce [00:17:00] some of the things that human error can introduce. AI can often solve for that. But I think the real beauty of AI is that it's just, it's so fast you can get answers in seconds, and like we said, if you don't get that answer, your tools can prompt you where to go next or can ask you questions you didn't think about.
That's one of the things I love about using some of the tools like GPT, et cetera. Where they all, they never just give you the information they end with. Could I help you find an event to go to that would cover this information? Or are you looking for resources? May I connect you to a Higher Logic community where this is being discussed.
So it's really a lovely way to keep that conversation going. As I mentioned, reducing repetitive staff tasks that can introduce inconsistency. That's a great way. To employ ai. It can also help if you have a small staff, which many people do. You can use AI to help teams respond to [00:18:00] things faster. So actually providing better member service and then being able to funnel people that do need that kind of personal assistance, but you do help reduce that overall workload.
And then really it's like having an insurance that you are providing a timely communications with people, it standardizes a lot of the delivery of that material because typically if you're reaching out to a customer service, you're getting my way of telling you this information or Lance's way of telling you this for information.
The nice thing is you can have that beautiful quality control. This is how we want to talk about these things, or these are the kinds of resources that we want to offer. So it does provide a lot. Of risk reduction and it does speed up operation so that it again frees you up to do the things that humans are really good at.
Sharon Pare: Lance, is there an example where AI has helped her team to work smart and avoid errors? Just digging into what Layla had just mentioned 
Lance Wiggins: soon. I'll say that the transmission is a very complex piece of machinery, [00:19:00] so at any given time in a transmission, he could have 500. Pieces of parts, right? Our system and the way that it uses our material is again, based on what we've loaded into, and pretty much we've loaded almost everything.
It's learning our videos, it's learning our rebuilding videos. So to give you that example, we asked a question last week on how to rebuild a pump. Assembly from a 10 R one R 80 transmission, and it gave us some generic information. A week later, we asked the same question. Not only did it give us the accurate specifications, but it also gave us three sources to go and look and view for our pleasure as well.
So now you can go to the [00:20:00] PDF, you can go to the video. You can see how the pump is built. So as it's learning, like I mentioned, it's like a toddler now. Maybe it's a five year old and seven year old. And the more information you give it, the fungi year it becomes, and really for us, it's just making sure that the information we're giving it is accurate.
And our technicians, we've got 300 years of technical experience between everybody here, including myself. When we build things and we edit. We make sure that quality control maintains The difference is if you, if you drop that stuff into Gemini or drop that stuff in a chat, it, it pulls from all over the place.
That's where you can get in trouble. Yep. You can really get in trouble. 
Layla Masri: If I could add one other item. As you said, it's every month, every day. It feels that the agents, these engines are getting smarter and smarter. There are things that I can do now that six months ago wasn't [00:21:00] able to do. Same for pretty much anybody across the AI universe.
The half-life on improvements is just. Astonishing. And I think what we're really seeing is AI is improving in a way that allows us to get better info to answer things more accurately. And in fact, that's what Higher Logic is devoting a lot of our roadmap and AI development to do. And this is what we're focusing on right now.
And then definitely for 2026 and beyond ongoing releases. And you mentioned, Lance, you mentioned adding video and that's one of the things that I am personally so excited about. Is the ability for AI to add transcription to video and to be able to search it. How game changer that is. If you like this exact podcast, being able to search for text and language and phrasing inside a video like that is.
Super exciting. 
Sharon Pare: Our logic unifies your community marketing, learning events, and more into a complete engagement [00:22:00] ecosystem. So every member touchpoint feels connected and personal. With AI powered campaigns and vibrant online communities, members feel seen, supported, and excited to engage every day. And because everything works together, your staff spends less time wrestling with tech and more time achieving your mission.
Plus you get built-in strategic guidance and support to boost retention and turn passive members into passionate advocates. See how higher logic is revolutionizing engagement by booking your demo@higherlogic.com. I wanna shift gears a little bit. See what I did there, Lance? 
Layla Masri: Anyway. You mean to need chat GPT or write your dad joke for that?
Sharon Pare: Just ask my dad. Dad jokes of association. We talked last week and you both said that this is the first time we've all had, we've had technology that's now truly accessible to everyone. So what do you think makes AI different from some of those past digital tools? 
Lance Wiggins: For us, it's. [00:23:00] By far, it's the speed of searchability.
It's the q and a. It's the informal formal conversation. You, as you're talking to our techie program, it's asking other questions, and then as you're having that conversation back and forth, it's like. When we have a brand new trend that we, we actually have a brand new transmission down there from Toyota.
It is state of the art. It's a CVT transmission that doesn't have, uh, a belt in it. It's two electric motors that run this. It is state of the art. It is the future of CVTs. It's pretty awesome. We pulled it apart, so you got three guys sitting there pulling it apart, figuring out how to pull this thing apart.
There's no videos on it. There's the Toyota hasn't released anything on it. We're all bouncing stuff off of each other, right? And so we're taking pictures and we're doing things. The motor is the same type of motor that's used in other, like Elon Musk has in this Teslas, right? Same type of motor. So I'm, all right, let's, [00:24:00] let's go to our programs and we start researching some of the programs, start finding out how the motor actually works.
Now we can put it into our own words, how that works. Once that happens, we put it into our higher logic platform. Now when we do the videos where we do the shoots, we do the, anybody that gets on there when they search this transmission is gonna have an endless supply of material that they can't get.
They can't get it from Toyota. That's another thing that I think is very interesting is all of the manufacturers, all of them back in the day. We used to go to a helm, a bookstore, and purchase shop manuals for every manufacturer out there. Toyota, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler. The ones you couldn't get really were BMW and Volkswagen, but we don't really have a lot of those units in the United States as much as they do in Europe.
But you, that's where we purchased our library and would fill up rooms. I'd have hundreds. Thousands of books, [00:25:00] and you'd go to a book and you'd open the book and you'd go to the page and you'd find the page and you'd scan the page and you'd fax the page and so on and so forth. And then when everything went digital, now you could get it digitally, but the subscription, right?
Like anything else that you purchased, there's a subscription. The subscription cost, if you don't use it once or twice a month, people start thinking, I'm not gonna really use that. We started building that into our own subscription. Like any other association, when you have material that will help your members, you build it, you research it, you build it, you put the training together, and now you have that information.
So what we're doing now currently is building that information for the future. So next year when they get into, it's all gonna be accessible to 'em. That's proprietary. That's not out in the world until somebody gets that transmission and decides to throw it on YouTube. But do I actually trust that guy? I don't know.
I would much rather trust the association that's been around since [00:26:00] 1954 doing transmissions since 1954, 90,000 plus technical things and 300 plus years of material. It's a game changer for us. It's just huge. It's just a, it's a great opportunity for us to do things that we haven't really had the opportunity of doing with less people.
We have a saying, you can only go as fast as the slowest car in front of you. And that's a true statement, right? But when there's no cars on the road, look out, man, we could, we can get up and get to it. This is just, it's just changing the way we do business, literally right in front of our eyes. 
Sharon Pare: It really is, and I wanted to add something in here and throw this in.
Especially as you say, you can only go as fast as the car in front of you. And I was thinking about this over the weekend, and a lot of our for-profit peers, right? Us in the tax exempt world, our for-profit peers. I think that the level playing field of AI is now, we're all behind that same curve. Do you think this is an opportunity for the association world as historically?
[00:27:00] We've always been a little bit behind that curve. Is this time for us to be able to set that tone and innovate with this technology? Now, what do you, I would love, 
Layla Masri: I think AI tools are modular, so modular that I think it really lends itself to really. Making a jump in deciding what you wanna try so you can turn on AI for a single workflow or single campaign.
You don't have to take this huge leap of faith. You can just take a leap of curiosity or a step of curiosity and say, what would it be like if we tried this one thing? Even if it's something that's just for one department of your organization, you can try that. You can try AI without making like an overarching.
Commitment to ai and what that means is that there's no IT lift. You're not talking about like integrations, you're talking about staff that can run like micro experiments off the side of their desk like Lance is describing. And you can then determine what's the ROI on this? So that if you can, if you decide that this is something you wanna take [00:28:00] more broadly through your organization, then you can explain.
We ran a test on it. The test took us an hour to set up in our existing tools. We ran it for this amount of time. These are the results we would like to now implement this through the rest of our organization. And assuming, of course, those results are highly positive, whether it's we've reduced staff time, we have things like smart campaigns in higher logic Thrive, where you can actually use AI to.
To generate very hyper targeted micro campaigns to do the stuff that staff usually doesn't have time to do. Like encouraging people to join a committee or to update their profiles so that you can best customize experiences for them. Really important stuff. A lot of times people don't have the time to do those things, so if you can bite off these little pieces, show that they work, it's just a great way to, to jump in your staff benefits.
Your members will feel it after that. And these like snowball effect of these internal winds make the innovation and the reach of [00:29:00] it and your expansion of that seem a lot less scary and gets people more excited about it. 
Sharon Pare: So question for you both when you are saying to just start going out there and peak that curiosity by actually using it.
What defines a trusted platform for everyone to start it? And is it security, is it usability? Is there something else? What would you say is a great place to start, 
Layla Masri: if I can jump in on that one? Of course, higher Logic has built this into our tools and is continuing to build this into. Platform, and I think regardless of what you use working with ai, the safest way to try ai, I believe, is inside of a trusted platform.
Because as Lance mentioned, if you go out and start to roll your own, you can be introducing a variety of different issues. For example, taking proprietary content and putting that out on the internet. Diminishes the value of your organization. It also requires IT assistance to make sure that you are tapping [00:30:00] into the proper agents or LLMs, et cetera, that you're able to move this content around and have it digestible and output.
So that would mean like writing APIs and not like people's heads are probably like, yeah. Too much tech, right? It gets overwhelming. So anytime that you can try something, anything of a tech experiment, I think it's always best to try it inside of a platform because the data stays where you're already governing it.
You are not worried about uploading many things sensitive, as I mentioned, and then. The great news is that the AI and what it does and its outputs, can also follow the same permissions and rules that you have set up in the rest of your systems. So starting where your data already lives, it means that you can just work with inside your tech stack and you don't have to do anything special to it.
You're just enhancing it. I'm sure. Lance, you have some thoughts on that? 
Lance Wiggins: Yeah. Interestingly enough for us, the majority of the people that currently work for the association aren't. Brand new. We've [00:31:00] had a 30 year turnover, so most of the people that had worked with us had been with the company for 30 plus years.
My, I've been with the company for 26. Those groups of bodies are retiring and the newer groups, which are much more. Used to working in these types of platforms are the ones that are suggesting these type of platforms. So it's, I'm a father of six kids. I understand how this goes from the age of 24 to 33.
So I've got a pretty good span of technology that they use. Some things I do, some things I don. Our material is proprietary to an extent. We produce material, we do members and non-member events. We have books that we have that we sell to members and non-members. And believe it or not, there are people that scan it, put it on the internet for everybody to use.
That's cheaters will be cheaters. That's how that works, right? But having something that we can. Sandbox [00:32:00] and it's our own material. You can't put a price tag on that. That's where this particular scenario and using the AI platform within higher logic, for us, it's a game changer. Like I mentioned before, it's just, it's gonna take us to a place that we probably thought if we're gonna go with some other larger companies that are out there, the price tag is.
B beyond expectations. This works this and they're working with us. That's another thing. OG is a great company. They are literally partners with us. So as we give them something, they give us something back and then we collaborate and say, this is where we're at. We are very unique. We are the unicorn of unicorns.
But there are no other company like ours. They are companies like. No other association like ours, you can't just put a blanket and say, this is good for all associations. Some associations are different than others, and this is the best part about this and working with them, is that we can give them our problems, tell them where we're at, and then they're creating solutions that are not only [00:33:00] helping us, but also could help other associations as well.
Sharon Pare: I think this will be an interesting note to end on for our podcast. We've run out of time, but speaking of time, we talked a lot about how AI has given our staff that time back too, right? And I wanna keep this one a little bit more generic, but what do you think associations. Could accomplish if they did have 10% more, 20% more of their time back each week, because now they're using these technologies that are now in place at the organization and either one of you can jump in.
Layla Masri: Sure. I'll start. So I think in terms of using AI that's giving. Time back to their staff. That's not changing. Member experiences. The, so I'll summarize the things that I think AI would be fabulous use for in terms of how we're saving time. So drafting, marketing copy, summarizing discussion threads and [00:34:00] communities, suggesting engagement messages, auto tagging, categorizing content.
Those things are huge. If Lance can say to his team, Hey. We can use AI to do those kinds of things. Then what it allows his team to do, and I'll of course let you speak to this with the specifics, Lance, but like theoretically across all organizations, so you're then not asking a staffer to, Hey, pull out that generic email that you send every time someone asks you for X.
Or if people are needing resources on these 10 things and we just have a list and you have to send them out. That's probably not the best use of that person's time. You really wanna use them for strategizing, for analyzing, for sitting with your membership and actually providing like real customer experience and customer input so that helping them actually problem solve and or ideate on really bold and audacious [00:35:00] things, whether it's marketing, whether it's event planning, you name it, community engagement.
Those are the things where people. Are really great at doing that, and you build those relationships. That's why AI has, in my opinion, an area where it sits in helping manage, digest, and surface information, but it's never gonna replace that value, the human being. And that's why we join organizations, right?
We're not just getting it for information. So much of it is about the community, about learning from your peers, sharing your subject matter expertise. That's what I think the staff of an organization. Are also best free to do when you introduce those efficiencies of ai. 
Lance Wiggins: Yeah, a hundred percent. For our association, it's, it's an aged association.
If anybody's listening to the news, you got Ford CEO going on there saying, we, we have a technician shortage, et cetera, et cetera. That's true because quite frankly, we told everybody to go to college and been tell 'em to work on cars. So [00:36:00] it's the way that the world works, right? Like we mentioned earlier, it's the world's a different place than it was 30 seconds ago, even 30 years ago, right?
The curiosity is there for our staff. We spent most of the time gathering lists getting. Dues shipped out, answering incoming calls, getting events organized. We failed miserably at communicating with our people. And to me that is the most important thing. If we don't talk to our people and we don't have a relationship with our members, there's a huge question they ask.
Why am I a member? It's very simple. And if they think that we don't care. They think that we're just an entity, a body that collects dues, chances are they'll leave. And once they're gone, as any association would know, they're, it's very [00:37:00] hard to give back. So from our perspective, it's helping us with time to make those phone calls, to create those relationships, to maintain those relationships.
So much so that on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We had maybe three or four calls come in the entire day. And so I told the crew, I said, listen, if y'all wanna take off, go ahead. Just forward the calls to me and I'll take 'em for you. And a call came in as a gentleman. He said, oh, I gotta pay my dues. And I said, and I answered the phone.
Thank you for calling ATRA, this is Lance. He says, who? And I said, Lance, he goes, Lance Wiggins. I said, yeah. He goes, I didn't mean to call you. I know, but I'm here. What's up? How you doing? What's going on? You about ready for Thanksgiving. And we started having a conversation that was real. It was just a true conversation.
And he said, I gotta pay my due. I gave, I let everybody go home early to go visit with their families. Can we give you a call on Monday? He says, [00:38:00] absolutely. I said, why don't you take the rest of the day off as well and we'll see you on Monday. And he, you can hear him smile. You can just feel he felt like I was treating him like a human, as we all should be doing.
And as I mentioned before, we're servants. We should be serving these people. And that's the part of the game that a lot of companies don't. You're not just a number, you're not just a bed, you're not just a car. You're human beings with, with families, with people. You need to get those people to those locations.
You need to help the young bucks, the ones, the new blood that's coming in. They can't be afraid of failure, right? In our industry, we learned a lot By failing that was part of the game plan. Now we can learn. Gather information and reduce the failures, but also gain the valuable experience that we need sooner than later.
All of our shop owners and technicians that are in their forties, when you look at a 20-year-old kid coming through the door and he's [00:39:00] got a few tools here and there, he may or may not know how to use 'em, who knows? But if you put 'em in front of the, our video programs. You put 'em in front of a, a, an AI program on our community forum and say, Hey, research something on this.
And then, and when you're done, I want you to come over 'cause I'm actually working on that vehicle. I want you to see what it looks like in real life. I don't know that you can get better training in that. So it, it's a, it's an opportunity for us to, to just have more time to spend with them rather than having more time to spend.
Licking stamps and sticking them on an envelope. It's just one of those things. 
Sharon Pare: Lance, thank you so much for sharing your story, especially CEO of ATRA, picking up the phone call on Thanksgiving and a member not knowing the CEO of ATRA is picking up the phone, but giving them that true member experience.
I'd love to know any final thoughts before we conclude the podcast today? 
Layla Masri: I'll just say [00:40:00] that I think that speaks to the power of ai, that Lance felt confident that there were enough supports and tools to do more with less, that he felt confident that. It could hold down the fort while people were away enjoying their families and that things would continue to hum along and members would continue to be able to get service.
And also the special treat of getting to talk to the CEO, that's pretty amazing. And I just wanna say thank you to Lance because. It's never a good idea to build anything, especially software in a vacuum, and being able to ideate with our customers and understand exactly what they need and how they need it oftentimes surfaces things that we wouldn't have even thought of.
So it's just such a treat to be able to have that direct connection and to listen and learn from each other and to build something that is super helpful together. 
Lance Wiggins: A hundred percent agree with that. It's teamwork is the dream work. Yeah. I appreciate you guys for having me on. This has been great. 
Sharon Pare: I wanna [00:41:00] personally thank you, Lance, and thank you Layla for sharing your insights, both of your experience, your expertise for the conversation today.
And that does it for this episode of Association NOW Presents Industry partner series. We'll have these special episodes throughout the year, and please make sure to join us each month overall as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the U.S. and the world.
We wanna give a big thanks to our episode sponsor Higher Logic. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. For more information on how AI is transforming the way associations operate, visit associations now online at associationsnow.com. Thank you [00:42:00] everyone.

Leading Together: Strengthening the Board-CSO Partnership

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Joanna Pineda speaks with governance experts Glenn Tecker, Mark Engle, DM FASAE, and Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE about the essential partnership between the board and chief staff officers (CSOs). Together, they break down how these roles differ, why their relationship is inherently interdependent, and how expectations shift across different types of associations. The conversation explores the competencies leaders need today, the role of trust and communication, and how associations can navigate rapid change—from the disruptions of COVID-19 to the growing impact of AI. The guests also offer practical strategies for fostering strong board–executive dynamics and close with reflections on what they hope to achieve personally and professionally in 2026.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/i5E0LcD_rhI
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Joanna Pineda: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Joanna Pineda, CEO, and Chief Troublemaker at Matrix Group International, a digital agency to associations. I'm also host of the podcast Associations Thrive.
Today we are excited to welcome Glenn Tecker, founder of Tecker International, Mark Engle, principal at Association Management Center, and Jon Hockman, chief practice officer at McKinley Advisors. Our topic today is the imperative of a healthy relationship between the chief volunteer officer and the chief staff officer.
Gentlemen, welcome to the show. To make sure that we are all on the same page, I'm gonna ask you all this question. Who are the chief volunteer officers and the chief staff officers? Glenn, maybe you [00:01:00] can define that for us. 
Glenn Tecker: The chief staff officer is the paid individual who is responsible for overall leadership and direction of the organization.
The chief elected officer often goes by a variety of different names. A board chair, sometimes they're called president, sometimes they are called chief mucky muck. It really depends upon the history and the culture of the organization. Similarly, the titles of chief staff executive can change depending upon the history of the organization as well.
Sometimes they're called executive director, sometimes chief executive Officer, sometimes president, oftentimes President, and CEO. So depending upon the history of the organization and the model of nomenclature, it's using the terms and the credentials can be different. 
Joanna Pineda: Okay, so how would you describe the relationship between [00:02:00] the chief staff officer and the chief volunteer officer?
What should be the relationship? 
Glenn Tecker: It's based upon the expectations that member leadership has for the relationship with their chief staff executive. There are subtle but real differences. The expectations that the volunteer leaders of trade associations have for their chief staff executive versus the expectations that the volunteer leaders of professional societies have for their chief staff executives.
Again versus, or different than the expectations that the volunteer leaders of cause related or philanthropic organizations have for their CEO. So there really is no one who earns that. You can put all of the answers to the question you've asked into 
Joanna Pineda: John. Maybe you can explain how are the expectations different between say, a professional society or a [00:03:00] trade association.
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: The depiction that I would bring forward here. The pair between the chief staff and chief volunteer is the epicenter of leadership in the organization. Not exclusively, but it's the epicenter. And I think of it as a Venn diagram where those two roles have distinct responsibilities, but there's also places where they overlap.
And we oftentimes talk about the metaphor of a bicycle. And the front wheel is where you set direction. And the back wheel is where the chain connects and powers the board chair, the volunteers at that front wheel. With the board setting course for the organization, the CEO, the staff committees, all the other ways that members are organized sit at that back wheel and power things forward.
And so those are just very different roles, but they're obviously symbiotic to make it work. 
Joanna Pineda: Mark, if I'm running say a charity, a nonprofit, maybe a disease related organization versus A CEO, who's running a trade association, are the expectations different of my role and of the relationship. [00:04:00] 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: I think the expectations are different, but they're based in competencies, and the competencies in those two areas are very different.
The trade association execs are often a public face, so I was CEO of several trade associations. Actually, when we went to the Hill, we were leading the charges. The chief staff executive, I was, my title was president. We had a board chair, and they were the backup because they did not want to be on display for their companies necessarily.
As for the industry. Whereas for a professional society, it's almost the reverse element of it where the CEO is the one who's putting in place the right ambassadors to represent the organization. So the competencies are aligned very differently on that basis. And again, with philanthropic organizations or public organizations that are out there raising money or trying to combat disease, for instance, they're trying to open doors, they're trying to support financially.
The organization and moving it forward. So the competencies are [00:05:00] very different from what you're looking for a CEO in those VAs. 
Joanna Pineda: Wow. Our topic today is the imperative of a healthy relationship, so why the word imperative? 
Glenn Tecker: There's probably nothing more germane to the continuing success of a CEO than the relationship they have with their board of directors.
That relationship in large measure is a model of the relationship that the chief staff executive and chief volunteer officer or chief elected officer has. It becomes the model of how the two will work together. What we have found over time is the successful relationships tend to be defined by a subtle but real understanding.
That is that on the complex and often controversial issues that boards and [00:06:00] senior staff will face together, it's critical to understand which body of knowledge needs to be the primary driver of the selection of the solution strategy. If the body of knowledge is that's held by members who are sitting on the board, then staff needs to defer to the view of the members on the board.
If the body of knowledge that's essential is the body of knowledge held by the staff in association management, then board members need to defer to the opinions and expertise of the staff. Asking the question, which expertise is needed for us to make a confident decision is probably the best start that you can had to sustaining that relationship over time.
Mark and John will both agree. I am sure. That the relationship between a board and the CEO is as much [00:07:00] a personality that differs from combination to combination as it is in fact based upon a set of dispensable competencies that both the staff leader and the elected leader need to exhibit in their work together.
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Yeah. If I could just build on Glen's point. Completely agree. As he predicted, and. If the culture of the organization is such that supports that sort of recognition that the body of knowledge sits at the board, that's where we go. If the body of knowledge sits at the staff, that's where we go. The core culture supports that.
Great. Often it doesn't, and that's where things break down or get mucky, is navigating the way through that. It could be really a wild ride. 
Joanna Pineda: Can we go a little bit deeper with this? 
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Of course. 
Joanna Pineda: I was on Facebook recently in one of the discussion groups where a lot of association execs hang out and somebody said, I'm in hell right now because my board chair is [00:08:00] micromanaging everything.
That sounds like a situation where maybe the chief staff exec is thinking, this is my domain. The staff have knowledge here, but the board chair is causing trouble, if you will. How do you set the expectation about whose domain should be respected in what situations? Like the choice of an annual convention venue versus a position that you're gonna take on a government policy, for example.
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: We try to move it through a policy base, if you will, so things like routine items, and I know conventions are important and people have a lot of emotion tied up into where that goes. If you can put that into a policy format, it reduces the effect development making a decision on that basis. And that really then becomes more staff driven if the board sets the parameters for it.
So providing that clarity is helping define the line between board role and staff role. And that's where it comes down to the competencies. The staff has the competencies to [00:09:00] determine the profitability and the aims of that. Conference, if you will. If it's framed at the board level, then they don't have to get in that decision making loop every time and make what becomes an emotional decision.
Joanna Pineda: Is that something that you teach your clients, for example, to ask the question, who's got the knowledge to be able to answer this question or provide guidance? Glen? 
Glenn Tecker: Yeah. There are also some systems and processes which are essential to sustaining appropriate role definition. One of them is something that we refer to as a strategic board agenda.
A key to all of this is understanding that boards will talk about what's on their agenda. So ensuring that the agenda focuses on items at the level of strategy and policy rather than at the level of management on operations becomes essential. Having said that, there are still some board chairs and some board members who carry a [00:10:00] mental model with them from other places where they believe the appropriate role is to get into issues of management, staffing, and operations.
In order to deal with that as Mark suggested policy that describes the expected roles of governance is an important addition to the organization's conversation. Establishing board norms as a compact between members of the board where they make statements about how they intend to work with each other as a group.
And how they intend to work with staff. Having a process for planning strategically that functions like an ongoing GPS rather than a traditional roadmap, having a methodology for addressing complex issues. That involves the development of information basis, so the conversation can be intelligent and confident.
All those are examples of systems and processes you [00:11:00] can put in place that will, in fact, as John has suggested, have a significant impact on the culture of leadership within the organization. Associations are weird. There's only two ways that you can affect culture. You either change people or you change people.
And if you're going to change people, then the way to do that is to give them a different experience in terms of how they function than they've had before. If you can alter the work process that's being employed, you can alter their behavior. And if you alter the behavior of enough people, you are altering the culture.
These are the kinds of things that we find the most successful CEOs, the chief staff executive is continually paying attention to, so that she or he is managing the functionality of their partner as along with their partner, as well as managing the organization [00:12:00] itself. 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Let's unpack that cultural element a little bit deeper because I think the one critical word in this space is trust.
And it takes competence and caring to develop that level of trust, especially between the chief staff executive and the chief volunteer. And if those two have that bridge of trust, and again, based on competence and caring about each other and about the organization, then you can develop a very positive culture.
Also, and as Glen said, we do have a lot of turnover in our board. You can blow a culture overnight. You can blow a culture in one conversation, but it takes a long time to build that productive culture. So save it at all costs. 
Glenn Tecker: There are very few instances where a chief staff executive has ever won a battle over the distribution of power.
Developing the competence required to finesse whatever leadership personality you inherit becomes an essential competency of the [00:13:00] CEO. Essentially, they are operating like chameleons, 
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: So I think underneath all this is strong communication. I mean, to the core question around role definition and getting on track with that all the way through the culture pieces is that both the chief staff officer and the chief volunteer officer are actively working on communicating.
That's not just speaking, that's listening and truly hearing what the other is saying. All three of us run programs for ASAE around this, and at the heart of those, as wonderful as the content is, and kudos to my colleagues on that. Is the chance for them to be in dialogue with one another. A consequence of that hopefully, is a deepening of trust that Mark talked about.
So I just think that you can't over, well, you probably could, but you can't over emphasize the importance of communicating with each other each to understand one another. [00:14:00] 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Yeah, I was a CEO for 30 years, various trade professional societies and so on. I always made it a point to go visit. The incoming board chair, where they work, what they do, who they work with, how they work, how they wanna communicate, and those are critical elements in developing that trusting relationship.
So they develop into friendships too. Hopefully, not always, but hopefully they do. 
Glenn Tecker: Different individuals have a different work and communications preferences. So in the relationship, given the fact that the chief staff executive is in fact the professional. Our belief is if there is adjustment to be made, it probably is the function of the chief staff executive to make the necessary adjustments.
With good conversation, both can make adjustments so that their natural thinking and working style preferences are compatible and consistent rather than in conflict or inconsistent. And as John has said, communication [00:15:00] that is continuous, that is open, that is honest, will be able to sustain trust over time, assuming that you have a partner who is mentally healthy.
And that's not always the case. That's right. I think true. 
Joanna Pineda: Lemme ask you a question. So I've been on a couple of boards and you've talked about things like having the board charter, having open communications, defining the roles. I'm not sure that I ever saw those, unfortunately on the couple boards I was on.
Where do people learn this and how do you, I don't know, how do you impart this when the board does turn over a lot? Like where is this being taught? 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Should be in starting with orientation and development, and so many boards do orientation for just their new board members. No. Every year the board changes 'cause you have new people coming on.
The principles probably don't change and maybe some of the strategies don't change, but how we work together changes. When people change, [00:16:00] you're gonna have a new influx of, even if it's just one person in a 12 person board for instance, that's change. And the issues coming before you are changing. So spending time on how we do our work is as important as what is the work to be done.
Glenn Tecker: There are a variety of approaches that are used to create a common information base among volunteer leaders about expectations and roles. For example, Pennsylvania now has a law that requires board members of school districts to have a certain amount of training before they're able to take their position on the board.
And I share that with the podcast because increasingly we are seeing boards committing to ongoing quote, professional development. For their board members. So it's not just a single event at a single meeting, but it's continuous. As Mark and Joanna both suggested orientation is critical, and if you can [00:17:00] get the board member engaged in a way that allows them to see how an effective board functions before they take that seat, that's critical.
Every new board member comes to that position with a set of mental models, expectations they have about how things should work, and oftentimes those expectations come from roles in other organizations that are not sufficiently consistent with how associations operate. It's important for them to understand the difference and to have conversation with successful volunteer leaders, particularly the board chair.
Who will use previous board chairs who have been successful as a kind of mentor in the process. But our belief, and I think Mark and John would've shared this, is that those intuitive understandings need to occur before they're asked to take the role, 
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Not during it. Yeah. And just to build on [00:18:00] everything that Mark and Glenn have said, and to the extent that the organization can get a culture within the board of learning and development.
So that the board is, whether through self-assessment or other assessment tools, where is there a need for learning or skill development at the board level so that once, hopefully that orientation type foundation is in place, there are other opportunities to learn and grow and be a stronger leadership body because of it.
Joanna Pineda: Mark, you said that when you were a chief staff executive, made a point of visiting your board members. What are other things? Chief staff execs and chief volunteer officers, what should they be doing to promote this healthy relationship? Anything new and creative that you've seen recently? 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Not necessarily new, but creative, I think is to visit one of our programs that Glenn and John and I represent.
'cause it does bring them together to focus intently on the organization and intently on their relationship. And it gives 'em a common understanding of [00:19:00] roles, responsibilities, when to lead, when to support. And the whole element of that positive, productive partnership, that's a lot of peace. 
Glenn Tecker: Yeah. It's just one of those areas where there really is no best practice.
That is something that works the best all the time everywhere, but there are effective practices and practices that suck and you can tell the difference. And one of the important initiatives here is that there be a common understanding of how they're going to work together. The creation of that common understanding is probably more important than what the understanding itself is.
So it's through that conversation, that lasting trust, the ability to depend upon each other, to make promises and keep those promises. A colleague of mine years ago defined trust in this relationship as the residue of promises kept. 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Hmm. There's a [00:20:00] couple of trust relationships too. One is, does the board trust the board within those dynamics?
Then does the board trust the staff, especially the CEO. But the third one I've experienced particularly recently was, does the staff trust the staff? And that's an interesting dynamic and you talk about a board healthy culture and association, healthy culture. And a staff healthy culture. If we don't have those three elements, board to board, board to staff and staff with staff, a culture of trust, there's gonna be a breakdown.
There's gonna be a dysfunction in achieving any kind of strategy for the organization. 
Glenn Tecker: One of the competency areas that we find the most frequent and softest area is the ability of the group to address those kinds of conflicting behaviors when they occur. Most boards will have something like a code of ethics or a code of behavior.
It's [00:21:00] attempts to shape behavior by the threat of a penalty. If you misbehave. The best boards we find have something that we refer to as board norms. That is agreements on how they are going to work together and how they will interact with their staff. And they also have, as part of those board norms, judgements they have made about how they will at the moment intervene when a violation of those norms take place.
So having in place an understanding about how you will deal with. Emerging conflicts or potential violations of the judgments that have made about how that culture should work. It's an essential tool that still, unfortunately, too many boards don't have. 
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Yeah, we talk about the three-legged stool of respect, candor, and trust, and all those relationships that Mark outlined it, board to board, board to staff and staff to staff.
There's gotta be presence of respect, candor, and trust. [00:22:00] And it's not that hard to find respect, although it's not always present. But there's so many examples where candor is lacking and we're not having real conversation. We're not having complete conversation often because the trust isn't there. But that's not the only reason.
But you can't get to good norms or good communication if you don't have the appropriate presence of respect, candor, and trust within the dynamic. 
Joanna Pineda: You've talked about what an effective relationship looks like between the chief staff exec and the chief volunteer officer. Give us examples of when it broke down and then how do you fix it?
Glenn Tecker: There was an almost universal breakdown that occurred during the pandemic during when COVID forced everyone to go to entirely virtual communications. We observed a number. Things occurring as a result of the inability to spend face-to-face time together. [00:23:00] One thing that occurred was the bright minds that only contributed when they saw necessity to do.
They were the anecdote to the bullying voices tended to become more passive in the conversations, so folks who were the loudest to talk the most often tended to carry the day rather than good thinking. The second thing that we emerged is that groups selected management level issues to deal with because they were easier to address in a virtual environment without having the ability for the continuing face-to-face conversation.
The third thing that we saw that was absolutely disastrous was the kind of social interaction that occurs among board members and staff in between the sessions of the board, and in a night in between could not happen. So the ability to develop an understanding of their colleagues, which is really the [00:24:00] essential ingredient to trust growing where I can like you, even if I disagree with you, didn't have an opportunity to grow.
I'm willing to drink online if I have to, but I'd much prefer to be at a bar with my colleagues. 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: And the good news is they're getting back together face-to-face. Again, I think we're finding the average board is three to four times face-to-face again, which it was prior to COVID. Yeah. So that's encouraging news.
 
Glenn Tecker: So it is encouraging. A concern that we have, although we're seeing it decrease over time, is that the cultural. Expectations of some groups have remained what they were when they joined the board during the pandemic. So working with those groups to get them to return to what we all consider to be best practice is sometimes a challenge, particularly when the members of the board have no board experience prior to having [00:25:00] joined the board in COVI.
Joanna Pineda: John and Mike, give us an example of how you fix stuff when it breaks down. 
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: The reality is sometimes you can't fix it, and accepting that is better than trying to hang on forever, but that's not the only outcome. It goes back to communication is sitting down and seeking to understand this is a skill that is unfortunately all too absent in our society right now, and I fear getting worse.
Not better. But trying to understand different perspectives, different approaches, and see if you can't find a thread that can begin to build a bridge, a reconnection. Absent that, it's hard to make progress. It's hard to write a toxic or an unhealthy situation. And I know all of us work with folks all the time who it's broken and they're just not sure where to start on the rebuilding it.
But it's gotta start with conversation. You gotta sit down and talk. 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Let me build on that. 'cause I did have a personal [00:26:00] experience in this. I was this probably 20 years ago. I was CEO of an association. We had a board chair, two year terms, but you could be reelected. The first two years with this gentleman were awesome.
We were like in sync, right? It was really smooth, productive. Something happened his first year of the next term between our relationship and somewhere I failed in his eyes. I could not discern it. Luckily, I had a good relationship with the vice chair who was next in line, and we had a conversation and he was able to have a conversation with the board chair.
He came back and said, mark, sometimes relationships just unwind and you can't really explain them. And so I was able to dig in, was it an integrity issue? And he assured me it wasn't. So I'm like, alright, I might not know the answer. At least I'll be okay with the fact that it's not an integrity issue. And then actually the vice chair became the chair sooner than.
What his normal term would've been, and we had two terrific years together. Sometimes those [00:27:00] relationships just get fractured. You don't know why, as John said, you try to communicate, but sometimes it's plan B, bring in some reinforcements that are on a volunteer to volunteer basis to help, help bridge that relationship or the gap, if you will.
Joanna Pineda: You talked about the pandemic. We're now post pandemic, and now we're increasingly in an AI powered world. Have those things changed? 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: The relationship between the CSE and the CVO Arc, I think they have the opportunity to, I don't know that we've experienced it entirely yet, so it's interesting. I was at a board meeting recently and they were making a decision that impacted one board member, and so you could see there was a motion tied to that.
So my point was, if AI had a seat at the board table, how would AI vote? They likely removed the emotion from the decision so you could make a cognitive decision, [00:28:00] which is what the CEO was desperate for, and yet. They made the emotional decision. So I think AI can play an interesting role when you consider that voice at the table.
It's really interesting 
Glenn Tecker: and there's a way to get the voice there that is, if the board and the senior staff have a habit of. Complex decisions being informed by background information, usually compiled by staff, but sometimes by staff with volunteers or staff with volunteers with outside contractors.
That background paper is the place where the insights that AI can lead you to can be presented to the group in decision making. I have had boards now we're working with where the board members will utilize AI during the conversations to look for additional information or to answer a question about something they wish they knew more about but did not, but.
Well, the other thing we are [00:29:00] finding with AI is not so much with AI as it is with the effect that the emergence and evolution of AI is having on the group's view of change. Recently, somebody authored a statement that said change itself has changed. I'm not sure about that. What I am sure about is that association leaders cannot manage change.
Not like for-profit hierarchical organizations can, they can manage through change. The reason being, they don't have the same kind of line authority with a group of volunteers that you would have in a for-profit or a public agency, for example. So understanding the necessity of developing competencies in managing through change, which is the essence of agility at the personal level, has become, in our judgment, a new necessary competency for the [00:30:00] successful CEO.
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: I wanna underscore, first of all, I think we're very early days on the impact of AI on the relationship, really governance overall, but certainly the relationship between the staff and volunteer leaders. But I just came from a Breakfast of Trade association leaders where an example got brought up of a group where their staff CIO, with the board's blessing and created a persona AI persona.
To participate in the strategic planning process, and that person was a seat at the table as the board did their strategic planning work, own experiment. Lots of lessons learned, but I suspect that's not the end of that story by any stretch as that continues to get integrated, so much more to come. 
Joanna Pineda: Wow.
Gentlemen, I could talk to you for hours about this because I'm a newbie at this. I know you're busy, so I'm gonna close out with a question for you and you can answer with something professional or personal. What are you looking forward to [00:31:00] in 2026? Glenn, I'll start with you. 
Glenn Tecker: I'm looking for surviving an assault on the truth that is occurring at a national level, 
Mark Engle, DM FASAE: mark.
I'm looking forward to catching up on my reading list. To be honest with you, there's so many good publications out there today around especially collective decision making at the boards level and the role that courage has to play and should become a competency. So that'll be my research agenda for 2026.
Courage in the Boardroom. 
Joanna Pineda: Wow. John, close this out. 
Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: I think 2026 is gonna be a, your extreme tumult on almost every front. And so we talked a little bit earlier about a change management. I'm. Looking forward to leaning in on what I would call change readiness. 'cause you can't manage it, but how do you get ready to deal with all the turbulence that is coming?
I think that's a skill of the future and lots of juicy work to be done there. [00:32:00] 
Joanna Pineda: Gentlemen, this has been insightful and wonderful. Thank you for being on the show today. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals.
Discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US and the world. For the full conversation, visit associations now.com. And for more information about governance, visit asaecenter.org. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
And if you have a hot topic or pressing challenge that the association community would benefit from, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact ace's Michael Ross at mross@asaecenter.org to propose a thought leadership sponsorship opportunity on a future [00:33:00] episode.

Powering Advocacy: Why PACs Matter for Associations

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE, president and CEO of the Ohio Society of Association Professionals, is joined by Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE, Chief Public and Governance Officer at ASAE; Dawn Mancuso, CEO of the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry; and Mark Falzone, President of Scenic America. Together, they dive into the essential role Political Action Committees play in advancing association advocacy. The discussion breaks down PAC compliance requirements, why PACs matter in today’s legislative environment, and how associations can more effectively engage their members and leaders in political action. The guests highlight recent advocacy wins—including efforts to halt costly tax reforms—and underscore the need for consistent participation to ensure the association community’s voice is heard. The episode closes with a clear message: advocacy is a shared responsibility, and association leaders must stay active to protect and advance their missions.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/k8Ys7y1lB_M
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Jarrod Clabaugh, President and CEO of the Ohio Society of Association Professionals. And this month I'm lucky to be the host of this podcast. Before we begin, I would just like to thank our three panelists for being on the call today.
Thank you, Dawn, Mark, and Mary Kate today. We're excited to welcome Dawn Mancuso, the current chair of ASAE PAC, and also the Executive Vice President and CEO of Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry. And the immediate past chair, our friend Mark Falzone, who is the president of Scenic America. And Mary Kate Cunningham, who most of you likely know, ASAE's, chief Public Policy Officer and governance officer. Friends, let's jump right into the questions. We have a lot to cover. Mary Kate, thank you for the great work you do and the rest of the team and the public policy department at ASAE. Would you mind [00:01:00] providing our listeners with a quick overview of what a PAC stands for and also what missions of PACS often are?
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. So PACS are Political Action Committees and we're gonna talk about PACS at the federal level that are formed by trade associations, professional society and other membership organizations. And the goal is to support candidates that align with their policy goals and interests.
The PACS are funded by voluntary contributions by individuals, so  they have to be by eligible members. Again, individuals and not corporations. There's a lot of restrictions around giving and around reporting to the federal government. So federal ballot prohibits associations from using dues or general funds for contributions to candidates.
It's really just from your individual members. Also must have a designated treasurer for compliance. They also must register with the Federal Election Committee and follow very strict reporting and disclosure requirements. That includes regular filings and contributions and expenditures. [00:02:00] And for solicitation, they can only solicit from their restricted class, which is members, executives, and certain employees.
For trade associations, they have to follow prior approval where they get specific approval from companies to solicit their individual members there. So the Federal Election Committee is what they have to follow the rules for, and we say sometimes in PAC world, FEC jail is real jail. So PACS are a great tool for advocacy.
There’s very strict reporting that you have to follow. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: Sexy stuff. Mark and Dawn, would either of you like to share any examples of PAC victories or PAC experiences the two of you have been involved in? 
Dawn Mancuso: I will say that in a prior life I ran a small trade association where we did have a Political Action Committee and had to deal with those regulations where we had to get permission from the CEO in order to solicit or even talk about the PAC in many ways with their employees at different [00:03:00] levels of the organization.
Which can be challenging if you're trying to reach the advocacy folks at a particular institution, but it is doable and there are strategies you can employ to make sure that you can speak to as many of the individuals at the member organizations as possible. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: What about you, Mark? 
Mark Falzone: PACS are a part of the political ecosystem.
And so if you're not playing in that field, then you're not taking advantage of the entire range of tools available at your disposal. And I think that  SAE has done an amazing job with their PAC under Mary Kate's leadership and Michelle Mason's leadership, and making sure that they have every tool at their disposal when they're using the pack versus lobbying.
Direct lobbying versus grassroots lobbying. This is just another tool in the tool shed that every organization should really make sure that they have at the ready for them to use. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: I would throw this next question out to all of our [00:04:00] panelists. When you think about turbulent times, what kinds of challenges come to mind for PAC leaders today?
 
Mark Falzone: I think that this year, ASAE has been the most turbulent time that it could be in my memory. Literally, associations were on the chopping block when it comes to taxation and tax treatment associations were about to get taxis levied against them where all of a sudden nonprofit statuses were in question.
For some associations, this would be the equivalent of a death penalty, and for other associations it would certainly mean cuts. I would say that this year, 2025 has been very turbulent in terms of the association world, but Mary Kate with her leadership and Dawn as the ASAE PAC Chair has done an amazing job in navigating ASAE through these turbulent times.
And, I would defer to Mary Kate to speak a little more on the amazing work of what ASAE had [00:05:00] to do in order to make sure that the tax bill ended up okay. And associations still are not subject to taxes because of Mary Kate and ASAE's work and Michelle Mason's work and Don Mancuso’s work. 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: Thank you so much, Mark, and thanks to all of our members who helped to make this big victory possible.
But about a year ago, we were preparing for tax reform like everyone else in Washington, knowing associations are always a target. Our non-dues revenue specifically, and this was not our first rodeo show with tax deform, but this was a much more serious threat because two major, well-respected Think Tanks called for.
Taxing nonprofits across the board at the corporate rate, which is 21%. So all told there were 6.5 billion in additional taxes on nonprofits that were introduced this Congress for the tax reform bill. So through all of the advocacy of ASAE members around the country, we were able to defeat all of those 6.5 billion over the course [00:06:00] of the legislation taxes.
Specifically the biggest taxes were the nonprofit parking lot tax. That would be the tax on employee transportation costs that associations give the first time that we would be paying a tax, an excise tax on an expense. So that was also a potential constitutional issue. And then a huge other source of taxation that was introduced in the house was on royalty income.
So on that tax revenue, it would be taxing our revenue on royalties that are received that are part of unrelated business income. Those are, in addition to the across the board tax that was floated and never introduced because lawmakers support associations. I think that's the main focus over the last year that we're really proud of.
But we know we're not out of the woods, so it's something we're continuing to engage on. And I would say PACs are a great tool, as Mark said in your advocacy strategy to elect candidates who share your association. [00:07:00] Positions on these important issues and on your legislative priorities. I'll also note, I think we really take a nonpartisan strategy for our work, and most PACs are nonpartisan supporting candidates from both sides of the aisle that support their positions.
Dawn Mancuso: Thanks Mary Kate. I really applaud the work you've done, your whole team as well as the leadership at ASAE, Michelle as the CEO, because you saw the handwriting on the wall and you took action at a time when we had to get prepared, we had to put the resources in place and ASAE made the commitment to do that and marks.
Very sweet to pose me as the leader of the PAC, but during much of this work, he was the chair of the pac. I was the vice chair and learning as voraciously from him as quickly as possible. So it's been a real team effort and I really appreciate playing a role in this. We're right. Politics are very contentious right now.
ASAE characterized the tax threat that took place this past [00:08:00] year as the biggest one that we've ever faced since the creation of the tax code back in 1913. So we've got a lot of concern behind this, and that has helped to mobilize people. But when you've got this kind of winners versus losers framework happening in the larger environment, people are divided and they may respond by saying.
They pull away from the public arena or altogether, or disengage, or alternatively, they become tribalized. They really only wanna support one team, and these are the times when PACs can make a big difference. There is a critically important tool to help educate legislators from both sides of the aisle about the value of associations to American society.
PAC leaders are challenged to break through all the noise. To make sure that our value is understood. I think we will continue to play a very important role in ASAE's advocacy efforts in the future to come. 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: Jarrod, your point [00:09:00] also brought up a another issue for me. When you're thinking about turbulent times for associations and association PACs, I think the candidates that are not taking association PAC dollars is also something interesting.
I've noticed, it seems, like these candidates are more likely not taking corporate PAC dollars. Sometimes they're actually saying encouraging, giving through the association PAC instead. But as he talked about with the FEC Regulations Association, PACs are some of the most regulated ways to engage in the political process.
There's so much sunlight. So I think that telling that story and that I think is important too. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: It sounds like a lot of this is tied to education and getting. The association leaders educated, getting members educated, and then also going out and making sure you're actually educating members of Congress.
And as somebody who participated in the fly in this past year and in other years, many of the approaches changed when we started telling our stories and when our members started telling our stories. How [00:10:00] then do you think we can work with leaders within our own, maybe membership or just within the space to help them engage more and to get them excited about delivering those messages to lawmakers?
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: One idea we just had, what I think. We realize that the top percentage of members are always really engaged in advocacy, but there's so much room for growth for people who are newer members to the association. So just putting on more, as you say, Advocacy 101 or Your Association Advocacy 101 sessions, I think is a great way to make it feel approachable so people realize that.
I think if they're not, if they don't have a background advocacy, they might be a little more hesitant too. Go to hill days, and when we make it more transparent, I think that people realize that they are the experts really talking to the congressional staffer, they're the ones bringing the wisdom and that it's, it isn't really less scary than it may seem at first glance.
Dawn Mancuso: I think the ASAE PAC has a particular challenge in that so many of our members who are politically [00:11:00] inclined or advocacy inclined are focused on the needs of their member organizations or their member professionals. And so they use their time and energies to put forth the messaging that their members need.
Oftentimes forget about the ecosystem they work in, right? As we've learned this past year, that ecosystem we've taken for granted, and it's not something that will survive without the support of everybody in the community. And that not only impacts our own organizations as our own associations, but affects our members, and we all need to get behind this.
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: In terms of educating candidates, we know so many states are strongly considering or moving forward with gerrymandering this year. So congressional districts will change and there can be a lot of new faces that we need to educate. So I think the pressure just is continuing for telling the story. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: What factors do you think contributed the most to the successes A SAE had earlier [00:12:00] this year? Mary Kate? 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: I think it's waving the flag early. I think getting on everyone's radar really early before the tax cuts and Jobs Act provisions expire, I think was very helpful. But we know, like Dawn said, our members have to focus on their own members first. That's their day job and it's really ASAE's job to care for the advocacy issues for the whole community.
So I think because we were able to stand up our Community Impact Coalition early, it really helped people say, I'm gonna support the coalition. I've gotta focus on my own members, but here's this support to help you guys tell the story better. So I think that's one of the main elements. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: Mary Kate, I know one time I heard you say it's easier to blow out a candle than it is to put out a forest fire, and I think that's really one of the things that ASAE excelled at in the past year.
And as Dawn has said, and as Mark has said, bringing everyone together no matter what our members' interests are, but defending the industry as a whole. [00:13:00] Given that and given these successes, what should we be on the lookout for moving forward? Do you think there are more turbulent times ahead? 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: Absolutely. We know just last month, the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee held a hearing on the tax exempt status of some nonprofits, and there are, or members of Congress on the committee recommending removing exempt status, asking are they truly earning exempt status?
So I think this is not going away. We have to continue to tell that story. We've also done it through polling, especially using. The pollsters of the members of Congress that we really wanna influence so that they can, they feel like they're trusting those numbers, the percentage of voters in their district that would oppose taxes on nonprofits.
That was really helpful. But I think we've got a lot of work ahead in just really telling the story on how we drive the economy and train the workforce, and that increased taxes on associations means less community benefit. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: How do you feel we can maintain momentum and make sure [00:14:00] that leaders keep telling this story not just to their communities, but also to their boards and to their peers?
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: I think it's people like Mark and Dawn that take time out of their extremely busy days to engage in ASAE advocacy, and we are so lucky. I think we have the best members in town, and so more association professionals putting their name in the hat to engage in advocacy, I think is the most useful because once a member of Congress can hear from a constituent about how their association is improving their community, I think that's the best proactive measure.
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: So you guys have all made some great points in the right direction to lead our members and to engage our leadership. I'm gonna direct this question to all of you. Many association execs struggle to inspire leadership level giving. What approaches typically motivate CEOs and board members to contribute?
Dawn Mancuso: The ASAE PAC's mission is an easy one for CEOs and association professionals overall to give, given the [00:15:00] magnitude of the challenge we are facing. But I think there are some tools that. PACS use, one of which is a scorecard that you can keep track of board members' contributions and engagement with the PAC as well as other activities of the organization, I believe uses that approach.
Right, Mary Kate? 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: Yeah, absolutely. We know board members would like to have all their checks, especially in something that's primarily displayed in the board book. So I think that when the leadership starts at the top, especially. Having a host committee has always been really helpful to us as well, because those key leaders wanna see their name among everyone else on the host committee.
Those are two elements that really work for us. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: Great insights. Can you share an example of where a partnership that your organization has or collaboration that your organization has done, whether that's internal or external, significantly boosted visibility or your fundraising results. 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: So this is the coalition that we stood up in tax reform, and [00:16:00] it's more than 115 organizations, all different types of nonprofits around the country.
And I think the great part about this coalition is that congressional staff knew our goal was simple to stop additional taxation on nonprofits. They knew we weren't picking winners and losers. We wanted across the board to keep the tax code treatment of exempt organizations the same. So I think having all those different really diverse groups from associations to disease advocacy organizations, law enforcement organizations, all kinds of nonprofits, I think that really helped us be effective.
And then also if we had a lot of silent partners, orations that are, were. Influential in the space that we just shared. Information, intelligence, talking points so that we could try to again, sing from the same song sheet. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: Great perspectives. What common misconceptions do you encounter from time to time when it comes to pacs?
Dawn Mancuso: I think probably the number one misconception I've encountered is that people [00:17:00] think they can use the organization money as a contribution to the pac, and I think it just means we have to do a better job of educating people what a PAC is and how they work that. Contributions need to be from an individual or contribution from another PAC.
So from time to time we've been able to get contributions from another organization's pack, which is really gratifying. It means that we're sharing, we have a common goal in mind. 
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: I think to Dawn’s point is that association PACs are somehow dark money, quote unquote, and I think that's absolutely a misconception.
All contributions over $200 are reported to the federal election committee and are listed on the website. So there's so much sunlight here. This is a really ethical way to support the legal process and candidates, and I think that's one misconception. 
Mark Falzone: Yeah, I agree with that, Mary Kate. I think that a lot of people think that, like you said, that there is something wrong with doting pac and oh my goodness, I could never do that.
And the truth is, this is [00:18:00] just another tool in the toolbox, like I said earlier, for your association or your group. And it's really important to leverage all the tools at your disposal and that not only from an association level, but from a personal level. If there is a cause out there, you want to support, giving to a causes PAC can really further that organization's mission. 
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: Unfortunately, our time has come to a close. We've flown through the questions we had and we shared a lot of good insights today. Thank you to all of you for being on the panel. I would like to ask before we conclude our conversation, do you guys have any nuggets of knowledge that you would like to provide with our listeners to help them motivate either their members, their board, their leadership, or the communities that they operate in to get involved and to make sure that their voices are being heard?
Mary Kate Cunningham, CAE: I think the often quoted phrase in DC is, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And that's absolutely true. So get involved in your own association’s advocacy, get involved in ASAE's advocacy because there are real kind of threats [00:19:00] ahead, frankly. And we really have to be diligent about telling our story for our community.
Mark Falzone: Yeah, PACs are just, like I said earlier, just one tool in the toolbox, but it's an important one. And to me, if somebody is a seasoned professional or wants to really be active in advocating for their association's work or something that they just care about, you want to be making sure that you're leveraging everything that you can.
So, being active in the PAC, contributing to a PAC, being active in lobbying, direct lobbying, being active in grassroots, lobbying, making sure that you're actually doing everything that you can. A lot of people think, oh, I can't do that, or I just think that that's a little weird. That actually couldn't be further from the truth.
What's weird is not doing it because it means you're not advocating for yourself. It means you're not actually participating, and it means you're not contributing to your mission and it means you're not doing your damn job. So make sure you do your damn job, get off your butt and work [00:20:00] tirelessly for your PAC.
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: Dawn, any last thoughts my friend? 
Dawn Mancuso: Our membership organizations are based on the same premise that our democracy is, that everybody needs to be educated, choose to engage, and take the time to get active. And I think as association executives, there's a moral imperative. We have to walk the talk and we need to do what we ask our members to do by serving as a role model.
By doing what we can to educate others so that they can play as active a role as they would like. I think we are demonstrating to our members and to society and to our members about what the options are for engagements. We are not association executives just from nine to five. We do it throughout our lives, and as Mark so aptly said, PACs are an important tool in that engagement.
Jarrod A. Clabaugh, CAE: I would just throw out there, condensing everything we've talked about today. When you stay silent about the work that you're doing, you are the only one to blame when no one hears your message. [00:21:00] So I would thank all of you. I'm lucky enough to serve on the PAC Committee with Dawn and Mark and many other wonderful people, and to have great public policy advisors like Mary Kate and her team, and the great work that Michelle does on behalf of the association industry.
So I want to thank you for your time today. I want to thank you for your engagement. I wanna thank you for, as my good friend Mark said, get off your damn butts and do something, because otherwise you really shouldn't be complaining about what happens. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents.
Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy. In the United States and throughout the world. Again, we'd like to thank our guests today, Mark, Dawn, and Mary Kate.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on the great work being done in the advocacy space, please visit Associations NOW [00:22:00] online.

Beyond the Buzz: How AI Can Empower Every Association

In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, guest host Camille Sanders, CAE, director of chapter operations and programs at ISACA and host of LeadHERship Bytes, sits down with Carlos Cardenas, CAE, AAiP, senior strategic advisor at DelCor and co-founder of Association Latinos, for a forward-thinking discussion on the future of AI in associations. Carlos shares how his personal journey with AI began during retirement planning and evolved into a passion for helping associations—especially smaller ones—use AI strategically to thrive. The conversation explores practical concepts like the “quarterback agent” for task management, the value of experiential learning, and aligning AI tools with real business goals. Together, they highlight how associations can embrace AI innovation while ensuring inclusivity and equity for Latinx members and beyond.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/rw3813NLPe4
This episode is sponsored by the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Camille Sanders: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm your host today, Camille Sanders. In addition to my role as director of chapter operations and programs at ISACA, I also host LeadHERship Bytes, an independent podcast highlighting the career and personal journeys of inspiring women across industries.
You can find it on any major podcast platform. Now, before we dive in, we would like to thank this episode sponsor the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau Now. Let's get into the really fun stuff. I'm very excited for today's conversation where we're talking about the future of AI in associations with Carlos [00:01:00] Cardenas, the senior strategic advisor at DelCor, and a co-founder of Association Latinos.
Welcome, Carlos. 
Carlos Cardenas: Hi Camille. How are you? Thanks for having me. 
Camille Sanders: You are very welcome. We're excited to talk with you today. So I just want to be fully transparent with our audience that I know Carlos personally and I know about. Some of your exciting writings and the things that you've been doing in terms of educating associations around experimentation and adaptation of ai.
And I know that journey started for you with something really personal around your retirement planning, and that's a really unusual journey. That's not where most of us start. So can you talk to us a little bit about what sparked that idea for you? 
Carlos Cardenas: Sure. No, I will say just like everybody else, right?
October, 2022, OpenAI dropped chat GPT version 3.0, [00:02:00] and it shook the world. It shocked the world, and so everybody started to experiment and say, how does this relate to me? How can I use this? How can I leverage it? I wrote a LinkedIn article in January talking about the directions that it could go. One of 'em was a travel advisor, one of 'em was a strategic advisor.
A couple other things as well. Fast forward a couple years, right? And so I'm, I'm relatively young, I won't say my age, but I like to think about the future. I like to think about financial independence, not necessarily retirement, but financial independence. And so I started to go down the road of what does retirement, or what does financial independence look like for me?
And you've got your traditional 401k in the workplace and you've got your employer match. Outside of that, you might do Roth IRAs, you might dabble in crypto, you might have some other investment vehicles, and so I do a lot of the work myself. And so [00:03:00] I look at websites, I look at market trends, but I'm like, how can I leverage some of these tools to help me so I don't have to do a lot of the heavy lifting?
I like to experiment. I downloaded open source models of my own. I purchased an NVIDIA graphics card. I've got that installed on my home desktop computer. But I run these models and experiment with them, and I use generative I to help me build agents. So I can have one agent that does it all, and you might get to that later on, but I felt I wanted to build an ecosystem of agents to help me with these various aspects.
So what I've been able to do so far in terms of retirement or financial independence is build an agent. I'll say it's probably 70% of the way done, but it goes to the marketplace. It looks at the s and p 500, and it comes back and it gives me that information, and then it builds a dashboard for me. So I can look at my financial portfolio and I can have it send me emails.
[00:04:00] And so basically it's my assistant to say, how am I doing? The market took a downturn, or it's doing, it's on fire, right? What does that mean? What does my five year-, what does my nine year-outlook look like? Do I need to make adjustments in my 401k? So that's kind of surface level. We could talk 60 minutes about this, but I'll stop there.
Camille Sanders: Yeah. No, I love that and I thank you for that example because I think it's a really practical example to show how people can use AI in our personal lives, right? To help us with future planning. And I, for one, had never thought about that. So thank you. Thank you again for that, and I think it leads nicely into something bigger.
That you've talked about in a recent article that you wrote and published, you talked about the fact that AI isn't at this point really about innovation, it's more about survival, especially for smaller [00:05:00] associations, and you even called it this moment, a breaking point for associations, and that's a powerful.
Really strong message and I'm curious about what makes you feel that sense of urgency right now? 
Carlos Cardenas: I think it's clear if you follow investments, if you follow the big, the tech bros, so to speak, right? In terms of what they're doing. Generative AI is not going anywhere. People use it on a personal level and they've been able to multiply their cap capabilities.
But when you go to the association level for us, you look at association membership and, and I'll say for ASAE membership, since we're on this podcast, I believe something around 80% of all associations, and I don't know if they're specific to ASAE, but they're small staff associations. Their annual revenues are somewhere between, uh, I'll say a million or [00:06:00] less.
And that's a wide range. So people wear multiple hats. And so now you've got, you're bogged down into the tactical things. You don't have opportunities to take that hat off and be more strategic. And so administrative overhead comes front and center and, and I think these agent AIs or these AI systems perfect candidate to be able to offload some of those administrative burdens, so to speak, to free you up for the more strategic aspects of it.
And so that's why I feel like it is critical. It's critical now, right? People are stuck in the mud, so to speak, and maybe I see it as a consultant. Their technology posture is not where it needs to be, and so I feel like this is a perfect opportunity for leadership boards to be looking at these technologies to say, how do we leverage it in the workplace?
Again, we can use it on a personal [00:07:00] level, but. How do we bring that into the workplace and bring ourselves into the future? How do we experiment? How do we build that culture of learning? 
Camille Sanders: Yeah. 
Carlos Cardenas: So again, that surface level answer, but that's how I thought about this. 
Camille Sanders: That's really good. And in that same piece, you introduced this concept of a quarterback agent, which I think is really timely.
It's football season, and I liked the concept because again, it makes AI feel more approachable. Can you break that down a little bit for us and talk about what exactly is a quarterback agent? And why is orchestration so much more important than just having this one catchall tool? 
Carlos Cardenas: I'll start from the model perspective, and you've got your chat GPT version 5.0.
You've got from Anthropic, you've got cloud version 4.0, 4.1. You've got these multiple [00:08:00] flavors that try to do it all. If you look at the open source market, you've got specialized models, more lightweight models, maybe from an energy standpoint. They do not consume as much energy. They do not need as much computation, and so rather than thinking about one person, one agent to do it all, I like to distribute that workload and think about specialty agents, and I can have multiple specialty agents.
If I'm managing, I'm at the center of them all and managing them all. I feel like I'm just perpetuating and repeating a current problem. And so therein comes the orchestrator or quarterback agent. The, it's, think of it as a digital twin, a mirror of you that you're trying to train this particular model, and that quarterback agent can work with the other one.
So let me give you an example. Now, let's just say you've got a project, project a, we'll call it. You maybe have a [00:09:00] statement of work or project deliverables, and so you could have a specialized project manager agent that can think about all of the deliverables that need to happen. Some of the project outcomes, some of the timelines.
You might have a business analyst agent where you feed some of the brick requirements from. Think of your discovery meetings. Think of a communications agent that is specialized in outreach. Drafting emails and writing letters and drafting RFPs and writing executive summaries. And so they each have their own specialty and the quarterback agent essentially activates them all.
Doesn't have to be linear, right? It could be like non-sequential, but it can say, Hey, project manager, I need you to tap into Microsoft Project to create X, Y, Z task communications. You take that output as input. Draft a letter to the client or to the internal executive leadership team. So you can see how [00:10:00] the coordination aspect of it frees you up.
Obviously there's always a human component to it where you have to have that human oversight, but conceptually, I think as the tools and the technology evolve, so too, do organizations have to evolve to figure out how do I leverage this? And I think this is one aspect in terms of Agentic AI that we're gonna hear more and more about.
Camille Sanders: Yeah. So if an association leader had to just start with one of all the agents that you described as possible, which one do you think gives the most impact right away and why? 
Carlos Cardenas: Yeah. I'll say before you even go to the agents, right? Start with yourself, make sure that you're experimenting and learning. And so I think of a series of concentric circles.
With you at the center. And then I think once you master that or get comfortable with it, you can go to that next layer. And that might be the team, eventually you'll get to the organization. But I [00:11:00] think it's important to take a step back and think about what is our organization, what is the mission, and what is the vision?
What are our business goals? Instead of chasing a bright and shiny tool, and you just leave the stuff that you just bought and you put it on the shelf. What do I, what problems am I trying to solve? Gotta make sure that you align it to the business goals. Otherwise you're just tinkering and experimenting on a personal level.
That's good. On an organizational level, I think that's detrimental to the organization. There's gotta be some experimentation, but make sure it's focused experimentation. Make sure you have some concrete examples or deliverables that you know you want your team. I think if you can do that. And the tasks you find are repetitive in nature, instead of prompting each and every time to do this, I think that brings the use case for an agent to help you.
And so again, I think start with that concept. Make use of that first agent. I can't [00:12:00] tell you which one makes the most sense at in the beginning, but I feel if once you understand that and you leverage it, and then you realize those outcomes, proof of concept, then move on to the next one. It is a process.
Yeah. You can't just jump to Step Z and say, let me get a quarterback agent without doing the other ones. 
Camille Sanders: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Now, one thing that. I love about your writings and your guidance on this is that you have really been adamant that associations not get caught up in the hype, and you just alluded to that.
Really tying things back to business goals and back to strategy for leaders who might be feeling FOMO, that fear of missing out. On the big push around AI right now, how would they really know where to start without just chasing the shiny new thing that's happening? 
Carlos Cardenas: Yeah, I would [00:13:00] say start somewhere.
You've gotta take that first step. I think. Don't let fear prevent you from taking that first step. I can tell you to use a specific tool, but I don't think we wanna do that. I think find a tool that speaks to you. Start to experiment with it, start to learn from it, and then I think you'll get more comfortable with the tool, and then I feel like eventually you'll realize what the capabilities are.
Obviously with some training, you've gotta always be learning, because this tool constantly changes and evolves. Technology is moving at a breakthrough speed. So rather than be overwhelmed with trying to chase each and everything, try to get good at a core three concepts. Try to get good at aligning it to your specific role.
Maybe you're a marketer. Maybe you need help with social media posts. Maybe you're a tinkerer, a creator and experimenter, and you need an ideation partner. Try [00:14:00] to focus on some of those things, and then I think you'll realize what the capabilities are and then harness those capabilities. Towards the business outcomes.
Sitting on the sidelines at this point is not an option. And if you are a leader, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and say, am I stifling? Not just the innovation, but the advancement of my association, my organization? And most times you won't see it, right? If you are the problem and lean on your team, have conversations, have open and honest and frank conversations.
I feel like the more you can bounce ideas from your team and off of your team, the more that you can help shape and think about the direction that your organization needs to be going in. Ultimately, I think we all need to dip our toes into generative AI in one form or another. I know we have different on-ramps, whether you have a policy or not inside the organization, guess what?
Your [00:15:00] teams are using the tool. At work, at home, they probably know more than you do. If you're an advanced user, you probably know a little bit more, but I think sitting on the sidelines, it's just not an option. At this point. You do not wanna be left behind and three years later, finally come to the realization, oh, how do we leverage this?
You'll be behind at that point. 
Camille Sanders: Yeah. Yeah. I very much agree with that. And speaking of just. Moving forward and thinking forward. You have developed this very interesting concept called Innovation by parts, which you've also trademarked and. I think it's amazing how that frames AI as something that's both incremental and manageable and for smaller associations, which you've alluded to.
And I think honestly, this might be practical for even medium and large associations that have not yet [00:16:00] leaned into adapting the technology. How can they apply the innovations by parts approach in a low risk and practical way? 
Carlos Cardenas: I'll give you a little bit of background in terms of the genesis of innovation by parts.
And so I go back to calculus two. Differential calculus, and so integration by parts was the concept where you take trigonometric functions as an example, and sometimes you're multiplying them and sometimes you're integrating them and it's so complex, right? And you'll probably fill pages and pages with these equations.
But there is a tool called. Integration by parts where it lets you break that down. It lets you simplify these things into additional variables to integrate that a little bit more. That's one part of it. The other part is I'm hyper visual. If I could turn my camera, you'll probably, you'll see a whiteboard on this side here.
I've got an extensive series of whiteboards, so I'm visual. I feel like if you are trying [00:17:00] to articulate, I mean, name your concept, if it's a project, if it's a mission, if it's a vision, I can talk to you about it. The message may get warped depending on how you receive it, but if we're looking at a picture and we're looking at a diagram, then we could walk through that diagram and talk through it, and I can provide you more clarity.
Maybe I'm not gifted at the gift of gab, but I think I've been blessed with being able to articulate visually. So that's the genesis of it. Behind that is you've got this complex idea, which can be daunting to some people. Look at any project, right? Whether it's an AMS implementation, sometimes you're just like, whoa, there are too many pieces to this.
But if you can break it down into smaller pieces and analyze and evaluate, then I feel like it's less daunting. It's more approachable. You can plan around those things. You can set milestones. So I guess in simple terms with maybe [00:18:00] the long-winded answer to your question, that is innovation by parts. How can organizations use it?
Go to the whiteboard. Don't assume that people understand what you're talking about. You know, whatever that project is, if you can draw it and you can understand it, then I feel like you know what you're talking about. And if you know what you're talking about in your organization, your team would be able to see your vision as well.
And don't just draw it once and look at it once, but use it as a visual tool, visual aid. As you progress along that project timeline, 
Ad Read: Let's take a quick break for a word from our episode sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. Atlanta is a leading convention city providing an exceptional environment for a wide range of events, meetings, and trade shows.
The destination strength lies in its highly accessible and walkable convention district, which is [00:19:00] seamlessly integrated with its entertainment district, home to the world's number one airport, Hartsfield Jackson, Atlanta International Airport, and a substantial inventory of more than 113,000 hotel rooms in the metro region.
The city is well equipped to accommodate small and large scale gatherings. In Atlanta, your success is our top priority. Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and our close-knit hospitality community, don't just serve as a resource, we become an extension of your team. For more information, visit discover atlanta.com.
Camille Sanders: And so now Carlos, I want to shift gears. And look a little bit down the road. If associations get this right five years from now, what do you [00:20:00] think the workplace will look like? And on a personal note, what excites you most about that future? 
Carlos Cardenas: I had the privilege of being the immediate past chair of the tech council last year.
We were talking about what does the IT team of the future look like? So we had a bunch of ideas in terms of what are the skill sets, what are the psychological profiles that an IT leader, but IT team members need? And the missing piece was agents, again, as agentic AI comes into the picture, how can it not be part of the future as these tools become more available and readily accessible?
Again, it's natural language processing, and so it's very accessible. You don't have to be super techy. How can that not be part of it? And so again, from the administrative overhead aspect of it, even on the board perspective in terms of, you know, strategic planning, I still hear stories [00:21:00] where boards are expected to look at 20, 30 page documents to prepare for a board meeting.
So how can you leverage these tools to be able to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize complexity? Into more simple terms. And so the board members can focus on strategy from a volunteer perspective. Associations, you know, manage various committees. I'll say you're taking meeting minutes and I think those are the simple ones.
I think we're past that part of. But in terms of keeping people organized, people are busy, right? If they're volunteering, they've got a full-time job, they've got a family, how can we lean on some of these tools? To help us with the repetitive, to help us with the mundane, to help us prepare for our next meeting, to help us look back and reflect on previous meetings, to help us look for trends and say where are we going?
Where did we come from? Are we aligning with the three year strategic plan that we created a couple years ago? Do we need to [00:22:00] pivot? Times are changing, do a landscape assessment. So all of these different tools, and even from an internal perspective, again, if I can go back to the small staff. You're wearing multiple hats.
Maybe you don't have the budget to get a technology leader. In comes your agents, and I'm not saying they're commercial off the shelf, but you might be able to train it best practices Microsoft documentation if you're a Microsoft shop. But I feel like it can augment your staff and the capabilities and maybe you don't fall behind on technology.
Maybe you can stay ahead to some extent of that technology curve. But it's a competitive advantage, and so if you don't take advantage of it, your competitor will. And what does that mean for the future of your business, your organization? 
Camille Sanders: Oh, Sage advice. Sage advice there. Thank you Carlos. And I have one more question for you.
Since it's National Hispanic Heritage Month, [00:23:00] I wanna close on what I think is a really important point in this conversation, and that's that AI systems are only as good as the data. They're trained on how can associations ensure that Latinx perspectives and experiences are included so that AI outcomes are both equitable and inclusive for everyone?
Carlos Cardenas: Great question, Camille. Thank you. As I think about Hispanic Heritage Month and how associations. Can make sure they're inclusive and think about the bias of these large language models are inclusive of their Latino members, Latinx members. Some of the things that they can do, uh, and maybe I'll take a step back and say again, bias is relative.
Bias is a reflection of humanity. If you think about public libraries, they're full of bias at one point or another throughout the history of time. But people have written their perspectives. Those [00:24:00] are, think about it. Some of the models are trained on some of that data. Maybe they've been transcribed and they're digitized now, but these large language models, you'll scrape these sites and scrape these articles, and they're trained on that.
What associations can do to make sure that Latino voices are heard are accurate. You cannot take the human out of the equation. So I give an example of let's say you want to cater a Hispanic heritage marketing campaign and you wanna make sure you have an authentic voice. You've got some choices to make.
There's Spanish, the dialect, the language itself, but there are different dialects. Are you speaking to Mexican, Spanish, Argentinian, Spaniard. So I feel like it is incumbent upon the association. To be that filter to make sure that you are speaking directly to your audience. Maybe you know the differences in terms of dialect of your members, and maybe you do some extra member segmentation.[00:25:00] 
I am privileged to be the incoming board president for Association Latinos. We're a local nonprofit 501(c)(3) here in Chicago. We're about four and a half years old, and so I think about exactly what I was talking about earlier. Small staff associations. Wearing multiple hats. How do we get rid of the administrative overhead?
How do we have these tools augment? And so as I assume the role, I want to incorporate some of these tools, some of these agents, some of the training, some of the upskilling into the work that we do as an organization. I think about where we are as a small nonprofit in the, I'll say ecosystem or economy of associations in general.
We're small, we've gotta outcompete, we've gotta out hustle. And so I look at these tools as a competitive advantage. I also look at it as an opportunity to train our volunteer committees, our board, [00:26:00] so that they can learn some of these tools, not just to deliver to our community, but they can take back into their own workplaces.
So if I can make 'em a stronger leader, and if I can. Get them to leverage these tools. I know that they'll go back to their organization, to their association, to their leadership roles. They're going to incorporate some of these tools and inherently make their association a stronger association.
Camille Sanders: Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much Carlos, and this has been such a really insightful conversation, and I do just wanna thank you for sharing your perspective and really giving us a roadmap. On how associations can approach AI with purpose now and in the future. And also a special thank you to our listeners and viewers for tuning into Associations NOW Presents.
Each month, we bring you the conversations that are shaping associations today, [00:27:00] highlighting the challenges, the opportunities, and the real impact. That our work has on the economy, the U.S. and even the world. And a special thank you again to our episode sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.
To learn more about planning your next event in Atlanta, please visit discoveratlanta.com. And be sure to subscribe to associations now presents on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And for more stories and insights, visit us anytime at associationsnow.com.

The Next Chapter: What's Ahead for Future-Ready Associations

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Sharon Pare, director of partnerships at HighRoad Solutions and co-host of the Rethink Association Podcast, is joined by two dynamic leaders: Christina Lewellen, MBA, FASAE, CAE, CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools, and Preet Bassi, CAE, CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Together, they explore how associations can thrive in an era defined by disruption and opportunity. Drawing on new themes highlighted in the upcoming fifth edition of the Professional Practices in Association Management, the conversation dives into the rising importance of governance and trust, building human-centered workplaces, and the skills association leaders need for the future. Lewellen and Bassi also share insights on the role of AI, the next wave of professional development, and how associations can adapt to create resilient, attractive, and future-ready organizations.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/V_j94oIM_IM
This episode is sponsored by the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
ASAE_ep14
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. Before we begin, we would like to thank this episode's sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. I'm Sharon Pare, director of partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot Agency “associafying” the way associations go to market with, well, their marketing.
I'm also the co-host of our monthly podcast, Rethink Association, where we talk about how to reimagine the way you association, which is the perfect lead in to today's discussion. So enough about me. Today, we're excited to welcome Christina Lewellen, CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools, and Preet Bassi, CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence.
Welcome to the show, Christina and Preet. Hey, good afternoon. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks so much for having us. Absolutely. Welcome to the show. [00:01:00] Before we get to introductions, I'd like to level set before we get into it. On this podcast today, we'll be talking about the future of associations, evolution, innovation, and leading through change.
We're also gonna talk about some of the new themes in the fifth edition of the Professional Practices and Association Management book, but we'll talk about some of the insights that challenge business as usual. And also this podcast is for you if you're leading a small but mighty team like Christina is, or a schmedium association, like Preet likes to call it, a national organization.
Or if you're simply just curious, there are some pop tracks in this podcast that you don't wanna miss. Preet and Christina are two leaders bringing deep experience in the field and fresh thinking on where associations are headed next. Well, they certainly need no introduction. I'm excited to give them the floor for a quick hello.
So we'll start with you, Christina.
Christina Lewellen: Hello everyone. I'm Christina Luwellen and I am the president and CEO of ATLIS. As you mentioned, [00:02:00] ATLIS is technology leaders in independent schools, which basically means that we are CIOs and tech teams, tech directors that serve private K 12 schools primarily in the states.
And we are growing really fast. We're a relatively young organization, about 10 years old. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary, but we are growing between 30 and 35% year over year, so we're definitely adding. Lots of new schools to our community every year. 
Preet Bassi: Hi everyone. I'm Preet Bassi, the CEO for the Center for Public Safety Excellence.
Been in that role. It'll be 11 years this September, and our organization has gone through a fix it phase and also a grow it phase, and we're in our grow it phase right now. We work with fire departments all around the world, helping them and the professionals that work in those fire departments establish continuous improvement methods to make sure that they're serving their communities better.
Sharon Pare: That's amazing. I'm really excited for today's conversation. And just from what you said, [00:03:00] Christina, you're at a newer association being there for about 10 years, and then Preet, you've been at your organization for 11 years, so I think that's amazing. Today we'll be chatting on topics we're all grappling in the space, so without further ado, let's jump in.
So associations built around people, knowledge and exchange, creating a collective knowledge. I know you've both contributed to shaping where associations are headed. Christina, let's start with you. What do you think will be foundational in the next era? 
Christina Lewellen: As we think about that, I like to boil things down in terms of associations and what they are, and I love this very simplistic way of thinking about it that Peggy Hoffman offers us, which is that the formula's pretty simple.
Associations are simply a combination of content. Community, and I feel like that is likely to remain the foundation of associations, but how we build on that foundation is probably going to have to change. There's a couple ways that I envision this happening, one for sure is that I [00:04:00] think that how we redefine and evolve the.
Workplace of associations will likely become foundational to how associations succeed. We have great opportunities there, but I also think that a lot of associations have some governance cleanup to do, and that is something that will really amplify this idea of the foundation being content and community.
Because if organizations are struggling to either clean up their components or wrestle with some unhealthy governance practices that have gotten into the mix, it's tough to stay really true to the mission and to deliver on that value proposition of content and community. So there's some opportunities there for sure, and I think that we'll continue to unpack that as this conversation goes along.
Sharon Pare: Preet, is there anything you'd like to add or something shifting even more dramatically?
Preet Bassi: I completely agree with the content and community comment. I would add connection to that, how we bring it together. [00:05:00] But my perspective on associations and CPSE is 28 years old, and about eight years ago, right as we were becoming a true adult at 21, we had a conversation in our board meeting about needing to self disrupt. If we were Blockbuster, we needed to figure out how to be Netflix, not have some other Netflix come in and overtake our market. Historically, associations haven't needed to worry about competition, startups, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcy, right? Those are common terms that we think about in the private space, but not in associations.
But if you look around over the last five, 10 years, there have been associations that have started up because they did not feel. They had a home, they had a voice, they had a space. You've seen associations that unfortunately have dwindled, those that have been friendly, merged, or perhaps hostile takeover bought out.
And [00:06:00] in looking at that, some of the things that we've been trying to do at CPSE is. How do we diversify who we are, how we're formatted to make sure that we're very agile and we're adapting as those societal, technological, economic, environmental, political changes come in. We've launched a subsidiary, we've started a new program.
We are incubating an association. Those would be words that you typically would hear, once again, in the private sector, but you wouldn't hear for associations. I think that the time has come for associations to not take their membership market for granted and make sure that they're scanning the entire market and how they best conserve it.
Sharon Pare: Yeah, that's great. Preet, and being on the industry partner side of things, we've seen that, of course, in the association side and seeing some of these hostile takeovers, if you will, or some of these mergers. But I'm seeing it on the industry partner side too. Almost on the monthly, maybe on the weekly, you hear some new news of [00:07:00] some of these larger conglomerates in our for-profit side of our association business, the industry partners respectively, where they're doing these mergers and acquisitions and they're creating this monolithic corporation, if you will, within our own space.
So this brings me into my next question. What do you think will fade or transform in terms of roles and skills and the futurescape of associations? 
Preet Bassi: I believe that we'll have a few doer roles that consist and event coordination. We have an amazing staff member that makes sure that the sponsor booths are set up and all the way a few of those will stick, but those that have historically been in thinker roles.
If they can grow that particular skillset, I see that as a kind of a skillset that is going to shift, whether it's because you're gonna do some automation through AI or even some outsourcing of things that are related to your [00:08:00] mission, but not core to the mission and just really don't need to do it. And it's interesting.
InCPSE, we do outsource a lot of core back of house tasks: finance, IT, legal. And thank God for partners in the private space that work with associations specifically on it, on legal. We are also thinking about how we outsource some front of house operations, events, communications. But what we're not considering is our very core programs, which are accreditation and credentialing.
And so that is more about associations. So I think we'll want to retain the skill sets and the roles that directly touch the member, but those that support the touching of the member, which sounds very weird, is I think where we'll see. A lot of change, whether it's through automation outsourcing or even potentially sharing of resources.
Christina Lewellen: If I could just draw an underline under [00:09:00] what Preet said. I think that you're right. The job functions and skills that are core to the strategy are likely to be the ones that really stay home at the association, but I'll just note that can change. So it could be that if you're launching a new program or something that is really high priority on your strategy.
You might need marketing and communications to be on your team, but then once it becomes rote, once it becomes the chug, a chug of work that we always do, just trains leaving the station, then you might reevaluate that. And I would say that it won't be that those skills are no longer needed at associations, but I think it's gonna be.
The chief staffing executive's job is to take a pause, take a beat, and go, okay, I understand why eight years ago we needed the marketing team because we were launching this new thing, or we went through a merger. But now that we've got that settled down and things are a little bit more business as usual, do we still need that function in house?
I think that's where you'll see some of these fringe [00:10:00] tasks like accounting or HR, but even some member programs and services like what Preet was saying that they're considering, that is likely to possibly shift just depending on where it falls in your strategic plan. Organizations that can be fairly nimble are probably gonna be the ones that really leverage having the right skillset in-house.
And then I'll just note that I think the AI right now is. Clickbait. The headlines are just getting our attention, getting us all wound up, and there is some voice coming through the clickbait noise right now that is bringing a certain amount of pragmatism and levelheadedness to the conversation because we have not gotten to the point where generalized intelligence is going to be able to connect the dots on all the content, community, and connection that we create for associations.
We still need to do that as humans putting those pieces of the puzzle together. But any jobs that do require those conclusions to be drawn and those dots to be connected are very likely to stay a part of [00:11:00] our kind of landscape for a while. 
Preet Bassi: Yeah. And connecting with that, we've said we don't mind if AI proprietary tools are automating very rote tasks for us, but we don't want AI being the.
Connection point for our members. It's like AI can touch our members stuff and because we're a conformity assessment body, we're accrediting fire department's credentialing fire professionals. So there's a lot of checking of their application, verifying, ensuring that it's correct. Sure, the AI can do that, but I want to make sure that the person, the humans are central to the ongoing engagement because so much of what people are coming to associations for.
Isn't just, oh, I have money in my budget that I need to spend on an annual conference. They're looking for community. They're looking for connection. The content they could get anywhere, but those other two pieces do require that there's a human on the other end. [00:12:00] 
Sharon Pare: Putting AI aside, are there any new skills rising that maybe we're not talking about enough in the space?
Christina Lewellen: I think that there's a lot of emotional intelligence that we are going to need because of AI. I'd love that we could just set it aside or set it on a shelf, Sharon, but that's not the reality we're living in. But I think that to your question, I understand the point of what you're getting to, and I think that we're gonna need humans who are super.
So many, you know, we need good emotional intelligence. We need to make sure that our workplaces are bringing balance and flexibility to the humans who work at them. And I think that all these things are possible, and it's not just because of ai. We should have been doing that anyway before ai. But I do think that in the emerging generations of leaders.
We're hearing about how emotional intelligence can be the antidote to burnout and how it can really create healthy culture. So I think that having some of those soft skills, having resilience to get through hard things is probably, [00:13:00] I don't know if they're skills, but they're at least a characteristic of the future workforce that we're going to need to develop.
Preet Bassi: Christina must have been in an amazing conversation we had at our all hands staff coordination meeting. We meet periodically in person and we looked at ASAE's, Drivers of Change around the more human humans to ensure that we were doubling down on that. Another skillset that I would add, and I think this has historically been something that's been reserved at the director C-suite level, but it may now need to promulgate the entire organization, is continuous improvement, creativity and small eye innovation.
Am I doing the right thing? Is there a better way of doing it? Not just can I do more of it? And whether that's a staff member that feels empowered to bring that idea forward. Obviously managers, directors, who should be looking at it, and the CEO, who should be creating that culture where that's the expectation [00:14:00] around to just improve it.
We actually redid our entire. Staff competencies list and there were core competencies for the entire organization. Some were considered to you. Gotta be aware, proficient and expert customer service was expert throughout emotional intelligence, was expert throughout, even for the most junior member of our team.
Sharon Pare: I think that's a perfect lead in to how we think about learning itself. Christina, maybe we'll bring it back to you, but how do you see professional development evolving? 
Christina Lewellen: Look at the surface level. If we can get generalized content easily from ai, then associations have this imperative to do the deeper dive.
I think we're gonna have to do more customized professional development because members can go find information on. You know the chat bot du jour, right? So what we need to do as associations, as we think about learning and PD and [00:15:00] how we're gonna deliver that, is that we really should get in a place where we're offering specialized guidance to help them, the member, stand out in their shifting marketplace.
It's not just that associations are going through these changes, our members. To navigate them too. As far as how we do this, it is very likely that we're going to incorporate AI bots and gentech AI into our associations the way that we eventually embedded the internet into our delivery system in the late 1990s and early two thousands.
It's very awkward in adolescent right now, but it's maturing quickly, so we're going to have to walk this path, but we probably need to do so at varying rates to hit all of our members where they are and make sure that they're getting the delivery mechanisms that they need at the end of the day. In the education sector, when the internet was widely available, there was this massive fear that the end of school, as we know it was upon us.
And as it turns out, lo and behold, we still have [00:16:00] school. Right? So I don't think that AI is going to, in any way, hold. Fully eliminate association generated content or standard setting in particular, super customized, super niche, right? And even like our in-person gatherings, in fact, we may see that there's a greater need to have in-person or virtual communities of humans getting together because of these AI shifts that are taking place.
So. I feel like there's a lot of concern about what AI might do to disrupt us, but at the same time, if we lean into it, there's a lot of opportunity for us to get the the surfacey level stuff out of the way so that we can do a deeper dive, and that's what we're very well equipped to do. 
Preet Bassi: I think for me, the greatest opportunity is if whatever format the professional development it is provides actionable insights, go do this.
Here's the tips for replication, here's why it would be a good idea. Provides flexibility for engagement and really understanding people like to consume information in very different ways. [00:17:00] I think about the subsidiary that we're launching as we've looked through delivering content in a handbook, in an in-person workshop through onsite facilitation, reading short case studies, searching through an LLM on your own.
But also picking up the phone and talking to an expert. That's the range of the ways that you could engage with this content. And I think then if you are able to provide some flexibility in the way that the engagement is your in-person experiences, no more lecture, leverage those for real good engagement.
Use that time together, let them read the stuff ahead of time. And there's always this sense of wanting to lead to the lowest common denominator. We send them the pre-read and we told them to after the pre-webinar video, but they didn't. Too bad. So sad. If the in-person experience is focused on [00:18:00] engagement, they'll keep coming back 
Sharon Pare: Preet, you mentioned accreditations just a moment ago, so I'd love your take on this, especially considering some insight from Foresight Works.
Some skepticism around the credentialed experts. Would you be able to share what that might mean for certification in the future? And also for the listeners, if you could explain Foresight Works just a little bit too, and what their role is in sharing with us their insights. 
Preet Bassi: Absolutely. So at CPSE, we accredit departments.
Credential professionals, and it's not a requirement that they be connected. They're two separate programs. There's significant overlap. We are well aware that rejection of expertise is a societal threat and it's no different for us. There is this unfortunate bifurcation within the fire service of the progressive responsive data informed departments and [00:19:00] individuals are going in one direction and the traditional, don't move my cheese or in a different direction, and it's becoming a culture war. Much pick a topic. You could have a culture war around it. Foresight works. It has quite a few drives of change, and so this is an annual effort through the research foundation, one of ASAE's subsidiaries that tries to identify.
Those things that are happening that are going to cause an impact to associations. We already mentioned the more human humans is one of the drivers of change that's out there. There are a few related to rejection of expertise, but also this impact on credentialing programs. And it has to be said like the workplace today is a challenged one.
A lot of requirements can become barriers to entry. For individuals. I know that we've actually been supporting a lot of work on how to create [00:20:00] a more. Open and equitable fire service that doesn't require somebody on day zero to pay an application fee and be able to do the physical tasks. Let's look for the attitudes that we want, that they have an aptitude to learn, and through an academy they can get to that point where they're able to do those tasks.
But at some point there is a line in the sand that has to be drawn that shows is there an industry standard? How are we performing to set industry standard and is that standard changing? So I think about this even in an environment where credentials, experts, there's public skepticism about it. CPCs credentialing program is growing.
We grew 44% in the last five years, and there were a couple of ways that we've done that. One, we've diversified our offerings. We don't just have a single credential. We historically had, it was the chief fire officer. We've added six for [00:21:00] individuals that are more junior in the organization. That's the fire officer, and also five specialty ones with two of them being typically held by people who don't wear a uniform.
They work in the fire department, but they aren't a uniform member of the fire department. So that's been really interesting. The other is, how are we making it? Easier to go through the credentialing process. So we've done significant technology changes in the application process. We also wanted to make sure that our credential was pushing for excellence.
Our mission is to lead the fire and emergency service excellence, so we wanted to make sure we did that. We do have some industry standards that we've historically relied on to pull technical competencies out of. We realize that. Scope of update was too narrow and not frequent enough. We then conducted an analysis of what are the skill sets that future leaders in this space need, and we added those to [00:22:00] our credentialing model.
Mental health and wellness. Health for the firefighters was really important as was data and technology because there weren't other standards out there today that were requiring those. We removed our own barriers to entry. We historically asked the supervisor to attest to the application. Unfortunately, if there was a relationship that wasn't great or.
In some cases, if the member who was seeking the credential was in a more traditional setting, but they wanted to be a little bit more progressive, and especially if they were from an underrepresented group, they weren't getting that. We've now removed that requirement. We've also started offering scholarships and once every five years, we take every single one of our programs through our business process plan to make sure that.
We don't have any unintended breaks in what we're doing, so the rejection of expertise is there. It is a threat, but some thoughtfulness about how the credentialing programs are built and [00:23:00] how they're delivered can really go a long way to overcoming some of that initial pushback that may be rooted in an access barrier that then becomes a rejection of this credential.
Christina Lewellen: If I could just add Sharon. I'll throw a hand grenade kind of into the room or drop a truth bomb, whatever analogy you want is that, yeah, associations are facing this trust issue, both in the realm of certification and credentialing, but in other realms as well. But we also have a branding issue on our hands.
It's not just a trust issue, right? It's not just that folks are more skeptical of what we offer. I think that we need to shift our mindset from the sit and get certifications. Because anyone could leverage an LLM and get the answers out of a textbook. It's the same thing we're seeing happening in education.
Done credentials and certifications are likely to become very devalued in short order. So I think the important opportunity here is in those scenarios and experience-based [00:24:00] credentials, I think that's where the value will come into play because they demonstrate. That human centric and that human dependent expertise.
So if we're facing skepticism around our credentialing programs, I think that associations are gonna have to challenge the status quo of those programs. They're cash cows, right? They've been designed, and who really has the appetite to just chuck it out the window and start again, but equally important to making sure that the content is there and it can't easily be replicated by an LLM.
I think that we're gonna have to elevate our messaging and our branding around these programs to help the end user, whether that's from a safety perspective with fire departments, or whether it's someone trying to hire a technology director for an independent school. We need to focus on those aspects that are really unique and uniquely human, and I think that's where some branding and messaging might need to be elevated as well.
Sharon Pare: I think that's some great insight and you mentioned Don't Move My Cheese, and it really feels like [00:25:00] a big throwback to decades ago. 
Ad Read: Let's take a quick break for a word from this episode. Sponsor the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. Atlanta is a leading convention city providing an exceptional environment for a wide range of events, meetings, and trade shows.
The destination strength lies in its highly accessible and walkable convention district, which is seamlessly integrated with its entertainment district, home to the world's number one air. Court Hartsfield Jackson, Atlanta International Airport, and a substantial inventory of more than 113,000 hotel rooms in the metro region.
The city is well equipped to accommodate small and large scale gatherings in Atlanta. Your success is our top priority. Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and our close-knit hospitality community, don't just serve as a resource. We become an extension of your team. For more information, [00:26:00] visit discover atlanta.com.
Sharon Pare: I wanna move into the future a little bit, and so if we imagine someone thriving in the association world in 2035, what does that look like? Preet, I'll start with you. 
Preet Bassi: Oh, first, acknowledging that everything is changing everywhere, all at once. Sounds like a movie, right? It is. It’s burned from a movie. I think the shift from, and I hate this phrase, being member-driven, I think it's being member-informed, board directed, staff executed, and that being a constant cycle, not a one-off, not just every five years, we're gonna do a strategic plan, which nobody should be doing that.
Really looking at it from the back of house standpoint, the association and Christina mentioned it earlier about how technology, the internet joined associations in the late nineties, and it had to be that every company today needs to be a technology company. Your systems and experiences need to be [00:27:00] just so seamless.
You have to effectively use your volunteers. I think the industry subject matter experts have to remain core. To what we do and we can't over index on staff 'cause that's why we're here doing my best. Oprah, everybody gets a KPI like if you're not measuring every single program, whether it's KPI, OKRs, pick your system, your metric format, you have to.
And I think at the end it's definitely seeing grounded in the mission, adapting to that change that's happening everywhere. Everything all at once. If those ingredients hopefully will set up the association to thrive if the board and senior staff are willing to do so, if they're willing to change, if they're willing to accept and if they're going to be an emu that puts their head in the sand. This too shall pass. And a lot [00:28:00] of that disruption and hostile takeovers that we talked about are just going to occur 
Christina Lewellen: If we're looking 10 years down the road. I'll just amplify what Preet said, that we have to include healthy governance, whatever that looks like. It's the thing that sets us apart from corporations and government bodies.
Associations have this powerful partnership between the board, our industry experts, and. The staff are operational experts, and if we're looking long term, there are some organizations that we all know of that could probably do with a bit of a governance overhaul, and some organizations were ahead of the curve on this and trying to revamp things to be more innovative, to be more responsive to the need.
So the member, but if that hasn't happened already, I think that's what's gonna set apart the good from the great is when that one plus one equals three on the governance side, that it's boring, but it is essential and key to who we are and how we operate. It's what makes associations [00:29:00] really different and special.
And I think far too many associations just don't. Wanna bite that elephant. They just don't wanna tackle it. But I think that's gonna be an important way in which associations can thrive moving forward. I also think that there's an opportunity for us if we don't exactly know where a lot of technology and content is gonna go.
I would imagine that 10 years from now we become the distilling experts. If there's an overabundance of information, then being able to connect the dots and being able to sift the macro factors and how it affects the industry you serve. I would anticipate associations are gonna play a more intricate analysis role when it comes to all this content and.
I guess I would just add that the community side of things with associations, we've always helped people find their people. That's not gonna change, but I would imagine in 10 years we may have to help our industry's voice stand out again with. So much information, the evolution of AI, we're [00:30:00] probably gonna have to help our industries navigate their own shifting landscapes and make sure that their voices are coming together to get that critical messaging and or work out in the public sphere.
So I would imagine that there's also something, and not just bringing community together for the sake of community, but for amplifying voices in a really noisy room. 
Sharon Pare: As you're talking about helping the industry ship that landscape, and we're talking about thriving, we also have to talk about value, right?
So what will make associations truly desirable to future members? 
Christina Lewellen: More than we do right now? We have to understand the nuances of our members because there's a really wide variety of jobs to be done by associations. So too often we segment our communities either by the positions that they hold or the certain.
Stage of their career that they might be at. But they come to us to do a job. Each member, each individual member comes to our association looking for some kind of job that we [00:31:00] are gonna do for them, and we might need to revisit that jobs to be done methodology in the context of a really unsettled and evolving landscape.
The job we're supposed to do for them yesterday is unlikely to be the job they're gonna pay us to do in the future. And whether that's onboard to my new career or help me get a new job or. Help me make connections in my industry. Whatever those jobs were yesterday, they're likely to change tomorrow. So I think that we need to stay tapped into that on the value side for members.
And I also think that we may wanna talk more about the emotional connection that members have with our associations. So it's not just that we're gonna be their special library, that they go to pass a certification exam or that we’re their voice on the hill or their. In person conference of choice. I think that increasingly humans are gonna seek other humans, and we have this opportunity to evolve our role in making that connection, maybe making more personalized connections, smaller cohorts and things like that.
So [00:32:00] I think there's a couple of ways that we can not upend the apple cart entirely, but maybe tweak the values that we're bringing to the market today to be more responsive and flexible in the future. 
Preet Bassi: I wanna pick up on one of the comments that Christina made actually to the previous question that it was about helping our industry, and I'd add sometimes when they don't even know that they need to be.
So are we a trustee for our members or are we a delegate? The trustee acts in the best interest of the members, but perhaps doesn't do exactly what we want them, they would want us to do. The delegate does and a lot of that is looking at trying to predict what's gonna be in the future. A phrase that I'm sure my team is quite sick of using recently is just in time.
So what are the “just in time” solutions, but also what is the “just in time” volunteering? I actually would love to hang out with this organization for the next three months and do a thing, but I'm really not interested in doing it every single day. [00:33:00] So how are we building our programs in that way? I think also there's gonna be this sense of brand connection and is this an organization that you want to belong to?
Does it speak to who you are? The governance comment, I only, my only addition to what Christina had is I wish we were in Zoom and I would've put the 100 underline emoji on what she said 'cause it's so true. Radically transparent governance. If the members can't figure out why the organization made a change, whatever said changes, you have a problem.
So they don't necessarily need to know how many people voted X versus Y, but every decision needs to be done in this really transparent way. And I also think there's, for associations, like there's perhaps a number of associations that a member interacts with. They might want you periodically to collaborate but not necessarily partner with the other associations.
Like it's fine for you to do your [00:34:00] own thing, but. Really looking at how do you collaborate on those big issues, those once every five year big efforts, they're gonna want to see. That was an industry-wide effort and not just a you association effort and from a member, their ability to buy, whether that's driven by the point in their career, beginning of their career, end of their career, or do just what they want.
I think we need to be okay selling them margarine, but also butter. So if we're like, we always want the best in class offering, we want this high touch, really glossy educational deliverable. Wonderful. Also, are you delivering similar content in a boring on-demand webinar that they can buy for $29? If you aren't delivering at both of those price points, you are going to make it so that you've automatically isolated some of your members.
So those are some of the things that really came to me, but I think that big one is, are you. Able to act as their [00:35:00] trustee. We got your back versus we're just gonna do what you tell us to do so you'll buy more from us. And that's going to require some guts on behalf of the board and the CEO to be willing to make that shift.
Sharon Pare: I think that’s some really great coins. And that's one side of the coin. And of course there's the other is who will wanna work for associations. So I'll keep this open for both of you, but what does an attractive association employer look like in the future? 
Christina Lewellen: This is my favorite topic because I really think that associations have this opportunity to stand out when it comes to designing the workforce and the workplace of the future.
And we have what a lot of people are looking for. We have mission, we have this purpose, and a lot of folks are trying to connect. If I'm gonna spend this many hours of my life working at a job. What in the world is it all for? So I think that we have a great message to sell, but I also think that we can shape what a workforce looks like and be an example for our members.
[00:36:00] Companies like whoever joins your association, you can be the one setting a great example. That's one of the things that Atlas tries to do. I have my way of doing things as a CEO, it. Pretty well known at this point, so I'll just run the laundry list really quickly. We do not send internal emails. We have zero internal emails.
We are entirely based in a project management system. I run a permanent four day work week. We have unlimited PTO. I'm even entertaining some really creative additional offerings to my benefits package that are really out there, and I don't wanna go on public record saying it yet because I gotta get my budget passed.
But I basically, my whole goal. My whole lens for all of this is that my members, Atlas's members, deserve an effective, efficient, and inspired workforce. Simply put, it's good ROI for them to have a ridiculously loyal and happy staff. I believe in that. And so I think that your employees certainly deserve a healthy environment, and we might as well go [00:37:00] about removing obstacles to their continued excellence.
Let's put them in a position to succeed. Not everybody is going to do it my way. Not everybody's gonna do a four day work week. Not everyone's gonna be decentralized. I understand that. But I do think for the associations who choose to accept this mission, both in terms of attracting and retaining the staff that we get, but also like influencing all of the industries that we serve.
Can you imagine the fingerprint? We would leave. The associations decided tomorrow that we were going to create best in class workplaces, and then our members started following suits. Think about the influence we would have. So this is an area where I have a lot of passion and it's not just because it works for Atlas, I'm seeing.
So many of our peers take these nuggets. Well, Christina's kind of crazy and she'll try these things. Maybe I could try 'em too and see what that does for our team. And I think that the benefits have been really incredible. So I know I get worked up and really excited about this topic, but I think it's not just for the sake of being recognized as like somebody cool [00:38:00] to work for.
I don't care about that. It's not what it's about. I don't care if they wanna work for me. What I want is I want employees. Who are obscenely committed to our mission, and that's what I believe our members deserve. 
Sharon Pare: Preet, is there anything you wanna layer onto that?
Preet Bassi: All the praise that Christina is well known for all of those amazing things.
And to say how she has been an inspiration, speak to it. So we've done the basic. We're remote first. We outsource where we need to. We contract where we need to. We're creating new and additional world, but we have our 2024 to 2027 strategic plan, and one of the four tenets of that is to be people focused.
Christina Lewellen: Yay. That's really cool. Tell me we are about that and it's, wait, hold on. We're taking over. Sharon, I wanna hear about this. 
Sharon Pare: No, please do a deep dive. 
Preet Bassi: We want a people-focused organization, and I can't even begin to quote all of the great statements, but it was something that came through in, in a given year.
700 people between [00:39:00] our volunteers, contractors, and staff do a thing that. Add something to the board. So if they're reviewing a application, they're conducting a site visit, thinking about our volunteers, contractors, the world that they do and the staff. So what would it look like if we thought about being that best in class?
We've been doing org culture surveys that are actually not terrible for a while with our contractors and staff, and making some actionable changes based on that. We're currently engaged with a project with a. Volunteer expert to do a complete overhaul of how we manage our volunteers, which we have about 650 of them, and it really is knowing that on any given day, any of them have a choice, whether it's the volunteers, many of our contractors are soon to be retiring.
Chief fire officers, so they've got a retirement, they're looking about giving back. They're sure [00:40:00] everybody likes an extra dollar, but they're not motivated by the monetary. They're looking about how they continue to continue to commission, and I actually believe we've extended. Many of our fire professionals, livelihood and contributions by giving them a place within CPSC and those that are and have been progressive, continue to be.
So I think that people first concept, we're early in it. We're only a year and a bit into our strategic plan. But there's some seven or eight strategies underneath this focus area, multiple objectives, and really wanting to succeed through our people. We know that it doesn't matter what tech, doesn't matter what systems.
There is a human at the center of everything. So if they feel that we are the best place and we bring out the best from them, and so much of it is about culture in an organization, but I think you know that adage of culture, eat strategy for breakfast. I saw a better version of culture and strategy eat breakfast [00:41:00] together.
I think that is really true and. I was so happy recently. One of our team members, she'd been out on maternity leave and came back and just sent us this message of how she felt so supported and she had never been in an organization that truly embodied family first and didn't just say it, but then. Are you sure you need to go to that graduation?
Are you sure you can't make the time? So it really was important, and this is not an ego trip, but at some point I think the association needs to be attractive to A CEO to want to come to, and especially A CEO that's gonna have some positive results for the organization. So that then falls to the board.
We've talked about a lot of our staff and how we're gonna help them, but how does the board enter into this partnership with their CEO that makes it a place that the good CEO actually wants to work? 
Sharon Pare: That's awesome. Preet, and I know we've gotta wrap up soon, but there's a common theme that I'm starting to [00:42:00] see in our conversation, A sense of belonging, connection, collaboration, humane, I love that word too.
People first, but we painted a really forward looking picture here. So where does the journey begin? 
Christina Lewellen: Look, we're in an era marked with change, so we have to lean into time proven like change management techniques, right? And so whatever model you pick, I think that we're at this era where some of us might be concerned about change, and so some of us might feel like we need to double down on the way that things work.
COVID gave us this opportunity to be in a change mindset, and the associations that took advantage of that and continue to take advantage of it are gonna be in the best position to make the transition. So if we think about where this should go or what the first step should be, we are. Very good at setting a vision.
Associations are good at that. We are good at saying, where do we wanna go? Let's be proactive. Let's clearly define what we're gonna be able to do to add value to our community, and then let's pursue that vision with the intensity that we always have. So I think you know [00:43:00] where to start with all this is just to be comfortable with discomfort and the fact that we are in a change management cycle and then we can really stand out.
I truly believe associations have. This opportunity to stand out more so than private or public companies. We're not driven by the dollar or shareholders. We've got the space to think about long-term investment and commitment to our goals, and now we need to do that. 
Preet Bassi: I love what Christina said, and we had a board member who really helped our organization at a time when we were moving from our fix it phase to our grow it phase, and he talked about runway, not-for-profits, associations, we've got a runway, we can make a plan and we can see it through.
Are we willing to do? That's the fortitude piece. And for an association that's trying to figure out how to change, I think you need to get good at doing the simple things so that there's trust, because all the changes and all the ideas. So if you aren't good at returning emails, phone calls, messages internally, externally.
If you [00:44:00] don't consistently deliver on your commitments, there's no trust there for you to make the next set of changes. That someone will be like, I don't know, that sounds a little weird. Are you sure we're going to do that? And I comment often about CPSE having had our fix it phase and now we're in our grow it phase.
It's not just, we're not just growing in numbers, we're growing in evolution of who we are. Like who do we wanna be when we grow up? Kind of growth. But what paved the way for us to be able to do that was consistent delivery commitment to what we were saying in the smallest ways. So that people knew we could do the next crazy idea that we came up with and that we were going to walk them along, which from a change management standpoint, just as Christina said, that's so big.
But I think the trust and how do you begin to measure the trust? How do you start going after those areas that there is potential, some distrust. It is the currency that any change is gonna need, and if it doesn't exist, [00:45:00] a great CEO, A great system, any number of great ideas just aren't gonna go anywhere.
How you do that takes communication takes. Calling the baby ugly when it needs to be called ugly, and making those small, but also big swing changes that do get you where you need to go. 
Sharon Pare: I think that's a great way to round out this podcast. I appreciate you both being guests on today's show. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Association NOW Presents.
Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals. Discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US and the world. We would like to give a big thanks again to this episode sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.
For more information, visit discoveratlanta.com. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, [00:46:00] and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Or go to associations now online at associationsnow.com. Thanks for listening.

Scaling with Purpose: Inclusion, Innovation, and Impact

Season 2 kicks off live from the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition in Los Angeles! Guest hosts Ben Muscolino, Gretchen Steenstra, and Jake Toohey of The Association Podcast sit down with Bobbie Racette, founder and president of Virtual Gurus. Bobbie shares her inspiring journey as an Indigenous queer woman in tech, from launching Virtual Gurus in 2016 to scaling it into a thriving, values-driven company. She opens up about overcoming challenges, securing funding, leading through COVID-19, and the critical role of company culture. The conversation explores how Virtual Gurus is integrating AI responsibly, Bobbie’s vision for global expansion, and audience questions on building inclusive workplaces and communities.
This episode is sponsored by Destination Canada and Visit Denver.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Ben Muscolino: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Associations NOW Presents podcast live from the show floor here at ASAE 25. I am Ben Muscolino with Brezio, AMS Geek, and Data Sangria. I'm here with my co-hosts of The Association Podcast. Jake and Gretchen. We are so excited to be bringing our format and our passion for the industry over the Associations NOW Presents podcast.
We have an incredible guest today and I'm gonna kick it over to one of my co-hosts and we're gonna get that going. So glad you're here with us today. 
Gretchen Steenstra: So I am Gretchen Steenstra, the permanent/temporary guest co-host. I think I came for five episodes and I don't know how many, maybe 50 now. My day job, I work at DelCor, a technology consulting company, and one of my passion projects is I'm a founder of AWTC, which supports women in tech and part of tech council and [00:01:00] all the association families.
So I'm really happy to be here and nice to meet you today. 
Jake Toohey: Hey, I'm Jake Toohet. I am the director of the association practice at Adage Technologies. We're a digital strategy, web development and design firm, and, work with all associations. And we are thrilled to have Bobby Racette, Virtual Guru's, former CEO, now president, founder.
So thrilled to have you. Can you start by just talking a little bit about what you do and your background and just kick it off from there. 
Bobbie Racette: Yeah. Hi. Thanks everyone. This is amazing. So founder and CEO of Virtual Gurus. So I started Virtual Gurus in 2016 because nobody would give me a job. I was looking for work for, I don't know, close to a year, and nobody would give me a job at all.
So I actually started it just to create a job for myself. And at the time, I had no idea I was gonna scale into this big thing. It was gonna go where it went. I had no idea that it was gonna be AI eventually, and that there'd be thousands of people working in the [00:02:00] platform. But here I am and happy to be here.
Ben Muscolino: Hey, Bobbie. We're storytellers in the association space. Your story is so incredible. We wanna talk with you about several things today, but to get things kicked off, talk to us about what you've been up to this morning and the session that you led. How was that for you? 
Bobbie Racette: I've been traveling a lot talking about my story.
I actually just flew in from Japan and I was speaking out at the World Expo, which has been amazing. Such an amazing experience. Just to be saying that I'm speaking and I'm out at the expo. I was there on a trades mission and just really telling the story, but this morning it was really just about telling my journey and about culture and my journey of being an indigenous queer woman in technology and how hard it's been to get to where I am today, and meant to raising millions and millions of dollars to run the company and to build the AI.
Now we're scaling globally, and I was actually in Japan meeting with senior leaders like the CEO of Mitsubishi to try to get our AI out [00:03:00] there a little bit more. So it's been a pretty crazy ride these last few weeks. 
Ben Muscolino: Bobbie we have so many things that we wanna learn about you, but I'm very interested in what was the turning point where you realized that you wanted to start virtual gurus?
What was that catalyst? Because you kind of talked a little bit about the need to want to create work for yourself. Was that really the catalyst moment? Talk to us about that. 
Bobbie Racette: Yeah. I was working in oil and gas in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where a lot of people are working oil and gas. But layoffs came like when the gas prices dropped, and I think 37,000 people were laid off within one day, and I was one of those people.
But when everybody went into the city and was trying to find work. By the time I got there, all the jobs were either being taken up, but all of the people that were more qualified or maybe fit their culture more got the jobs over me. And so I was looking for work for so long and nobody would hire me at all.
I don't know what it was. I'd like to say maybe it's just 'cause of who I am, [00:04:00] but a queer woman in tech and nobody would hire me. So I actually created a job for myself. I was the virtual assistant. I wasn't actually planning to scale it, I was just doing it to create a job for myself and. I had 19 clients, so I started with $300 in my pocket and I bootstrapped it to 1.8 million in revenue.
And then I realized I needed to hire, and then I needed to raise money and there's a lot of work to do. And so I closed my first funding round in 2020. The light bulb went on, why don't I start this platform to create work for people like me? And then all of a sudden, the platform just went wild. 
Ben Muscolino: So the serendipitous timing.
Where everyone that maybe got to the jobs before you did and then you raising money in 2020 and scaling when you did. What an incredible twist of timing for business being in 2020 when everything went virtual. Right? 
Bobbie Racette: Everything went virtual, and then I closed three funding rounds during [00:05:00] COVID, which nobody was investing at the time because they were so scared to use their dry powder.
But I was like, let's go and, and it worked well. We scaled 300% year overgrowth through every year and through COVID through three years. 
Gretchen Steenstra: So you were describing how difficult that was. Were there assumptions you made and had to adjust throughout these cycles? Like you said in the very beginning, you didn't know how to raise funds and people were turning you down.
But as you matured and evolved, what are the assumptions you're facing now that you assume when you're going out for funding or building your company, that you have to adjust and. 
Bobbie Racette: Yeah, I guess the landscape has changed so much from COVID. Before COVID, it was scary. People weren't really interested in the freelancing platforms and it wasn't as well known.
And then COVID hit and then everybody went remote and everybody was laid off their jobs. So people started going to platforms like ours. All the administrative people were getting laid off and then they came to me and so I was picking them up and recycling them back out and cold calling [00:06:00] the companies that were laying people off during COVID.
And I'm basically saying. Your company still needs to open and function, so we got E four back office support. The thing for us was just assuming that we were gonna be bigger then, and we were just gonna scale and we leveraged COVID for that and I was quite surprised with where it went. During that time.
We built out a people over profit program. So all the startups that were struggling to pay the bills, we gave them free virtual assistants. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah. Right after I closed my first finding round. So I'm like, thanks, invest. Or by the way, I'm gonna give free service those away 
Jake Toohey: There's one of the things that I took away from your session this morning was the culture thing.
Yeah. The kind of culture that you built at the organization. And I think, you know, one of the things that I, I remember is you saying that you used to hear the resumes hit the bottom of the trash can. You never wanted to make anybody else feel like that. Can you talk about that involving culture and what's driving that?
Bobbie Racette: Yeah. This was back when you used to go to the offices and hand in your resume 20 16, [00:07:00] 20 17. And like I said, nobody would hire me and I would literally go to leave the office and I could hear a piece of paper hitting the trash can and I knew that was my resume and it just made me so angry and sad. And essentially that's almost what powered my thesis on if we provide more work to marginalized communities, then.
We can't let people shine if we're gonna keep doing that. 'cause surely if I'm feeling that, then how many others were feeling it. But it did was inspire me and fuel me to keep going and to create this. I guess some will say I created it out of anger, but I really just created it out of spite. I thought “you all told me no so many times that I'm going to take my own control now.”
Gretchen Steenstra: Yeah. But I, I don't even know if it was spite you were just so passionate about. I found this, and a lot of the things you do, which I think is really interesting is you formed it into repeatable like almost products. So I'm looking at your culture cleanup toolkit. And so in addition to running a company, raising [00:08:00] money, growing the company, taking care of your employees, you also seem to have packaged some of these thesis statements and ideas into tools.
I've never seen that with a founder who's doing all of these things. And creating, you know, actual artifacts to help with people. 
Bobbie Racette: It's all tell you much when you go to an office or a startup or tech company or a business, any business, and people talk that their culture is good. But then you go in, you're like, whoa, this thing's about to explode.
And so I, I see a lot of that and I'm a firm believer of if you're gonna talk the talk, then you gotta walk the walk and you gotta show it, right? So the culture toolkit was more on, based on. We had some toxicity go through our company. And during COVID, when toxicity comes into your company, it's like a snake that just doesn't stop and you have to do a lot of work to fix it to right side it.
And so I really built the toolkit based on how do I make sure that I'm creating an [00:09:00] open and honest, happy space for all of the employees? How am I making them safe? How am I allowing people to understand the culture and what is allowed and what's not allowed, and what kind of a culture that we wanna have in the office.
And so it really helped with that. 
Gretchen Steenstra: What made you say, whoa, so a minute ago you just, you said you walk into an office and you feel this, like, what are a couple things that people don't notice that you noticed? 
Bobbie Racette: Like male leaders, for example. And when you go into, also say it like, tech bros, let's be real. I love tech.
I'm in tech, but tech bros. Can be a little bit hard to handle. And if there's women working and those, they're mansplained in weight. I'm not saying it's everybody. 'cause believe me, I have a lot of tech friends that are males because I'm in the tech community and they all treat me like I'm their little sister.
They treat me really well, but you can see it and it can really shut down your business. I've seen it shut down some successful startups. 
Gretchen Steenstra: We joke a lot at AWTC. We're advancing, empowering women, but men are welcome. You know, like it's not [00:10:00] excluding men, it's. Making sure that we're all being respectful of each other.
And Jake and Ben are two of the biggest champions we have at AWTC. And I think that's been interesting with us as people ask, can we join you? They're like, of course you can join us. Just don't be a jerk. You know? I mean, it's not hard, right? Yeah. So there's a lot of men in part of our organization that are great.
Bobbie Racette: Our new person taking over my role, I won't say too much just 'cause it's going out, but is male and I'm happy for it. We're a woman led indigenous business. 90% of my VPs are women. I have an all female board and I'm proud of it. I'm proud that we have a male taking over as my successor. Very good.
Ben Muscolino: Alright, so we're gonna keep going here, but we're gonna take a quick break and just hear from one of our sponsors. Quick note from Destination Canada. From the rugged Rocky Mountains to Sparkling Ocean Shores, Canada offers world-class venues and visionary leaders like Bobby Rossett. It gives you a sense of [00:11:00] belonging, the ability to unlock new ways of thinking, and a place where great business minds come to open their minds for business events that inspire, naturally build partnerships, drive transformation, and leave a meaningful legacy visit.
Business events canada.ca. So we had the pleasure of having Magic Johnson join us yesterday and he mentioned DEI being a thing, not being a thing, whatever's going to do with that. However you normalize that for, for yourself and, and any of the listeners businesses. But basically what he said is, let's just start being good again, right?
And however you label it or don't label it, let's get back to just doing right by each other. And I think that resonated with the room because. It's on a lot of people's minds and how that's gonna impact funding and culture and all these things. And it's a topic in our industry related to, you know, how are people financially gonna put things together, what's their reliance on, you know, what can I have associated with my business and can't [00:12:00] I, in order to get certain funding or when certain business?
And I think it gets best to the core of doing the right thing and working with the right people and building that culture. And so I guess what I'm trying to get at is talking about culture. Like where does all that resonate for you? 
Bobbie Racette: Well, my mom always told me, treat people the way you wanna be treated, right?
Like it is common sense. And I think every company should have that. And I think big things can happen if you treat people the way you wanna be treated. Just 'cause I'm a CEO, it doesn't mean I treat the customer service rep in my company or the sales person any differently than the COO or the CTO, I treat them all the same.
Jake Toohey: Can you talk a little bit about adversity and the adversity you've faced? Talk about. How you got to the point of actually getting the funding that you needed to, to grow and scale? 
Bobbie Racette: Yeah, so I bootstrapped virtual gurus to about 1.8 million in revenue, and it was then I realized that I probably needed to start raising money, but I had no idea what to do.
I was like, oh man, this is gonna be crazy. I literally [00:13:00] started the company with $300 in my pocket to go to having to raise out of valuation to raise millions. And so I set out to start pitching and I pitched all over North America. I went through 170 investors saying no, and I knew all it took was just that one.
Yes. But I was like, when am I gonna get the yes, yes. Yeah. The first yes, was the hundred and 71st pitch, and it was a cold email, reach out to an indigenous funding company, and five minutes later they called me and then they led that round. And then Telus Ventures led in second round and Telus Ventures coming on and they have MassMutual here in the US on my cap table now, and some pretty big names.
Now. 
Jake Toohey: You talked also about giving people feedback. I mean, as you had to kind of evolve your pitch over 171 different pitches. But I really liked hearing about your methodology with making sure that you're getting people feedback, even if there's some rejected attached to it. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Bobbie Racette: Yeah. I like to tell people that it [00:14:00] was probably quite annoying to people, but when somebody says no to me, other than the initial kind of jab to the heart where you're hurt and you're like, what? You don't wanna invest in me? Like why? Once that goes away, it's the, okay, but tell me why. Okay. And here's the funny thing about investors is they all say the exact same thing when they're just saying no.
And it's an easy way out of you don't fall in line with our thesis, although I do, and the company did. 'cause I wouldn't be pitching if it didn't or you're not scalable, right? And so I started actually going back to them and saying, look, you can't say I'm not scalable and you can't say this. Tell me the real reason.
Tell me the real, and putting the ball back in their court, holding them accountable. It's the fact that. Maybe they just didn't have enough space in their hearts for me because of who I am, like a woman with tattoos and queer, it really scared a lot of people, especially in the VC world. And so I really had to learn what I needed to adjust.
What was it that really made me not get [00:15:00] those investments? And really at the end of the day, none of them had an actual reason. But I was able to tweak and build the company still while I was going through that. 
Gretchen Steenstra: Yeah. And once you have a few, then you have some evidence 
Bobbie Racette: that other people invested in.
You're right. And then once you get the one investor though your first round, then it's easy getting investment after, right? Yeah. 'cause then you're like, 
Gretchen Steenstra: it's real. So when you were out, like you have just, so in your multifaceted CEO role is you are scaling financially, how are you balancing scaling your staff?
Back at the office who was doing the work that you were pitching? How? How did you do that? 
Bobbie Racette: It is hard because you hire based on how much money you have. We're really lean team 'cause you gotta protect your burn and we're very lean. So at the time during COVID, I only had five employees. At the end of COVID I had 60, almost 60 employees, 59 employees, and then thousands are working in the platforms, but succeed in the actual office.
And then after COVID and the technology started going and working, we [00:16:00] did a series of layoffs, and that was probably the hardest thing for me was laying people off. But we're about 30 employees now. 
Ben Muscolino: My reflection point is that, I guess instead of conforming, you really tried to force feedback out of them and keep your identity.
And I want to ask, how is your identity and owning your identity as indigenous LGBTQ plus leader informed the way you actually lead? And, and think, 
Bobbie Racette: I was really scared to talk about this story of me, my indigeneity and my queerness especially. I was really scared about that. And I was also really afraid about my parents, like ruining my mom's story as an indigenous woman that her parents were residential school survivors, and it's a really touchy subject, so I was really afraid of living that and telling it.
But once I did, and once I talked about it more. Uh, virtual gurus scaled. I'm out here talking in Japan, talking in Singapore, all these places in Portugal, [00:17:00] everywhere, and virtual gurus is just scaling and a lot of that is 'cause of the brand, which is me being the brand of the company. So I think through all of it, I've learned that if you just tell your truth, the world will open up for you.
Yeah. 
Gretchen Steenstra: And I know you, you have this announcement of changing from being the CEO and the founder. But this is common with a lot of leaders that they build a brand and then they wanna sustain it, so they hand it off to somebody. But you're the brand. What are some of the things you would advise people that you protect your brand, but you also let the next generation take the brand in a different direction?
You know what? Clearly you plan this because you wouldn't have done it, just, you know, spontaneously. 
Bobbie Racette: Yeah, no, it's been in the plan, in the works. I think the number one thing is respecting and understanding that. It's your story when you're kicking it off. But for me it's really important to that all the other people in the platform, especially all the folks that are transitioning genders, the neurodiverse community in our platform [00:18:00] to the veterans, the single stay at home moms, the retired folks that working on our platform, it's now their story.
And I want their stories to be heard more than mine now. So it's changed, but the Bobby Rossett brand is ongoing. 'cause now I'm, I've actually started a coach cast similar to this. But it's called Take the Seat with Bobby because it's about taking the seats that we were never given as women entrepreneurs.
And so that starts right away actually. 
Gretchen Steenstra: What are a few of those seats you're gonna start with? Like are there specific areas? 
Bobbie Racette: Yeah, it's gonna be pretty predominantly well known woman in Canada to start with. 'cause I'm gonna do it in person like similar to this and then we're gonna travel and do it.
Ben Muscolino: We're gonna take a quick break and just hear from one of our sponsors very quickly. If you're talking about the top meeting destinations in the country, you have to include Denver with its incredible Rocky Mountain views and 300 days of sunshine. The brand new 16th Street includes dozens of restaurants, patios, art installations, and free [00:19:00] shuttles, all within walking distance of 52 downtown hotels.
It's a lot of hotels. Very convenient. And there's the newly expanded Colorado Convention Center. The 80,000 square foot Bluebird Ballroom is a game changer along with a 20,000 square foot outdoor terrace. Come check out the mile high city where you'll meet uplifted. 
Jake Toohey: I wanted to ask about how you evolved the company.
Uh, can you talk about how the company changed one, the availability of artificial intelligence and it just becoming so wide scale? 
Bobbie Racette: AI is everywhere, right? AI is not going anywhere. And about eight months ago, we were like, you know what? It's not gonna be long before AI agents, like virtual assistants are gonna overtake actual human agents.
And so the best way to deal with that was to jump 10 steps ahead and start building our own agent. So we built an ethical 24/7 AI virtual receptionist that's actually now being built into a full AI agent. So it can do [00:20:00] demos for startups, it can do outbound SDR sales, it can do calendar booking. And so what we're gonna do is use that AI to create more work for the actual human side.
So we're combining AI and human experience together. So we launched it in January and it's flying hard, like it's probably a stickier product than our human side. But it's a cross sell opportunity. So some of our biggest clients are MasterCard, alis, and it's a huge cross sell opportunity. Get them signed up to the AI agent and then provide them a human 
Gretchen Steenstra: right.
But you said ethical. So how are you training your agent to be ethical? Because that's one of the things we've heard for underrepresented people is AI can actually hurt them because the large language models are. Flawed. And so you're just doubling down on bad data, which is why I have a love-hate relationship with ai.
So I just circled ethical. 
Bobbie Racette: Ethical AI to me is obviously is that, but one of the main things for me is how are you creating more employment versus taking away employment? And I think every single [00:21:00] company is gonna have to have AI eventually. It's just the way it's going, sadly. And so it's really on how are you building and training your ai and what is your AI able to do?
For us, we focus on making sure we're training our employees to use AI the best way that they can so that they're not going offline. You know what? Use it for content. Use it for this if you want, but don't use it for things that are not in your ability. Don't use it for that learn Still, it's ethical AI for us, but our AI is, it speaks 44 different languages and we've gotta fine tuned right now.
But we're creating employment with it. 
Gretchen Steenstra: Right? But I love that you're cross-selling, like I think that's the way they use it, the right way is you're educating people. This is where the AI is an effective tool and this is where the other staff is a good tool, right? So I think that's very important nuance that you're focusing on 
Bobbie Racette: the it can imagine if you are going into a store or a salon and you're called and it's a twenty four seven AI receptionist answers your phone.
And you [00:22:00] really need to talk to a human, press one to talk to human, then it will go to our humans, right? So there's still the work creation side of it, but the difference is we want all the businesses to put this AI on their sites and let the AI learn and go from there. 
Gretchen Steenstra: And I think people are okay with that.
You know, like we're all kind of trained to go through a couple prompts for efficiency, so I think that's fine. 
Ben Muscolino: Well, and sometimes depending on the person's style and how they want to be supported. Or maybe the situation they're in, like, I'm distracted with something else. I need to talk to a person.
Right? Versus I have my speakerphone, I'm multitasking. Let me go through the prompts. I can, you know, multitask and do that. So you're catering to situationally where they are in their journey of their day or their business, or their need or their urgency. 
Gretchen Steenstra: And I think another really important thing that you underscore is neurodiverse.
And so I think that just having all these different facets. Like you were saying, Ben, people communicate very different ways and so some types of people prefer to have a just much [00:23:00] more streamlined in ai does that. You ask it a question that answers you, they don't really need the interaction, the conversation.
They just need to get what they want. Yeah. And others need a different interaction. 
Bobbie Racette: One of the other things that human virtual assistant platforms in North America are not doing is teaching their virtual assistants to be strategic by using the ai. And that's what we're doing. So therefore we're creating more productivity.
So some would argue then you're taking away more billing time for you and it's, yeah, but our number one goal isn't the billing time. Our number one is how do we save clients time and money? So our VAs are billing, let's say 30 hours a month. I'd say, let's say they're working on one client for 30 hours.
Do you know those hours were full productivity hours based on how much work they were able to do? 
Jake Toohey: So I think we’ll take questions from the audience, if there's any, but, I did want to kind of end this. Section of the discussion with what's next for virtual gurus. 
Bobbie Racette: I think we just closed a fun round a couple days ago, so I was working on that.
It's much easier this time around. [00:24:00] I think the next thing is Virtual Gurus wants to go global, so I was just in Japan pitching Virtual Gurus on the global stage out at Expo and meeting larger partnerships. 
Ben Muscolino: I think we've got some questions coming in from the live audience here at A SAE annual in la.
Let's check 'em out. 
 Colleen Gallagher: Hey, I'm Colleen Gallagher with OnWrd & UpWrd. I, I'm sorry I'm losing my voice, but I love your story and it's really incredible, like this growth and, and how far you've come. And I know you said this is your first time here at a SAE. What do you think the association community could learn from this kind of growth and like, what could they take in, in terms of the community building?
And so many associations I talk with right now are really struggling with engaging the next generation and growing and instead of losing members, so what, what would your advice be to them? 
Bobbie Racette: That's a great question. I don't know. There's so much to it that I could answer. I think it would be is don't be afraid to learn.
Right? Learning from anybody that is in your community or the communities you're building or the people, it's [00:25:00] all about being able to learn what their needs are and then being okay with being uncomfortable with it. Like we have a massive community and every day I'm learning from them. I'm, I get on the lines and learn how they're billing by the minute and how uncomfortable that is.
Yeah, I think it's just don't be afraid to learn and take all that knowledge and soak it in and be a knowledge keeper because that's what they need. 
Ben Muscolino: So I have a final question, selfishly, right, and hopefully everyone can get something out of this, but I wanna ask this because I run multiple tech companies, I guess I one of those tech bros with the ambiguity around formality.
Uh, around DEI and I think everyone in this community believes in just being great to each other. Going beyond DEI statements to create workplaces where people can truly feel like they belong. What advice would you leave people with? And let's talk a little bit about that. 
Bobbie Racette: I think, I know like the US is going through a lot of the DEI stuff right now, and I think you should just let that make you.
Shine even more. I think you could [00:26:00] still talk DEI with talk talking DEI, right? Like it is more about showing it instead of just talking about it. So we can all still say, I choose how to have my business show up every day. I choose how to have my employees show up every day. But you could still do it underhandedly without actually saying, we're JEDI, DEI, right?
So you just gotta lead by example. If you are doing it, then everybody else is gonna follow. 
Ben Muscolino: Well, it's been a real treat to sit down with you and steal a little bit of time out of what is a very busy day already for you and a very busy time for you in business. And congrats again on your round. What round was that?
Bobbie Racette: We're gonna call it a Series A today because we're gonna work on our series B, which is about 40 million. Okay. 
Ben Muscolino: Well, I want to thank everyone again for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact [00:27:00] associations have on the economy, the US and the world around us.
I'm Ben Muscolino from The Association Podcast. Joined by Jake Tooey, Gretchen Steenstra, and a huge thanks again to Bobby Racette. Again, before we leave you, we want to thank our episode sponsor Destination Canada, and Visit Denver. For more information about our sponsors, check out the links in our show notes. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
For more information on this topic, visit Associations NOW online at associationsnow.com.
 
 

The Future Is Watching: Engaging the Next Generation of Members

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Lori Zoss Kraska, founder and CEO of Growth Owl, sits down with Brian Miller, vice president of strategic partnership at Multiview, Kimberly Tuttle, executive director of the American Institute of Architecture Students, and Gilberto Lozada Baez, AIAS board vice president, to explore new research on how students perceive associations. The conversation highlights key opportunities for associations to build stronger connections with young professionals—through targeted social media, mentorship, and small-scale in-person events. They also discuss the importance of digital fluency, university partnerships, and creating meaningful volunteer roles to foster long-term engagement and a true sense of belonging.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/HLTuvHAxkd4
This episode is sponsored by Multiview.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
[00:00:00] Lori Zoss Kraska: Welcome to episode 12 of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Lori Zoss Kraska, founder and CEO of GrowthOwl, LLC, a consultancy that empowers associations with the best practices they need to connect with Fortune 1000 companies and other large organizations for corporate sponsorship, partnership and philanthropic funding.
You also might know me as the author of The Boardroom Playbook, a Not So Ordinary Guide to Corporate Funding for Your Purpose-Driven Organization and host of my own monthly LinkedIn Live that features both association and non-endemic thought leaders who provide insight in new ways of thinking in the area of sponsorship and non-dues revenue.
You can find out more at thegrowthowl.com. But hey, enough about me. Let's take a moment to thank our episode sponsor Multiview today. We're excited to welcome Brian Miller, vice president of strategic partnerships with Multiview. [00:01:00] Also joining us today is Kimberly Tuttle, executive director of the American Institute of Architecture Students, also known as AIAS.
And Gilberto Lozada Baez, AIAS Board Vice President. They're all here to discuss key findings from new research on student perceptions of associations and how we can better engage the next generation of members. Welcome everybody to the podcast. Let's start with you, Brian. 
What influenced your team to look into this topic? 
[00:01:31] Brian Miller: Great question. Well, we always look for ways to help our associations improve their competitive advantage within their organization and any insights that we can provide along the way. It's very interesting for us 'cause we have roughly 850 association partners that span. 30 different industry verticals. Obviously it's a mixture between trade associations and professional societies and professional associations. So when we look at the professional societies, that's really what [00:02:00] we're talking about today with this topic. We conducted some research and we looking at years old problem of how do you. Engage the next generation of members, particularly in professional societies. So that's really why we commissioned this report in the first place. The other thing that was really interesting that when you look at the landscape is this is the first time we've got five generations working in the workforce, right?
You've got the traditionalists, you've got the baby boomers, you've got of course Gen X, and then you have millennials and Gen Z, and. From what we understand is this is the largest graduating class as well in, in foreseeable history that we look back at. So it's really important when you look at the.
Really important message of how do the associations look for that next generational member? How do they find them? How do they keep them throughout their professional career and their journey as members of the association? So that's really the main reason we wanted to, to talk about this topic today and really understand the importance of content and [00:03:00] education when it comes to looking at those different member segments.
And as we continue to talk. In this discussion, we're gonna find that young professionals, students, recent grads, and particularly early in their career, they have different needs, right? From a membership perspective, it's really important to understand this segment and how as an association you engage with those younger members and be able to offer them what they need and what they're looking for in an association.
So that's really the main reason why we did all of this. 
[00:03:29] Lori Zoss Kraska: That's great, and I want to delve in a bit more, Brian, into the research. A sizable amount of this next generation, based on what you found knows about associations, but only about a quarter, really understand the benefits. What do you think causes this gap and how do associations go about closing that?
[00:03:47] Brian Miller: I think the biggest thing is the networking aspect. You look at the younger generation, young professionals, they've grown up in this digital environment and they've really made a lot of their connections and their networking through all of their other [00:04:00] social engagements. They are familiar with associations.
We found that through that research, 85% of them are familiar with associations and what they do in respective industries and professions. But really it's looking at the value of that association for them when you're looking at what their needs are. Specifically, they're looking at career placement. They're looking at jobs. How do you help me create resumes? How do you help me create strategies for looking for jobs and all of that, how to interview, things like that. So they're really looking for those kind of things. And so that was really one of the drivers that we found in terms of that gap between.
Being aware of the association, but understanding the value that associations provide. I think they understand that. Obviously associations represent those key things that they do, right? They're out there to promote their industry or their profession. They're out there to educate that industry or profession, and then they're out there to advocate on behalf of that industry, or that profession. They learn that through job fairs, through what they learn for in their coursework and their [00:05:00] universities. But it's really about the associations taking the understanding that what their young professionals are looking for is career assistance, job placement. Skills training. Those are the key things that we found that they're really the hot buttons for them.
So from an association perspective, to increase that value gap, that's really the areas that we need to make sure that they're focused on, is looking for ways that they can really engage those young professionals through those skills training, through helping them with their. Careers and through helping them with interviews and job placements and things like that.
So that's really where the gap that we saw. But the good news is though, this is a great opportunity for the associations to really become the driver of this. This gap is very fixable and it's very. Easily done by the associations to look at their member segments and understand that they each have different values along the way and what the value is for them by being an association member.
And then long term, obviously that's gonna create a membership journey. [00:06:00] So if you can engage those young professionals, meet them where they are, be able to fulfill their needs, and that's gonna make for a better member as they progress in their careers, and then obviously things are gonna become more important to them going forward.
And it's the things that we talked about, the advocacy that the association does, the education that they provide, and well as being able to engage the different generations. When we talked about those five generations as well, and I'll just leave it with this. This is a perfect example of why associations need to look at not just a one fits all membership strategy, right?
You really need to understand those different segments that are represented within your membership and then create different value propositions along the way. So hopefully this will help engage them where they are, and then as they progress in their journey, the association's gonna provide additional value and more long-term value going forward.
[00:06:51] Lori Zoss Kraska: I love that you said that it's really the association's responsibility to empower themselves to realize that they need to meet [00:07:00] students and younger folks where they are. I think that's so important because maybe a different mentality in the past would've been, it's really up to the student or up to the young professional to research us.
For them to figure out what the value is and no, we have to turn this around. I love that really, that you've not only talked about that, but your research coincides with that. So I think that's excellent. Excellent. You know, Gilberto, I wanna throw it over to you. You're a former student at the University of Monterey and now a young professional and board member, so congratulations on all your achievements thus far.
What was your impression of associations before joining AIAS? And what prompted you to want to get involved and become a member? 
[00:07:45] Gilberto Lozada Baez: Thank you for saying that. And let me start with the second part of your question because I think you're gonna be a lot more insightful into what I was thinking about organizations.
I remember being in first semester of college, I was just joining to [00:08:00] starting at the study architecture school and they, it's very common for student groups to have these meetings where they try to get new people to recruit new members. And I remember sitting at the auditorium. Hearing to the AIAS group that was at my university, talking about the organization, about what the a IS does, its impact, its reach, the networking opportunities.
And it was a lot of an aspirational thing for me because I remember looking up at that leadership team and thinking I want to be in their place. I wanna be able to talk about me being part of a community that has such an impact, that has that reach globally, that I can say that I am part of that type of a community.
Interestingly enough, even though I was very inspired by that conversation, I didn't actually become a member of the organization until my third year in school. So it took me a while to actually become a member. To start getting involved with the a IS chapter at my school and [00:09:00] at large. And I think that the reason why that happened initially is because there were many little barriers, but what helped me go through them is that the leadership team at my school that was representing the organization at large really took the time to have a conversation with me.
Walk me through the details of what it meant to be involved with the organization, how to actually get my membership and how to join the team, and really just collaborate with everyone that was at my local level. The reason why I'm saying all this is because it really goes back to the first part of your question, which is what did I think about organizations?
And I think that my impression back then was that organizations were important and very impactful. They always felt somewhat alien or distant in a way. It was like really hard to access the organization and become a part of it. And even though I was really interested, there were so many barriers to it, little [00:10:00] barriers, but they all added up eventually and they made me unsure if my time, because I was in school, I didn't have a lot of time either.
My energy, the money that I would spend in my membership would be actually worth the investment because of course there were a lot of. More important or direct things that were a little less foreign and that felt like they guaranteed my success and my career or my education. And I think it's safe to say that once I got involved with the AIAS, it all became a lot clearer and I developed this sense of belonging, but it's also really important for students as well.
To the point that I'm now vice president of the organization. But yeah, I think it's really important to see how throughout my journey, a lot of those things that the report for Multiview talks about this gap between students and the awareness of the value that organizations offered. Definitely impacted my journey.
And it was because of that engagement with people and with the organization at the local level that I was able to overcome it and actually get involved. 
[00:10:59] Lori Zoss Kraska: So [00:11:00] Gilberto, I have a follow up here. I know if I have an association leader and I'm listening to you, I'm listening to you very carefully. You said something about barriers and I think that's something that associations would wanna hear more about.
Would you be open to talking about one or two of the barriers that you referenced earlier? 
[00:11:17] Gilberto Lozada Baez: Of course. I think one of the most important ones, especially for students and younger professionals, is cost barriers. Yeah. I think that is one of the more important ones, and we're all aware of it. The other one that I would reference is time availability, especially with my experience being an architecture.
Sport is a very demanding profession. And so anytime that I would have available, I would cherish it very much and try to use it to whatever would bring me the most value and success in my future. And probably another one is familiarity. Or this idea of perhaps Tism that I would mention, because a lot of the times it feels like organizations are a closed off [00:12:00] group that is not really welcoming to other perspectives.
I can honestly say now being a lot more acquainted with organizations and having been on the board of other organizations as well, that is rarely the goal because we all as organizations, want to get as much members and as much involvement as we can. But there is definitely that barrier of not being acquainted with something and being slightly intimidating that is present for students and potential prospect, new members.
[00:12:27] Lori Zoss Kraska: Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that, again, that's gonna be really eye-opening to a lot of associations that are listening, especially from the point of view of a  young professional like yourself. Kimberly, I want to move over to you for a moment. Many students are graduating with limited real world experience and unclear next steps. It's a crazy world out there. We just don't know what's gonna happen. But how are associations, especially those with student branches or in your case, an entire student-based organization, uniquely positioned [00:13:00] to support that transition for young people? 
[00:13:03] Kimberly Tuttle: Yeah, that's a great question.
So the AIAS. We were founded in the fifties and we branched out and became our own organization and nonprofit in the early eighties. So we're hitting our 70th anniversary. And the sole purpose, our mission is advancing leadership, design and service among architecture students. But. I think a lot of the work that we've done, and I just stepped into this role about a year ago, but I did work for the organization for four or five years, several years ago, really focusing on partnerships and so.
AIAS, I think, is uniquely positioned to bridge that gap between education and practice. And so we honestly, a lot of our programs are built on mentorship, internships, and building leadership skills to help transition them into practice. Because we're student [00:14:00] led, our program is. Deeply relevant because we're not guessing what the students need when we know what they need because they tell us.
Our board is 70% made up of students who are actively in school and are the ones who are guiding our efforts, talking about what they need. And so we look at things like portfolio reviews, design competitions, career preparation workshops, and we ensure that our students don't face that. What's next moment by themselves, right?
They have this community that is a strength of our organization. And then when we engage with partners, because we're associations, we're nonprofits. Most of us rely on partnerships. We talk with our partners about how. Our members are not actively buying, they're not currently consumers in our profession.
So we have a different pitch to our partners, and that's really let's build brand awareness while we develop content and career content career programs, leveraging your [00:15:00] brand. And for example, several years ago we had this one. Elevator company that was one of our bigger partners. And we use that to put together an elevator pitch competition.
And so we leverage our partners by building these career preparation programs to help build that relationship and build the gap and bridge the gap between education practice. So when they graduate and they're ready to set foot in the workforce, they have a lot of the softer skills that professionals are looking for when they hire young career.
[00:15:34] Lori Zoss Kraska: Kimberly, let me just say, as someone who works in the corporate sponsorship and corporate partnership arena that you found an elevator company to sponsor the elevator pitch competition makes me so excited and so happy. That's wonderful. Brian, I want to send it back to you here. We've talked about young professionals and what they need and what they want, and they expect from associations.
Did your research reveal the best channels to connect with them? [00:16:00] 
[00:16:00] Brian Miller: Yeah. I think it's no surprise that to the best channel is social media.  
[00:16:04] Lori Zoss Kraska: Yeah. 
[00:16:04] Brian Miller: And this kind of goes back to thinking about the associations and their identity. When the associations think about their identity and who their competition is.
It's very interesting 'cause most associations will think, okay, my competition is this other association that is in my space or in my industry or profession. It's really changing. Competition now is really evolving for associations. Their competitors now are the social platforms. I think LinkedIn is one of the largest competitors to associations, particularly when it comes to young professionals and they're looking at.
These resources through these social channels, LinkedIn's a given, right? It's one of the best places for career guidance. Career resources, helping you further your career. It obviously changes with different industries. Obviously the engagement is different with LinkedIn, but it is still a very important and viable channel and with some of the new add-ons that LinkedIn offers particularly.
Perhaps the [00:17:00] LinkedIn newsletters is a good example to, it's fairly recent edition. Associations can really utilize that, where they can say, okay, let's create a LinkedIn newsletter channel that's specific for young professionals, students for graduate students, and then maybe a different newsletter that's attacking a different segment of their membership as well with different content and so forth.
But LinkedIn, of course, as we said, is a given. The other big channel, of course, for young professionals is by far Instagram. That was what we. Saw in our results. And that really is understandable. When you look at Instagram, it's more of this edutainment, right? So it's education mixed with entertainment and being able to create short form content that's really impactful and really hitting those key topics that we found through the research that are important for young professionals.
The career skills training, job placements, interview and resume building, things like that. So it's. Important to know how to utilize those channels, creating the right kind of [00:18:00] content for that channel. When you think about associations, their competition, are any organizations out there that are competing for their members' attention?
And when you look at young members. You're looking at Instagram, right? Instagram is a huge platform that they're engaging with their peers as well as getting information and content in that kind of a format. And what is Instagram like? It likes reels. It likes carousel type of content. Very short, impactful type things.
So when you're looking at your education strategy for your different member segments, really understand that. To use the different platforms in the right format and in the right context. If you think yourself like a media company instead of an association, it's almost very similar. You look at the Netflix model, for example, so Netflix has an audience or any other.
A company out there, media organizations, we'll just use Netflix as an example. So they've got an audience and they get that audience because they're creating content specific to that audience. And that audience wants that. They have the distribution channels, right? [00:19:00] They have the distribution channels through their streaming services, through other pay services that they might offer.
And then they have the revenue side. There's two forms of revenue. They have the free model. Which is, we'll give you the content for free, but then it's subsidized by advertising, or it's more of the membership model where you pay to subscribe as a member, and then you get that content after that through your subscription.
If you look at your association, very similar. You've got. The audience. That's your membership. You've got the content. It's all the education that you provide, and all various ways that you disseminate that. You have the channels, your website, your LMS, all of the various forms, all your social media, all those channels for distribution of that content.
And then you have the monetization through your membership dues, as well as through the corporate sponsorships and the ways that you can engage your corporate sponsors. Lori, Kimberly, you both hit on this. So corporate sponsors are really evolving to where they're becoming more thought leaders now too.
That's a huge thing because now they're not just selling products or services. They're engaging with your [00:20:00] members, and if you utilize your sponsors to really engage them with your membership as thought leaders, then they can become even more important in the whole strategy of the association going forward.
It'll give them more opportunities to spend money with you. And be able to utilize those in all those different channels. So to sum it up, you know, it's the right content in the right format, through the right channels and in the right time and context. So from a young professional standpoint, being able to meet them where they are, like we talked about before, is really important.
So utilizing your social media and understanding that this is where they're engaging. A third area outside of LinkedIn and an Instagram that we found really interesting is. Young professionals are also utilizing Reddit because Reddit's an anonymous channel that they can go in, look up a topic, and be able to engage with other anonymous members to really talk about things and be very specific.
[00:21:00] So when you think about what's the competition. With Reddit are your community pages. Every association has community pages that they utilize for their members, so their members can engage and so forth. So there's a gap there as well. The young professionals are probably using Reddit more than they are using the association's community pages, so it's important to understand that channel as well, because Reddit is a source of information that they're going to also.
So look at. All the various topics within your industry or profession that are happening out there through those various subreddits. See what's important, see what they're engaging with there, and then be able to incorporate that into your strategy when you're looking at your different membership strategies and how you're getting your content out there.
But again, everything in its right place. 
[00:21:45] Lori Zoss Kraska: Brian, I think this information is so valuable because, I gotta be honest, I know associations that don't even have an Instagram account. And basically your research shows that young professionals are utilizing Instagram for finding career [00:22:00] information, for getting to connect with mentors, potentially.
There's a whole world out there of how young folks are utilizing Instagram. In ways that maybe other generations don't realize. So a call to action today. If anything, if you're an association and you don't even have an Instagram account, get online and create your Instagram account and get started. And I can imagine too that there are associations out there that.
Don't even know what Reddit is. It's a new concept to them. So I just think this information and what you have in your research is so valuable, and I really appreciate you, again, you bringing this to the forefront. But Kimberly, I wanna come back to you because this idea of digital fluency comes up a lot in this report.
What does it mean for associations to really adapt to social platforms and how is AIAS specifically addressing this as well? 
[00:22:50] Kimberly Tuttle: That's a great question, and as Brian alluded to, it's not just being on social media. So first off, if you don't have a Instagram, definitely got one, [00:23:00] but it's understanding where your members are and being good at creating content that works for them.
So it means understanding the language of each platform and using it to tell your story in a way that invites participation. For us, it looks like. Very interactive content telling, student stories, student spotlights. We have a chapter Leader of the Month feature. We have a chapter of the month feature. I think last fall we highlighted a lot of our global chapters to share more about the work that they're doing.
We have live takeovers when we're at our conferences and we use our platforms to celebrate. Not just architecture, but really the people behind it. Gilberto is our social media guru at the moment, and we're constantly looking at how our posts perform. Are there good times? What is the most engaging and how can we continue to skill up our social media channels?
But it's also not just where but how. So one of the really unique [00:24:00] advantages we have is that we. Have the next generation. These are our members, and so we get to experiment. They're using, as Brian mentioned, they're using the social platforms in ways that are very different from previous generations in both Good and.
Potentially negative ways. We also have a lot of conversations about data and, and I'm not talking about data in this terms of analytics, but where are you getting your information? Is it accurate? Is it right? We have a lot of conversations like, where did you learn that? And it's, oh, I saw it on TikTok, are we.
Having conversations about misinformation, those are pieces that we have to talk about is because where is this next generation digesting and receiving their important kind of news and data like that. So we regularly check in with our board about what platforms are actually relevant. Another conversation, I keep bringing this up, and Gilberto, we keep having this conversation, but for example, I [00:25:00] keep asking.
Should we be on TikTok? Is that where we need to be? TikTok is huge, but when we've had those conversations, Gilberto and the rest of the board is, that's not really where students are looking for that professional or academic inspiration. That's not the type of engagement that happens over on TikTok. So instead of chasing.
Trends like that, we really try and stay in intentional focusing on the platforms and the content that match the message and meet our members where they are. We're also doing a lot of work in exploring what other similar organizations are doing. So for example, NSLC, which is the National Student Leadership Conference.
Their Instagram channels are a great place for us to find inspiration because they are very member centric, and so that's something that we continue to aspire to be, and so we use. That research to help us continue to dig in because NSLC is actually the generation [00:26:00] before us, right? Or maybe not generation, but they're high school members, right?
And so as we're looking at how they engage with high school students, we start to think about, okay, how can we leverage some of the things that they're doing to continue to bring impactful member-focused engagement to our channels? 
[00:26:19] [AD READ]
Lori Zoss Kraska: Let's take a quick break from our conversation for a word from our episode sponsor.
Multiview is the leading B2B digital marketing agency and trusted advertising partner for associations proudly serving 850 plus partners for 25 years. There are NOCO purpose-built solutions, help associations engage and grow membership. Connect members with vendors through digital channels and unlock new streams of non-dues revenue.
As an extension of your team, they manage digital advertising sales on your behalf, freeing up staff time and resources so you can focus on what matters most, advancing your mission and serving your members. Learn more at [00:27:00] multiview.com/association. 
[END AD READ]
Kimberly. As I think about some of the association executives that might be listening, they might be thinking, this all sounds really good.
The research is there. This is amazing, but I need tips on internal buy-in. I'm working with a chief marketing officer that just isn't a hundred percent sure I should be spending all this time on Instagram or on Reddit. Do you have any tips that you might be able to provide to bridge the gap between maybe a person or a thought?
Internally that isn't completely bought in to spending time on these socials. 
[00:27:35] Kimberly Tuttle: As I, I often tease my officers that if they leave me alone with the social channels, we might get something that they don't want. Oh, I 
[00:27:43] Lori Zoss Kraska: Love it. 
[00:27:44] Kimberly Tuttle: I'm not even going to talk about the platforms that we shouldn't be on, but I am very well aware of my abilities and understanding of where social is and.
I guess for me it's just I'm going to struggle when [00:28:00] Gilberto saves us because we don't actually have a social media team. We are a very thin lean team, and so for us, we all do all of the work so. I would say for anyone looking to get upper buy-in, I would show the data, talk about how maybe do a test run.
So I used to work for a large architecture firm and they had a very robust social media team, and I learned a lot from her too. Whereas if you are looking to. Try and test things out. Stories and reels are much easier to do that because they don't live on your feed, right? They don't live on that landing page.
And so those are more opportunities to explore what works and what doesn't. And so what I would say is. Make sure you're staying by your brand guidelines. Make sure you're meeting the needs of the organization. But feel free to try and experiment in stories and reels, especially in Instagram because they disappear after 24 hours and you can gather the data [00:29:00] and then take that data to go have conversations.
 
[00:29:03] Brian Miller: I completely agree with everything you're saying Kimberly, we found the same thing. First of all, TikTok was not very impactful in the data results at all, but Instagram was. And when you look at the algorithms of Instagram and what it likes, stories, it likes those reels, and that's how it measures the engagement and that's really how things get promoted.
So everything you said was spot on. I will add one other thing too that is interesting that we've just seen in the B2B media side at Multiview. We've been working B2B media as a company for 25 years and one of the things that we're finding that's an interesting new trend is that the influencers usually are a B2C type of content.
We're now finding that influencer content is really creeping over into the B2B segment as well. So something to think about as an association executive as you're developing your social media strategies, and particularly with Instagram and those type of platforms where it's very edutainment type of content.[00:30:00] 
It might be a perfect opportunity to look within your community, your profession, and find influencers that you think could be very impactful and that can really help you reach these young professionals because they're already seeing that influencer marketing in all of their other contexts as a consumer and as a.
As just that people of that generation. So that's another interesting trend. I didn't even realize that until I was talking to some of our other agency folks that we work with, and they very much brought up the fact that influencer marketing is becoming a key thing in B2B as well. So something for associations to think about, but that's great stuff, Kim.
[00:30:35] Lori Zoss Kraska: Gilberto, I actually want to give you the last word on this because I would love to get your perspective. If you were speaking to an association executive that might be a little hesitant about utilizing new platforms like Instagram or Reddit, what would your advice to them be? 
[00:30:51] Gilberto Lozada Baez: That is a good question. I think it's important to understand that culture plays a significant role in how we're marketing [00:31:00] to our potential members as well.
Yeah, and it's also about culture. There's this element of. What the professional sphere is. But when you're talking about younger professionals and students, there's an added element to it of that student or young professional experience that also plays into how you're marketing towards, and then how you're.
Getting that message to them. So I guess that would be my advice. Understanding that there are different components to that and that really that is something that you can use to understand how to better engage with them and how to get that feedback from potential new members, especially with younger audiences.
[00:31:36] Lori Zoss Kraska: That's perfect. And Gilberto, why I still have you on the mic. Let's talk a little about events. The report also talks about the need for in-person, especially smaller scale events. What is the role for in-person events, do you think, and do you have any recommendations for associations? 
[00:31:53] Gilberto Lozada Baez: Yes, with the AIAS, it's interesting because we have an international presence.
We're in over [00:32:00] 24 countries, and that makes it really hard for us to get in-person engagement with our members, even though we would love to, but it's a little bit tricky. So I think something that helps us is that within the structure of our organization, we have baked in layers of engagement, and that includes in-person engagement.
That sort of ties into the whole way we operate as. Organization, and when I'm talking about that structure, just for a little bit of exposition, I guess it's that the app is composed of chapters at universities and so that is the first tier beyond the individual students can engage with the teams at their school, and that is a great way to get in person and a little bit more casual engagement with the organization as well.
Beyond that, we also have sometimes several chapters in a same city or within hours of each other. And so that creates opportunities for a bit of a larger scope engagement where [00:33:00] students travel to, I don't know, nearby firms to do a firm tour or local architectural landmarks that they want to visit and explore.
That is another great opportunity to get that. And then we can start moving up the ranks. And we have our quad and regional engagements. Our chapters are grouped in regions within the US and internationally, and they get the opportunity to engage with our directors and with other people within their larger regional location to get that experience as well.
And finally, we have the national and international component where we have our. Conferences and other types of programming. So what I'm trying to say here is that yes, we have in-person options for our students starting from the chapter level to the national, international level, and it's a peer structure.
But what that allows us to do is to have this bottom up structure that informs what we do as an organization at large. [00:34:00] And the way that I try to think about it is that it helps to create this sense of belonging. Which is very important for students and emerging professionals as they explore their future really and beyond that sense of belonging.
It also gives them this agency and it empowers them to engage with a larger community in a different approach, like thinking about how we're marketing towards them. I would also say that this tiered structure helps it so that out of sight is not out of mind necessarily because they always have someone in their near.
Vicinity that they can talk to or approach if they have any questions about the organization. And so this is how the AIAS operates in general. What I would say as aps of advice is that sort of what you were saying earlier, Brian, it's very important to meet students where they are and young career professionals as well.
But you that engagement and that opportunity to meet them where they are, to empower the approach [00:35:00] that the organization takes. To engage or to operate at a larger scale and really using these small scale efforts to empower the large scale operation of the organization as well. 
[00:35:11] Lori Zoss Kraska: Kimberly, did you want to add on to that?
[00:35:14] Kimberly Tuttle: In 22 and 23 as we were coming out of COVID too, especially, we had surveyed our members and top importance in AIAS member benefits was that networking, but a quarter rated in-person events as like their second choice, the second reason most impactful member benefits. So, and I don't know if that's because we were coming outta COVID, but that definitely is something that we have not seen.
Ticked down in the past couple years, it's only ticked up. And so as we get back into play in our in-person events, we're definitely seeing an uptick in our numbers, slowly getting back to where our pre COVID numbers were. But the students had identified that in both years as like the top two priorities of why they wanted to be a [00:36:00] member of the organization.
[00:36:01] Lori Zoss Kraska: That's great. And I think it goes back to Gilberto's point about creating that sense of belonging and community in these events. And Brian, I want to talk to you about that. In terms of larger scale events, how can associations include young professionals and larger scale events in things like annual meetings and conferences?
[00:36:21] Brian Miller: Yeah. And boy, that was just great insight from Gilberto and Kimberly. It really ties into the data that we're seeing in the report and one of the other key takeaways outside of this awareness value gap that we talked about. And then the second big takeaway was. The digital fluency that associations need to have to engage with the younger professionals.
The third thing that we found was exactly what the both the Gilberto and Kimberly were talking about. It's the revival and the return of in real life. I don't know if it's because of post COVID, but I think a lot of it's just younger professionals want to engage with their peers. They want to engage in these small [00:37:00] scale opportunities, right?
If happened, Gilberto mentions so many of them, but it, these. Local meetups, that's where they're networking. All these different like-minded peer related discussions and how those are taking place. They can happen online as we see. Obviously it's happening as we talked about with Reddit and all the various subreddit sub communities that are out there.
But again, it's also happening. In real life, locally from the bottom up, starting in their chapters, in their organizations, in their schools, in their universities, in their young, professional career, networking that they're doing in the various ways. So I think if associations can replicate those small scale events in their large scale events, that's gonna be a really key thing going forward from that engagement.
One of the things that we found out in the research as well is that the students. And young professionals, when they go to these annual conferences or these larger scale events, they get lost and they get scared. They [00:38:00] internalize, and they don't network. They don't engage because it's just too much, and a lot of the content that's even happening in there is maybe content that they're not even interested.
Again, when we go back and think about what we talked about earlier and what their needs are. Maybe those large scale events aren't really hitting those topics for those young professionals, but I think the biggest thing is that they just feel like it's lost. So there's different things that associations can do to bring that small scale structure to their large events where they can replicate those meetups, right?
Where you engage the peers within their community together in these small scale type opportunities within the large scale events. I think another thing too is obviously mentorship and coaching is a huge thing that they want as well. What better way to engage your corporate sponsors to be those thought leaders like we talked about?
Get them engaged in these small scale events that are happening within the larger events so that they can not only have their peer discussions, but they can also have some coaching and [00:39:00] mentorship type opportunities with other businesses that are out there in the profession that can offer guidance to them.
And obviously that creates networking for them and when they're looking for possible career placement as well. The other thing I think would be interesting to do is when you think about all the cities that you go to for your large scale events, for your annual conferences, maybe connect with local universities, colleges, trade schools, whatever that may be, depending on your profession or your trade.
And try to recruit volunteers, students from those universities to actually work with you as a volunteer at your annual conference, for example. 'cause now. They're not scared. They actually have a role within the entire scheme of things. They can actually be very involved from a volunteer standpoint, which is gonna create those connections for them.
They're gonna meet people, they're gonna have those networking opportunities, they're gonna have the ability to work with their peers, and they're also getting that sense of belonging. That Hill Albert so talked about [00:40:00] where they're feeling important. They're not just attending, they're actually participating in the event as a volunteer.
And it's a great thing for associations because the more. Staff that you can have that you're not paying, for lack of a better word phrase. It offers more resources for the association to be able to do some of these additional things. But I think that would be a great. Opportunity for associations to look at different things like that for the cities that they're in and how they can utilize the resources within that city, through the local colleges and universities to be able to recruit students to volunteer, introduce them to the association, and then they can start seeing some of the benefits early on before they even join.
So that's one of the insights that I think we gained from the data. But again, this really ties in with everything Kimberly and Gilberto's been talking about in real life from their organizational perspective. So it's great. 
[00:40:51] Lori Zoss Kraska: I love this. "The return to in real life," Brian. I think Multiview should brand that, trademark it, copyright it, because [00:41:00] I think there could be something there.
But to bridge off of that, Brian, I thought about, I have to brag in my hometown a bit here. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, where the A SAE annual was last year. Destination Cleveland, which is a local nonprofit organization, was highly involved in the A SAE 2024 conference and. I was speaking to a representative from Destination Cleveland and she was telling me about the number of young people, basically those under 30 years old who have volunteered to come out for this event to direct people where they need to go or recommend places to eat, or what's a great place just to go kick back and relax.
And so what you're saying makes complete sense connecting to the that sense of. Philanthropy and community engagement is so important. And my gosh, associations are built to do that. Absolutely. It's just perfect. So Kimberly, how do you work with the American Institute of Architects to help young professionals transition from student [00:42:00] to professional membership as we move to membership conversation now?
 
[00:42:04] Kimberly Tuttle: Yeah, sure. So we've had a long history and partnership with the AIA, and it's both collaborative and strategic. So we work together to build a strong pipeline from students professional. By starting early, we introduce our students to the broader architecture ecosystem. Through a lot of regular exposure to not only a i a, but what we call the alliance organizations, which are the six organizations that really lead and direct the profession as a whole.
And the six organizations are regular attendees and partners at our events. So they don't just show up, they actively engage the students through volunteer opportunities, mentorship and insights into future roles in the profession. But when we think about partnering with our. Professional associations, we like to partner in meaningful initiative.
We will connect our students with practitioners in real ways with the AIA. They [00:43:00] Ask sponsor a program called Crit Scholar. We have Crit Journal, which is our student architectural journal. That students write the articles, they do the research, and we put that out once a year. But we also have a program called Crit Scholar, which is really about research.
So for architecture students specifically, we usually end our education with a one or two year thesis. Portfolio. And so the students will get paired with a mentor in the profession, someone who is interested in that type of research, and will pair them and they will have that mentor to help provide perspective, create connection for them throughout their research project.
They also get a little stipend, which. Is helpful for any student, but what that's really helpful is that they are really getting paired and introduced with someone actively in the profession who is interested in the type of research that they're doing. So they're making those connections early, which may lead to that job opportunity later down the road.
Through our Freedom by [00:44:00] Design program, which is a program where students tackle real world challenges in their local communities. So it's not necessarily a national program, but it is a local chapter program. The students we've partnered with ncarb, which is our licensure. They facilitate licensure and the students gain hands-on experience working with clients, working alongside licensed professionals and seeing the tangible impact of their design work.
So it's a really great opportunity for students to going back to our mission leadership design and that service component where students get to give back to their communities, partner with local architects, and also continue to build that network for them. We often remind students, and like I said, I worked in a large firm.
It's not just what you know, but it is who you know, and our job is really to help open the doors, to make those introductions, to connect them with leaders, and to give them a seat at the table. We are very clear with the students that they have to do the [00:45:00] work to get in and earn that interview. But as we partner with our professional associations as they move into a contributing member of the profession, we see that transition from student to professional as more of a continuum.
It's not necessarily a handoff, it's really ensuring the profession stays connected. To the, what the students are doing, but that they're aware, they know what is important and impactful to students because they are important. And I think going back to what Brian was saying, it's really great to engage with students in those manners.
But I think, I've been in this space for about 10 years now, and early on I was on some panels for some conferences, and I would have a student on the panel with me, right? We're in a presentation, we're in a session, and the student would be. So nervous, and I looked at this one individual and I looked at her and I was like.
You are here for a reason. Your voice is extremely important. Employers and [00:46:00] practitioners want to know what you think and why you think that. So dig into that, lean into that, and don't be afraid to be your authentic self, because that is going to be more impactful than saying things that you think people wanna hear.
We actually, you were there for a reason and we are that voice of the students and so that's why we try and make sure we are where not everyone else can be, so that we are advocating for our members. 
[00:46:29] Lori Zoss Kraska: Kimberly, I can imagine maybe some that are listening to us today or watching are thinking, wow, Kimberly's really got her act together and they've got a really good system.
Wow. I'm a little overwhelmed. So what advice would you give to somebody that just is even just starting to have a conversation about how do we help young professionals go from the student mindset of membership into more professional membership? Where do we even begin? What's your advice on that? 
[00:46:57] Kimberly Tuttle: Yeah, so it's funny, we were actually on a call this [00:47:00] morning with our counterparts in the UK to share lessons that we've learned.
Oh good. Because they have a free student membership. So there are more of the professional association, but they have a free student membership, and they wanted to know some of the things that we were doing to help give greater meaning to that student membership that they have. And so I think the first thing is, if you already have that student base.
Maybe you have a free student membership. Start talking with them, start reaching out. Focus groups are a really great opportunity to hear what they are saying, what they are wanting to know, and understanding where they're digesting and getting their content. So I think first off, start there. Second of all, I think if you don't have that student membership, I think.
Start with your local university, right? Reach out to that program. If they have a program with your professional degree in it. Reach out, see if you can go in and just talk to the students. I still go back and talk with my high [00:48:00] school about the technical education. I do that probably. Once every other year and learn what the students are looking for.
Why are you thinking, why do you wanna go in this career path? What do you think the profession looks like? I think that is also like myth busting 1 0 1 right there, right? When you ask students what they think, oh, what do you wanna do with your career? And they say, for architecture, I'm getting into the nitty gritty, but I wanna do residential or commercial, and it's okay.
But commercial architecture, there's so many things you can do. And so I think for us it's also about awareness and exposure, and just that exposure can help students understand better where they fit in that profession. And that's something that we are really trying to be more intentional around is the educational exposure.
Of students, if they have a better understanding of how they fit into your profession, they might hit the ground running much faster than someone who's still floundering. So I would say. [00:49:00] Go back to your universities if they have a program that is related to your discipline, and just go talk to them. Ask them, what do you guys wanna know about?
What do you think the profession looks like? How can I help you? I think those are great opportunities to start to dig in, and then maybe eventually the membership or the engagement will grow from there. But I think that's a great first step, is to just go talk to the students, go right to the universities and offer up your services.
I will go and give a career portfolio 101 section where people reach out and say, Hey, can you come talk to our students about what the profession and practitioners like to see when they're reviewing portfolios? And I'll go, and I will be very blunt. I'm like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
This I would love. This is a great example. And so I think just by engaging and showing you are there as a resource is a great first step. 
[00:49:54] Lori Zoss Kraska: I just wanna say that this type of engagement with universities and other type of [00:50:00] educational partners, corporate sponsors love this because they are actually in the same boat as associations.
They are trying to engage young people and young professionals to get excited about their specific industry or their workforce. So when I have associations asking me, Lori, what are corporations sponsoring right now? What are they interested in? The number one thing still is anything around engaging young professionals to get excited about what we're doing as a career path, and that's something you share.
So really you can take some of this work that Kimberly's talking about with outreach. You could even potentially put some sort of formalized program around it and find a sponsor for it. The opportunities are, unless I just had to go down that road, 'cause you're playing the sponsorship. Place sandbox here.
All right, so Gilberto, let's go back to you as a student based member organization. You talked a little about this earlier, but can you talk more about the A IAS unique leadership structure that's comprised of both [00:51:00] students and recent graduates? 
[00:51:02] Gilberto Lozada Baez: Of course, I think Kimberly just gave a pretty detailed and accurate spot on description of what our organization does to engage this young leaders and to really empower them to go about their journey in architecture and just their leadership journey in general.
But basically, we are a student led organization, so not only do we have our student members, we also have our local chapter leaders. Our regional directors, our committee chairs and members, and our board of directors that are all comprised of students. So that is a great way to have that untapped, unfiltered feedback from the younger generations about the profession and what they want to see in the future, and to use it to have these conversations with other industry partners and allied organizations as well.
Like you were mentioning, we also have alumni that sort of tie into this entire piece because [00:52:00] it helps us see what's happening, not just while they're in school, but also once they have graduated and they're joining the profession and what really their education and their interests pan out to be in the future.
And so what we do as an organization, in a way, is to, the way I see it, compliment their education to find those resources and those opportunities that sometimes are not being. Offered by their global school programs or that they could find elsewhere and bring in it a little bit closer to them so that they can explore what they want their future career to look like, what the opportunities are for them, and to empower them to make an impact and to shape the profession into what they want to see.
The way that I see it is that students and young professionals are really an equal part of this collaborative ecosystem. That shapes our profession, right? We have an architecture, what is globally allied organizations, and they are [00:53:00] basically every realm of architecture that could be involved. They're talking about the professionals themselves, about researchers.
We're talking about accreditation, and everyone wants to hear from students. And so in a way, what we do through this structure is empower them to understand that, like Kim was saying, their voices are important. Everyone in this profession that wants to make a change, wants to hear from them, and so giving them those platforms so that they can speak up and be heard.
I think that's what is in the DNA of the AI S that empowers student leaders and young professionals as well. 
[00:53:35] Lori Zoss Kraska: And I think that is the perfect place for us to end today. I wanna thank everyone for listening to this episode of Associations Now Presents. Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US and the world.
Again, we'd like to thank our episode sponsor Multiview. For [00:54:00] more information about our sponsor, check out their link in our show notes. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on this topic, visit associations now online at associationsnow.com.