Associations NOW Presents

Recorded live at ASAE's Marketing, Membership, Communications + Tech Conference, guest host Nikki Golden, CAE, of Association Laboratory, welcomes Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP, editor-in-chief and director of content at the American Academy of Actuaries, for a conversation on the evolving role of association communications and marketing. Together, they explore how the two disciplines work hand in hand to build trust, engage members, and advance organizational goals. They also discuss the growing influence of AI, the importance of strategic storytelling, and why communications professionals must continue developing the skills needed to lead in an increasingly complex and technology-driven environment.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/7UaKw4Ycgqo
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Nikki Golden, CAE: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Association NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Nikki Golden, CAE, managing director and strategist at Association Laboratory. I'm also incoming vice chair of the Communications Professionals Council of ASAE.
We're recording today from ASAE's MM&C Conference in Washington, DC, where association professionals from across the country and industry are gathering to share ideas, build connections, and explore what's next for the community. Today, I'm talking to Preeti, who is one of my fellow council members, and so we're excited to be here with you.
Preeti, do you wanna introduce yourself? 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah, sure, Nikki, I'm so excited to be chatting with you. I am Preeti Vasishtha, and I am the editor-in-chief at the American Academy of Actuaries, and I'm also the director of content. I've had various roles in [00:01:00] communications throughout my career at associations in Washington, DC, so I'm really excited to be here.
Nikki Golden, CAE: Great, and since we are at MM&CC+Tech, I'm wondering, what do you think is so valuable about this conference for the communications community? 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah. First off, this is my first MM&C+Tech. Oh, great. Yeah. I've been to ASAE's, but this time I was like, "I have to go to MM&C+Tech." So I think one of the things that when I was doing the research for my...
I was planning my schedule, looking at all the sessions, and one thing that struck me, I was like, "Wow, I can go to this. I can go for this. This really speaks to me. This session really speaks to me." And when I was doing that, I realized this conference, this event is really built around our jobs of marketing and communications, right?
Nikki Golden, CAE: And membership. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah, and I'll get to that. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. You're right, and tech. Like, the three, like, let's- Yeah ... like the pillars of a, a stool. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah. And when I was looking at the sessions, I wasn't even looking whether [00:02:00] it's marketing, whether it's tech, whether it's branding. I was just going, "Yeah, I can go to all of these."
Yeah. So I think that's the power of this conference. I also feel the name represents all the four tools of an organization, right? We are the main characters here. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Right? This is about us. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: So I wasn't struggling to find meaningful, sort of, sessions. Say, "Ah, I don't know which ssession I should go to at this spot."
So I think that was really great, and I know, Nikki, you've talked about this previously, but really, you can look at it as three or four distinct areas. Yeah. But none of us really is sticking to our lane. It's also interconnected. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah, very much so. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: I think MMC and tech gets that complexity of our lives, and it just showcases the reality of what we are doing in our daily lives.
Nikki Golden, CAE: And it creates that commonality among these four different groups that really need to work [00:03:00] together in order to have- Agreed ... a solid engagement from your members. So I agree with that. Exactly. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: So coming to our favorite question, we've talked about this a lot. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: And we can go on talking about this a lot.
We talk of marketing and communications, so how would you, Nikki, what do you see as the differences between the two? 
Nikki Golden, CAE: I really think of marketing as really driving that brand awareness. There's a lot of product sales that are involved in it. And communications, I think, really manages that narrative and that storytelling relationship across all the stakeholders.
You really can't have one without the other. I think we often talk about them as if they're in competition, but really they should be working hand-in-hand, right? Because you can't really sell a product or have a brand without having that storytelling aspect in the background. And I think oftentimes we are pitted against each other, and what I really like about, I [00:04:00] think, this conference and I think the way that the councils work together, is that we really see how much the two need each other, and where one kind of lane stops and the other one starts.
I think people are tending to understand that a little bit better nowadays than they used to. But if I'm thinking about the way that we're going to be, how you think about which is which, conversions, sales, market share, that's a marketing ownership area. But building that, shaping public opinion, including your members' opinion, your stakeholders' opinion, really managing information that people need to know is really where communications sits.
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah, I so agree with you. So marketing really, it's so easy to quantify. It's here, right? Yeah. What are the metrics? But when it comes to communications, ah, it's a longer story. It's about the trust, it's about the storytelling. That's so hard to quantify. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. And, but you're right. But it's the backbone of that marketing, a conversion- Yeah
oftentimes. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: And without [00:05:00] marketing, communications can only do so much. So you're right, they go hand-in-hand. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: So I think along those same lines, like when you're talking to people who are outside of the marketing and comms, I think, what do they often get wrong about that work? And then along with that, how does that misunderstanding really affect the way that the organization can move forward?
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Such a great question, and again, I'm sure we can have a discussion. But I feel, you know, the most persistent misconception that I've felt is marketing i- is our work is about execution. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: And that strategy is somewhere else. Yeah. It's like we are known as the newsletter people, the co- or they'll write something up, or they'll do social media.
Nikki Golden, CAE: Or they're just putting 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah ... Ah, they're just putting out... Eh, it's easy. They'll just get it done. And we really are just doing sort of the hands-on role. I think our job, our role is so important to how an organization is [00:06:00] perceived both internally and externally, and that perception has a lot of consequences, right?
Yeah. Whether your members are renewing, whether policymakers think of you as a credible source, whether the journalists will pick up your phone when you make a call, or even your non-members or the members you, people you want to acquire as members, they even really even know about you. So all of this sort of feeds into what we do. And your other question really was about what, what impact does it have on the organization? So the downstream effect of this is that marketing communications, we are brought in too late. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Oh my God. We could have a whole session about that. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Told you. So it's like- 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah, 'cause you don't need to know until it's time for us to message.
Why would you need to know at the front end of this project? 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Why would we want your insight into the stories that we've been telling, what the brand voice is, or any of even pricing for the marketing side? 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah. [00:07:00] You're right. And it's just a general example. The organization is working on a major initiative, major project, and okay, all the details are done, and someone at the end will say, "Okay, let's think about how we are gonna communicate this," right?
And that's when we're brought in, when sometimes it's too late. But I think if we have a place on the table right from the get-go, the organizations make better decisions and wiser decisions. Why? Because we are thinking of the audience right from the get-go, right?
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah, 100%. I think when we do projects with our clients, the projects that are implemented well are when marketing and communications has a seat at the table for the entirety of the project, because they're not just handed a slide deck and saying, "Communicate this to the members."
Yeah. They're able to think strategically about it. They are understanding the why and how decisions were being made all along the way, and so they're constantly [00:08:00] thinking about what is the story that we need to tell to get people to understand why we're making the decisions we're making. It's very hard to do that when you've just been brought in at the end of the topic and somebody gives you a highlight of what has been, like, 12 months of planning.
And you don't have all the information, and so something gets lost. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah ... what's the message? Who is the audience? When are we trying to reach them? What is our success metrics? So those are some of the sort of questions that communications we guys- 
Nikki Golden, CAE: And how can we use our various vehicles to really drive home that message instead of just focusing on one place. Yeah. Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah. So talking about audience, we mentioned that a lot in our discussion right now, Nikki. So how do you think we guys in marketing and comms can really help with that connection with members? What's our role there? 
Nikki Golden, CAE: I think our role is kind of that, a through line of the brand and the story that we're telling.
I think oftentimes it's our role [00:09:00] to bring in what is the mission of the organization? And can we keep that as that North Star? And what is our strategic plan? Can we talk to the things that we are, we've learned through the strategic plan? What are the things that are impacting our members? How can we better communicate them to help them understand that we're aligned with their goals and their needs and their wants?
Because I think about both marketing and communications, we're really the voice of the member, and it is our job to make sure that everything that we are putting out is communicating what they need to hear. And not talking, because I think a lot of associations do this, we talk about ourselves as, "We are giving you this."
And our members don't care about that. They wanna know, "Is this gonna save me time? Is this gonna save me money? Is this going to teach me something new and put me ahead in my career?" And we need to do a better job of being that member voice at the table so that we can put them front and [00:10:00] center in any of the messaging that we're doing.
And also, again, just think through the mechanisms that we have at our fingertips. Director of content is so great because that's that 2,000-foot view of, yeah, okay, that was a great magazine article, but did we miss a little piece of it? And can we do, you know, an audio interview, or can we make sure that it's posted on social media and driving people back to that?
Whenever we have an education session, can we post people back to that article? And so really thinking more holistically about how all the pieces fit together, I think really helps with that engagement strategy. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: I agree. And you made a excellent point, Nikki, when you said, "We are the voice of the member."
And I think one opportunity for organizations to use marketing and comms strategically is use words, use language that our members use. I feel like- 
Nikki Golden, CAE: How often do we get into such inner, internal jargon. All the time. All the... We have an acronym. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yes. I know where this is on the website. I know we call it XYZ, [00:11:00] but our members call it totally something else.
Yeah. And that's where we come in. Yes. And say, "Hey, you know what? Members want to be seen and heard in our content, in what we are sending to them. So if we can use their language." 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. We're golden. Yes. 100%. We really do get lost in our own- Mm. ... internal speak. For sure. And sometimes that does translate to the website.
Oh, yes. Where we make things harder to find because we're not thinking about it from the member perspective. Absolutely. We're thinking about it from the departmental, you know- 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Absolutely ... 
Nikki Golden, CAE: internal. It's internal. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah. Yeah. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: I feel like the elephant in the room at this entire conference has been AI, maybe for the last three conferences that we...
ASC Annual, last year at CTAC. So how do you think AI is changing communications and marketing, and where do you see it really making the biggest impact? 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: That is such a big question. We are dealing with some really big topics here. But yes, AI is the elephant in the room, and in my readings, and [00:12:00] even at the sessions here, I'm not surprised to hear that marketing and- Yeah
comms is one of the top areas that has been most impacted. We are living it. Yeah. We're seeing it. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: So obvious- Because everybody thinks they can get rid of us and just use AI. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: And I'll get to it in a minute, but really the lowest hanging fruit, right? First draft, summarizing reports, comparing two reports, seeing audience engagement patterns and data.
So all that's really quick, really fast, and I think it's great for smaller teams- Yeah ... who struggle with bandwidth. I think that's fabulous. But what I'm realizing in my work as we get more and more AI savvy or just adopted more, is the need for pause. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Because just because something is done quick and fast, it doesn't mean it's great quality.
Nikki Golden, CAE: And so just because you can use AI for something doesn't mean you should use AI for something. 100%. What did the keynote speaker say yesterday? She had sloth mode. Yeah. Which is where you really need to slow [00:13:00] down and take your time. Yeah. I totally agree. I think that people are very quick to jump in and use it for the easiest use case, but we really need to start thinking about it more from a perspective of efficiency.
Can it help us do something we weren't able to do before? And can it take away maybe some of the manual work that we do? If marketing people and communications people, we're writers, so do we really need it to write for us? I don't think so. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Which is exactly my point. To me, coming from a content perspective, a lot of things that are AI written read the same.
Yes. It's AI slop, right? It's that vague- Confident sounding 
Nikki Golden, CAE: And it's almost more work to double check the AI than it is to just write the first draft myself. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: I think that- Yeah ... for marketing and comms, it becomes even more important that we hold onto our voice. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: And how do we stand out in a sea of content that just seems like it's reads the same, sounds the [00:14:00] same.
So I think we really need to hold onto that. Yeah. So I think our jobs are becoming more about that. How do we hold onto our originality? 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. And the subject matter expertise too. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Absolutely, right. So I think that AI slop kind of land, I think that's... That human function, that judgment, is really very important.
A couple of things that I've heard here, I thought I would share them with you, is there was a speaker from the American Marketing Association at the pre-con, and she said something pretty interesting. They have a study coming out, but she said that basically our jobs are already changing, right? But also now it's gonna start impacting our titles.
So what they are saying is that we're not gonna have them so segmented, like a social media specialist- Right ... an email person. We are really looking at someone who has strategy. They can look at AI as a whole and see, where does it fit in our workflow, right? 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Just like email and websites did once upon a time, right?
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Once upon a time. So I know there's that little bit of deja vu [00:15:00] here. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: I know. But this is gonna solve all our problems. When have we heard that before? I... No. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Nothing ever does. No. And lastly, I feel that this has been going on in my career a lot. I feel like I'm continuously having to learn. It's not even trying to keep up, but I think things are moving so rapidly and evolving so fast that we are now in an environment of continuous learning, and I think that's a mind shift because it's usually, "Oh, I've done this course, I've done the program, I can move on, I've mastered it."
Not really. Not in today's AI-driven world. That's what I'm learning. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. But I think that's also fun, right? It's interesting to think about new ways to work, again, that take maybe some of the more manual and, let's be honest, boring part of our jobs, and really be able to put some deep thought into a higher level of strategy.
So I like that aspect of it. I love that. But it is a lot. There's a lot out there, and it's hard to evaluate, and it's hard to get people to talk about real use cases, [00:16:00] not just esoterically, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?" But like, how are you actually doing this? And what is the tool of choice that you're using to make that connection between, like, all the places where you hold data?
It would be great to have one tool that can just look through it all and give you some magic answers, but I don't think we're there yet. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah, we're not getting there. Yeah. Every, every tool, AI tool has a different area, its strength. Yeah. And you have to figure out- 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah ... what goes where. Yeah. How do you use that?
And just play around a lot too. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Which is fun. Uh, yeah. So we talked a little bit about this already, but what do you think, going forward in our roles, what skills are gonna be important, Nikki, in this AI world that we are living in? 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah, I think that's such an interesting question because I think we've been coming at it, again, I think a lot of the world is looking at it as a replacement for things, and I really think that it's going to require us to really think a little bit more [00:17:00] strategically- 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah
Nikki Golden, CAE: about how we're spending our time, what we are doing- What works well, how we can automate some things that are maybe a little bit more time-consuming and manual, but that really move the organization's message forward. So I think critical thinking, I think strategic thinking, I think that kind of helicopter view of the landscape of all the activities and all the content being created by the association, how you can really make those connections between an article, a webinar, a podcast.
That's gonna become so much more important as AI is kind of scooping up all of our data and we are moving from maybe an SEO world to, I forget whatever they're calling it. AEO. AEO world. And so really being able to make those connections to ensure that your content is being found. But I think the other thing is just being a real problem solver, [00:18:00] right?
So being able to look at what are the things that are holding us back or creating friction for our members, and is there a way, like, how can we better get our members past that friction point or remove that friction point so that they can get where they wanna go. So I think about association websites a lot.
We're all hampered by them. We all have so many resources. There's so much content on there, but it takes a real problem solver to look at it and think about, "Okay, if we can't get the money to revamp our website, is there a tool that's out there that can help us Get our members to where they need to go.
Is there some sort of AI tool that can comb our website and our members can ask a question of it, and it gets them the resources that they need? I know that there's tools that are out there and do it. I think that's a low-hanging fruit. So being able to evaluate what the issues your members are having in terms of interacting with your content, and then finding the right tool and evaluating whether it is a good fit or not, [00:19:00] I think are gonna be some new skill sets.
I feel like we've always had to evaluate technology, but I think it's going to be an even more important skill as we move forward in this kind of more technological bringing AI into that mix. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah, and I completely agree 100%. I would also add, it's also knowing how to use AI. If an AI doesn't exist for that, like- Yeah
a tool doesn't exist, how can you use, say, any of the AI tools that we have to find a solution to your problem? How can you put AI to fix problems that are being created by AI? I don't even know if I'm making sense, but it's like using AI to find answers, you know? That may not exist in another tool right now, right?
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. We were just talking about Lovable, which is an AI tool that I was recently introduced to, and one of the neat things I find about it, so basically it allows you to create [00:20:00] something that you would have had to otherwise have a coder do. Think about a landing page, a, a customer relation management system, something like that.
But I think one of the things that it allows you to do, because there's such a disconnect often when tech and marketing or comms talks to each other, we're using a lot of the same words, but meaning very different things. I think that this tool can allow you to create something so that you can bring it visually to your tech person and say, "This is what I want it to look like.
I want to be able to click here, and go to this thing, and I want this information to be on a dashboard that looks like this." And really just visualize, even if you're not gonna use the tool within Lovable that you've just built, even using it to visualize, to be able to better communicate to a, your technology person, your IT person, your designer person, what it is you are looking for.
I think that just opens up a whole new avenue of actually successful technology projects internally that hasn't been there before. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: I think that'll reduce our emails by [00:21:00] hundreds, just the back and forth. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah, or like the remaking of things, or wireframing. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: I- So cool ... 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Those are so hard to think through, but this tool can actually help you see, "No, this is how I wanna be able to navigate," and now how do we build around that?
Fabulous. Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yeah, 
Nikki Golden, CAE: yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: So I think we are heading to wrapping this up, Nikki, but I did want to talk a little bit about our amazing professional advisory council that we have. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: And you're coming in as the vice chair. We are all looking forward to working with you, obviously. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the projects that we've done and that we are thinking of doing, a little bit of that?
Nikki Golden, CAE: Yeah. For i- ... So the communications advisory council is basically responsible for any kind of resources or content for the communication professionals' collaborate world. And so we have been split up the last couple years, and I think it's worked really well. And we focus on three different content areas.
So how do we bring [00:22:00] content into MMC plus tech? How do we bring content to ASAE annual? So we have one group that is focused on, at the beginning of the year, really s- ... what are strong submissions, and let's put together some really great sessions to propose. The second group has been working on articles.
We have, in the month of June coming out, is going to be an article about AI and communications that two of our members of our council have written. And then we've been looking at podcasts. So you and I are participating here. I think we've had some other members who are participating in podcasts. So we are really looking to build on that next year.
And everything that we do, we are posting in the communications professionals advisory section on Collaborate. And so I think we're just building a library of content. Hopefully we'll include webinars next year. I know that ASAE has been revamping their academy, and so we're hoping to build out a channel through there next year as well.
Anybody who [00:23:00] is interested in any kind of content needs or resources, we are always monitoring that communications professionals Collaborate channel. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Yep. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: And are free to let us know what they're looking for, what is missing from their toolkit, and we can see if we can create something for them to use to make their lives easier.
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: This is so exciting. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: It is. I- It's been an exciting couple years. 
Preeti Vasishtha, AAiP: Oh, and I'm looking, really looking forward- Yeah ... to next year. Yeah, for sure. So, so hopefully we'll do some great things again. And this was wonderful, Nikki. 
Nikki Golden, CAE: Absolutely. I'm so glad that you agreed to talk to me, Preeti. This has been really super fun.
So 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.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, recorded live at ASAE's Marketing, Membership, Communications + Tech Conference, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions welcomes Erica Salm Rench, chief marketing officer at Sidecar, for a conversation about helping associations navigate the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. Erica shares why AI presents a unique opportunity for associations to compete more effectively, discusses the importance of educating staff and aligning AI initiatives with organizational strategy, and offers practical guidance on building AI literacy, selecting the right tools, and adapting to the growing influence of AI-powered search.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/3tyPPP_4yXU
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partners Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, partnerships director at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot agency, co-host of Rethink podcast, and your host of this series throughout the year.
This episode today is sponsored by Sidecar. 
We're recording today from ASAE's MMCT conference in Washington, DC, where association professionals from across the industry are gathering to share ideas, build connections, and explore what's next for the community. I've got the perfect expert with me today, Erica Salm Rench.
She's really leading the association industry in all things AI. A lot of you might have heard of AAIP, their certification program. They're part of the Blue Cypress family. But before we kick all of that off [00:01:00] and get into all of those details, I know you're celebrating a special day today. I know we're here at MMCT.
We'll get to that in a minute, but you're celebrating your 15-year wedding anniversary today. 
Erica Salm Rench: I am. Oh, yeah, that was a fun fact- Yeah ... that we shared right before. Yeah. So I will see my husband later this evening, which is great. He'll get some time with me. It seems like a fair trade-off, though, to be at MMCT.
This is so fun. 
Sharon Pare: Yes. And then I have another thing. You were talking to me a little bit about your hotel. You know how when you travel a lot, I know for work. And everyone has their ritual when they get back to the hotel and what they do. Is there any things that you need to do? I'll give you an example.
So for me, when I'm traveling alone in a hotel room, I always have to sleep with Friends on. Do you have something like that you do? 
Erica Salm Rench: You and I are two peas in a pod. I usually have Friends on in the background, or I always make sure I have snacks with me in my purse, because I feel like a lot of times the hotel snacks, they're not as healthy or nutritious as you [00:02:00] want them.
Yeah. So I always have nuts packed or protein bars in my purse, and then I lay out my snacks so that I have something in the morning to wake up to.
Sharon Pare: Okay. Yeah. I love it. Okay, so I wanna talk about MMCT, but before we get into it, you did win an award this year with AWTC, the Technology Leadership Award.
Tell me a little bit about that and what that award meant for you. I was there. I was really excited to see you win that. Erica gives a great speech, by the way. She's a great speaker. 
Erica Salm Rench: Thank you. I was so humbled by it. It was so exciting.
I was just overwhelmed by the award, and Rebecca and Carrie and Jill, and the amazing women at AWTC. They do such a good job of bringing women together and empowering them, and they truly filled a gap in the association space. It is [00:03:00] so cool to be a part of that movement, and I think it was just really emphasized last night at the AWTC Happy Hour.
Sharon Pare: I was just going to ask- 
Erica Salm Rench: Oh my ...
Sharon Pare: What did you think about that? 
Erica Salm Rench: You literally could barely move in that room, because everyone is so supportive of what they're doing, and women in technology need to be celebrated. I think about my daughter, and I mentioned her too in my award acceptance speech because- She wants to be a rocket scientist.
She wants to send my little one to the moon. She wants to be an astronaut. 
Sharon Pare: I am all about that. 
Erica Salm Rench: And has there ever been a better time to be a rocket scientist for a lady, right? Come on, let's elevate these women who wanna be in STEM. 
Sharon Pare: That's amazing. 
Erica Salm Rench: So I just, it just was all that together, all of those feelings together, and it was an amazing moment.
I was, again, so humbled, so thrilled, and it was just great to celebrate with all the 15 other women who [00:04:00] won awards as well. So what a great, what a fabulous night. 
Sharon Pare: So tell us how you stumbled into the association world. Nobody has a, "I wanna grow up and I wanna be in associations." I, I don't know.
Maybe you did. Yeah. But did you stumble into it? How did you get here, and how did you say, "Hey, I'm gonna support the association community"? 
Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, so it, like you said, it happened a little bit by accident. So I guess I'll go, like, all the way to the origin story. When I was getting my MBA at Tulane, Mithun Nagarajan, who was the founder of Aptify and sold Aptify to Community Brands, it was when he was still at Aptify, and he came to speak to my class about what they're doing at Aptify, how they help associations, and how their purpose was to help associations fulfill their purposes.
And that just was so cool to me. At the time, I was actually working for Tulane as well, so in nonprofit land, and I was just, I was moved by that, and I went to speak with him after he spoke to our class, [00:05:00] and so we, that was our first connection. And then fast-forward after I graduated with my MBA from Tulane, I went to run a big team in a marketing agency. We had the 1,200 clients, just the largest agency in the Gulf South, at least at the time.
And my team did all of them, executed on all the digital services, so like everything on like SEO, repurposing content, paid online ads, web dev, you name it. And when Ameet and I then reconnected, like four years after I was at the agency, and he was sharing with me this opportunity to use AI to make some of the things that like essentially we were doing at the agency so much more efficient and effective and personalized, it was, it seemed like a no-brainer.
I was like, "This is where the world is going." So that was almost nine years ago, and I was with Rasa for about seven years, and now I've been with Sidecar for going on a couple years. So I've been with the Blue Cypress family of companies for almost nine, [00:06:00] and this community's amazing. Everyone's so kind and warm, and I really do feel like I'm making an impact teaching people about AI, and that's what we do at Sidecar as well.
So, you know, the rest is history. It felt like the right fit. 
Sharon Pare: And that's exactly what that award, I think, it really shows as an example of what you're doing for the community. So thank you so much for all the women in technology. 
Erica Salm Rench: Oh my gosh. 
Sharon Pare: And what I do wanna mention really quick is Amit and the Blue Cypress family of brands.
And one thing that I know for 2030 is they wanna make sure these associations are going to be in that same realm of Fortune 500 companies when it comes to technology. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that I think about all the time, and asked this on some of the podcasts, the Associations Now team knows that I've asked this before, but- Not controversially, but traditionally, associations are a little bit behind.
Sure. And now with AI coming up to speed and associations starting to finally get into that world, do you think that associations [00:07:00] finally have this opportunity to be at the same starting line as their for-profit counterparts? What do you think? 
Sharon Pare: I know you think that we're finally there. We are not the dinosaurs that they say we are. 
Erica Salm Rench: Absolutely. There has never been a more leveled playing field than there is right now. Great. This technology can amplify the work that almost anyone does, and being part of the movement where we teach people how to harness it and how to leverage it is so incredible.
Like you said, Blue Cypress's purpose is to make association groups as powerful as the Fortune 500 by 2030, and the part that Sidecar plays in that is, is like this chapter one for them, right? We're helping to educate people. So there are so many people that say, "I don't know where to begin. We want to, quote, unquote, 'do AI,' but where do I start?"
Education is a great place to start because you [00:08:00] can speak the same language as your team, you can figure out which tools and which puzzle pieces fit in to help you amplify your mission and your purpose, because it's not just about AI for AI's sake, right? It's about figuring out which of these tools can be harnessed to push forward your organization, and that's why education is such a great foundation for all of that.
Sharon Pare: And I think MMCT is obviously the perfect place for it. Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit. I know you had a session yesterday. Yeah. I want you to talk a little bit about your session, but are there any other moments and themes that you're hearing on the floor that are starting to become signals for where our industry is moving?
Erica Salm Rench: Absolutely, yeah. No, I'm so glad you brought that up, because throughout my session, I always like to do a lot of live polling, like hand-raising, "Where are you? Where's your organization?" So I always start with, "How frequently do you use AI?" Starting with, "I've never touched the stuff," to, "I- I've dabbled," to weekly, to daily, to, [00:09:00] "I'm using agents regularly to help me complete tasks."
And this year, I always do that, do that poll in the beginning of my sessions. This year, the number of hands that were raised for, "I use it daily and I'm building agents and automations," was overwhelming compared to the year before, and the number of people who raised their hand for just once a week was much less than it was, like I said, a year ago.
So that was really cool to see. And in my sessions, depending on the content that I'm speaking about, I do like to talk about tools and show people practical applications in action. That's my favorite thing to do, 'cause I think that a thing you can put in your suitcase and take home for Monday morning to bring to back to your organization.
So we did a lot of that. And I showed probably 20, 30 tools or talked about that many. And then I did something new this year where I talked about Okay, now we take these tools, we have them all in the back of our heads for what [00:10:00] is possible and what the capabilities are, because they're changing so fast.
But you just need to know, generally speaking, what is out there and what's possible. So I said to keep that in the back of your heads. Now we're gonna talk about strategy. Pull up your strategic plan and figure out where these puzzle pieces plug in and how you can demonstrate to your board, to your leadership, to your peers, that these tools are actually working to push forward your missions and moving the metrics.
So that was a fun moment. It was a new piece of content for me, but I think it was, I think it was impactful for folks. 
Sharon Pare: There was an article I read recently about what you called leadership malpractice, and I thought that was really interesting, 'cause usually you'll hear that in the doctor's office if there's, you know- Sure
something bad happening around what they are doing. Tell me a little bit about that as it relates to AI and associations. Absolutely. So it is a provocative term. 
Erica Salm Rench: It is. I'll give you that. 
Sharon Pare: No, because I think that you're right. You told me. But it could be doing a [00:11:00] disservice to the association because of this.
Yeah. So I want you to tell us a little bit about that also. 
Erica Salm Rench: Absolutely. Well, at Sidecar, we believe that educating your people and developing your people is a core part of pushing your organization forward, right? And in this time of such rapid change, it's unbelievable how quickly things are moving here.
And in this time of rapid change, if you're not educating your people and bringing them forward on this technological journey, you're doing them a disservice. Yeah. Both with regard to inside of your organization and what's possible from inside of your organization, but also with regard to what they do afterwards, right?
Realistically speaking, not everyone is a Reggie Henry, where you're doing amazing things for 30 years at one organization. They're gonna go out into the world, and you have to elevate your people, and the way to do that is through education and teaching them about everything that's happening. 
Sharon Pare: So you just mentioned about how AI is moving really super quickly, and again, most association professionals are not technology.
It's [00:12:00] right that MMC added the technology part to kind of marry everything here. So how do you translate fast-moving developments into something a non-technical leader can actually act on this week? 
Erica Salm Rench: Yeah. It's never been a better time to be someone who's interested in technology, but maybe not classifying themselves as a technologist, because the barrier between imagination and actualization has never been smaller, right?
You could ideate on something and go open your computer and build it for less than a cup of coffee, right? I built a dashboard for folks in the session yesterday, and it's just, I'm not a coder, right? And so it's so amazing that you can harness these tools and see them in action and experiment, and I always say the best- Place to start with AI is just doing it.
You can't really learn it well until you try it, and I don't like to talk about tools usually until I've tried them myself. [00:13:00] And the barriers to entry to experiment with these things have never been smaller, which is so cool. 
Sharon Pare: Let's take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor
Sidecar is on a mission to demystify AI for association and nonprofit professionals through education, events, and community. At the heart of Sidecar is the AI Learning Hub, a platform of self-paced courses built specifically for the association world and available for both individuals and entire teams.
The Hub is also home to the AAIP, the Association AI Professional certification, a foundational credential that validates both the knowledge and the practical skills association pros need to lead AI initiatives with role-based learning pathways, also offering CAE credits. Beyond the Hub, Sidecar produces a wealth of free and ongoing resources, including the Sidecar Sync podcast, Sidecar [00:14:00] Scoop newsletter, a use case library of short real-world AI examples, and a vibrant online community.
Plus executive programming for senior leaders who want to go deeper. And every fall, Sidecar hosts Digital Now, the premier conference for association leaders focused on the future of leadership, technology, and innovation. Whether you're just AI curious or ready to certify your whole team, Sidecar is where the association industry goes to learn AI.
So you've been a big believer in bringing the whole staff along rather than just one AI person. What actually changes when an entire team is actually working on this together? 
Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, you can speak a common language. I always say taking AI courses together, almost like a book club, can be so impactful because even if it's asynchronous, like a book club, you're reading the book separately, then you come together to talk about it.
And we've seen some of our clients do that, and it's [00:15:00] had such an amazing impact because then they can share ideas, and there's less resistance because everyone knows what each other are talking about. Even if you haven't done the things yourself, you still know about them, and you can speak the common language.
You have the same foundation. And so oftentimes we hear and we believe that AI isn't necessarily a tech problem, because the tech has never been easier to use. It's, it can be a culture thing, right? You have to encourage people and lead them and make the playing field leveled 
Sharon Pare: So there's a ton of AI education out there.
What does it get wrong when it's built for a general audience and it's not something that's association specific AI? 
Erica Salm Rench: There's so much out there, right? I get seven newsletters on AI, and you see the LinkedIn influencer version of what AI is, and all the, like you said, the TikToks and the tweets, and it's just overwhelming.
So that's [00:16:00] why I think CAR is such a great solution for folks because it truly is the intersection of AI for associations, and all of the content we've built in our learning portal is specifically geared toward association use cases like event planning and membership growth and retention, and what member organizations need from their AI tools as opposed to just general AI learning.
And I think that there's such an opportunity there for people to explore how this stuff can impact their specifically association lives and not just general learning. 
Sharon Pare: So outside of the learning, you think a lot about how people discover and trust information now, including how tools like ChatGPT and Claude decide what to cite.
What should associations understand about staying visible and credible in that world? 
Erica Salm Rench: Oh, that's such a great question, and that makes me think about my agency days. So we did a lot of traditional SEO. So some of the foundational pieces of what SEO was, like, still apply. If you need to optimize [00:17:00] your image metadata, you need to optimize your page metadata, you need to tag your images, like, all of these data points that you have the opportunity to optimize so that you're telling the internet what your information is about still hold.
They're still important. It's different because the, it's going into a much more aggregated AI response, but there's still a lot of opportunities to leverage some of the traditional components of SEO. That being said, there's much more now to think about, and there are a lot of trends to stay on top of in terms of what these LLMs are training on, and it ch- it changes very frequently.
So I think that you bring up such a good point because all these associations, they still wanna be in the rich AI answers that are presented when someone is querying Google or Bing or what have you. So I'd say, first of all, stay educated. Keep on top of it because it is changing fast. But also educate your marketing teams that it's not just about the traditional SEO components anymore.
You have [00:18:00] to expand beyond what, what your current knowledge is 
Sharon Pare: So I have a sidecar question 
Erica Salm Rench: for you Yeah, sure 
Sharon Pare: But out of the ChatGPT, the Claude, Grok, Perplexity, Gemini, do you have... There's so many. Some people use it all for different cases. Yeah. Sometimes it's work, sometimes it's personal, sometimes it's, "My nutrition, I need a personal trainer."
Yeah. Do you have one that you particularly... Well, what is your, which one's your go-to? 
Erica Salm Rench: So we're... Oh, I'm a Claude girl now, and we're mostly a Claude shop, mostly because of the, the co-working feature. It's just- This is no plug to Claude This is no... Yes, I, Claude did not pay me for this particular, no. But 
Sharon Pare: maybe they will.
Erica Salm Rench: May- Maybe they will. No, but the co- If you haven't experimented with Claude Cowork, which you need to work in their desktop app to experiment with, truly go, go work on that, because you can have it talk to your file structure, update files. It eliminates the copy/paste, and then it's also so amazing. The projects are so amazing for context.
So go play with that. And then I still have not yet found [00:19:00] that- A better tool for image generation or text to image editing or video gen than, than our friend Gemini 
Sharon Pare: Nano Banana? 
Erica Salm Rench: Nano Banana. And Veo, Veo 3.1, I think they're at for the video. It's just unbelievable. The audio capabilities, the video quality, it's cinematic quality from a prompt.
I play, it's, my kids and I play around with it sometimes too. It's, we made a tap dancing raccoon with Popsicles the other day, and it's, it's fun too, in addition to being, like, incredibly useful. 
Sharon Pare: Of course. Yeah. I always think about how much, you've seen the Will Smith eating spaghetti video, right? Yeah. And just the- 
Erica Salm Rench: Wait, no.
Wait, no. I said yeah. I haven't seen the Will Smith 
Sharon Pare: eating spaghetti. Oh, you haven't. No. Tell us about that. Well, that's a question, and I don't know if our production team has seen it, but- Yeah ... if our listeners now, if you go and look at when AI first started generating this video of Will Smith eating spaghetti and what it looks like- Yeah
versus what it looks like today, and it's only been such a short amount of time. Sure. Yeah. You need a, you need to Google [00:20:00] Gemini it because- Yeah ... it is just incredible to see how far we've gone- So far ... in just a few months. Yes. Look that it up, this video. 
Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, I have to. That's one of the things I did in my session too when I talked about imagery.
I sh- pulled up an image of what imagery used to be a year ago, people with 19 fingers, and the words were all misspelled, and now it is just unbelievable with the written content within images, the human faces and just how clear and realistic and lifelike they are, and then being able to surgically edit those images just with a prompt makes life, like for a non-graphic designer like myself, just opens up the world of possibilities.
Sharon Pare: So everyone worries about AI shrinking teams. We've seen it even recently in headlines. A lot of these big companies are doing these mass layoffs because they say that AI is going to really start taking over jobs, but you frame it a little bit differently for associations. Yeah. So can we dig into that a little bit more and why [00:21:00] with these associations staff shouldn't worry?
Erica Salm Rench: We see it as more of an amplification of the work that you're currently doing, and this quote is not my own, but it is something to think about, and it goes back to the leadership malpractice phrasing. But- AI won't necessarily replace people, but people who know AI will replace people who don't, because employers are gonna look for people who can do much more with the minutes and hours that they have, and that's just gonna be the reality of the future.
Sharon Pare: Yeah. All right. We're gonna move into our fast five. Oh, sure. All right. Okay. Okay, so there's no wrong answers, so say whatever comes to mind. It can be- Yeah ... personal, it can be professional. Okay. So what's a book, podcast, or account every association pro, I guess this one's a professional one, but if you wanna drop in a personal one, too.
Yeah. What is one that they should follow right now? 
Erica Salm Rench: I am a sucker for business books. I love Good to Great [00:22:00] by Jim Collins. I, I also love Rockefeller Habits. I feel like they both lay such an amazing foundation for building and growing organizations. 
Sharon Pare: What is a tool you couldn't live without right now, and it doesn't have to be AI?
Erica Salm Rench: A tool I couldn't live without... Oh, okay. It's the, it is the most simplistic technology in the world, but I'm gonna tell everyone to go sign up for an account right away. It's called Follow Up Then, followupthen.com. And Google has a similar sort of like Boomerang, and they're tooling it more. 
Sharon Pare: One more time.
This is more for me. 
Erica Salm Rench: Followupthen.com. Okay. So what it is, instead of having a to-do list that represents things that you might need to do in three months or five months or once a year, you send an email to followupthen.com- 
Sharon Pare: Okay ... 
Erica Salm Rench: and it emails you at the precise moment that you need to do the task. Oh. And then if it's something like you need to snooze it, let's say it's something you do once a year, you do the thing that year, and then you hi- hit one year, like snooze button, basically.
Oh. Grandma's birthday. Okay. It's [00:23:00] gonna send you an email on Grandma's birthday. You gotta give her a call, and then you snooze it. Or that once a month report that you need to send to whoever, you snooze that once a month. And that means that your to-do list only is the top three things that you need to actually get done that day, and everything else, you know that it's gonna be presented to you at the precise moment you need to do it.
I'm obs- it changed my life. 
Sharon Pare: That's amazing because I, I talk to Siri. I don't want Siri to hear this, but I'm like, "Hi, Siri. 
Erica Salm Rench: Can you send me a reminder to do this?" And then I never get the reminder, and I'm like, "Okay." It's not a time-bound reminder. We are not gonna get it from Siri. Follow- Yeah ... upthen.com will do that for you.
Now, they also don't pay me, but I think they should. Followupthen.com, if you're listening, I deserve a commission. Thank you. 
Sharon Pare: Something about the association world outsiders totally misunderstand. Now that you've been here for a decade, we've known each other for a decade, what do you think most people, when you're talking to them about, "Oh, yeah, I work in association," what do you think they misunderstand usually about the association world?
I think the people just don't [00:24:00] know that- 
Erica Salm Rench: The association world exists, yes ... when you start then giving them examples like American Heart Association, American Marketing Association, something clicks. But I don't think people know about what sort of thought goes into making a membership organization tick or a community tick, and then you have to get the light bulbs to turn on.
And I think something else that people don't, that associations don't realize is just, like, how valuable their audiences are to certain people. Obviously, I'm a sponsor of this conference. Sidecar is a sponsor of this conference. Being in front of this audience is so incredibly valuable, and I think that association professionals tend to undervalue, like, how valuable their audiences are to the outside world, and that's maybe why the outside world doesn't understand associations as much.
Sharon Pare: Yep. And it's funny you mentioned American Heart Association, 'cause I know that I wouldn't walk into a dental office that didn't have that seal of ADA approved. People just forget about some of those things that- That are part of your health ... part of your health. Uh-huh. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Best piece 
Erica Salm Rench: of advice you ever got.[00:25:00] 
Ooh, to be a lifelong learner. 
Sharon Pare: Yeah. So this is truly the role for you. 
Erica Salm Rench: Yes. And yeah, I love teaching people things. I love learning. I feel, I a- I tell my kids all the time, I remember this poster in my 1990s elementary school classroom, knowledge is power. Knowledge is really power. If you educate yourself and stay on top of things and can speak about the hot topics, that's, that can elevate you so much and, and just really help you figure out your own path in life.
Sharon Pare: So if you weren't doing this though, what would you be doing? 
Erica Salm Rench: Oh, I don't ... Oh, okay, fine. You really wanna know like my dream job? Yes. Travel food show host. 
Sharon Pare: Oh my gosh. 
Erica Salm Rench: That's my dream job. 
Sharon Pare: I would love to watch that. 
Erica Salm Rench: Yeah, wouldn't that be s- And eat, and eat, go to places, and talk to people about it, and teach people about food.
Sharon Pare: So where's the one place you haven't traveled to yet to try the food that you wanna try? 
Erica Salm Rench: I really wanna go to Japan. 
Sharon Pare: Oh, yes. 
Erica Salm Rench: Really. H- Have you been? Five times. Five times. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I wanna go to Japan so badly. I [00:26:00] love, I think the culture is so interesting, and I'm a big sushi lover. I wanna eat sushi from its birthplace, of course.
Well, 
Erica, 
Sharon Pare: this has been 
Erica Salm Rench: everything. 
Sharon Pare: Thank you 
Erica Salm Rench: so much for sharing- Thank 
Sharon Pare: you ... uh, your expertise, everything here at MMCT, everything on the AI front. I really appreciate you being here, sharing your time with us. Of course. Can you tell everybody where we can find you? 
Erica Salm Rench: Yeah. So please visit sidecar.ai, and we are your one-stop shop for all things AI learning for professional and trade associations.
Our cornerstone offering is our AI learning hub, which you can buy at the teams level or at the individual level. And we also have like 200 level education through our Mastermind program. And come to the Digital Now Conference. Yes. It's going to be in DC October 25th through 28th. It's gonna be in DC. It is.
Yes, we go- That's exciting ... yeah, we go back and forth- Yeah ... between Chicago and DC, and we're, it's a DC year. We're gonna be at Hilton Arlington Rosslyn the Key. We would love to have you join us. Come sign up. [00:27:00] Digitalnow.sidecar.ai. 
Sharon Pare: Awesome. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents.
Thank you so much, Erica, for being here.
Erica Salm Rench: Happy to be here.
Sharon Pare:  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.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on topics that impact the association space, visit Associations NOW online at associationsnow.com.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions welcomes Brandt Krueger, director of industry relations and partnerships at EventMobi, to discuss the evolving world of event sponsorships and association partnerships. Brandt shares why many sponsorship models have remained unchanged for years and offers practical strategies for creating more meaningful, results-driven opportunities. The conversation explores the importance of understanding sponsor goals, moving beyond traditional sponsorship tiers, embracing thoughtful innovation, and designing event experiences that deliver greater value for both associations and their partners.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/NgdE7JR8lOc
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Sharon Pare: Welcome to this episode of Association NOW Presents: Industry Partners Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, partnerships director of High Road, a HubSpot agency, co-host of Rethink Association, and your host of this series throughout the year.
This episode is sponsored by EventMobi.
Today, I'm joined by Brandt Krueger, and before we dig into sponsorships and partnerships, I know it wasn't exactly a straight line getting into associations for you. And what I would like to know first, and how I wanna get started is, I think you started in theater, and I wanna find out how you stumbled into the association space, and then we'll dig into all the other important stuff we wanna talk about today.
Brandt Krueger: We could probably do a whole podcast on just that, but it's 'cause like so many of us, nobody comes in a straight line, right? It's always falling in, falling out. So yeah, came out of college with a theater degree in technical light; so lighting, so technical theater, so lighting, audio, building sets and props, and things like that.
And was working for a theatrical lighting house, and was asked to resign at some point due to things we don't need to get into. But I took one name out of the Rolodex, and he was this kind of crazy, old hippie guy with long hair who did audio for these events. So I guess there's these events that people need audio and video for, and wound up working with him doing small events, and then got hoovered up by one of his major clients, who is one of the largest meeting and event production companies here in Minneapolis.
So I wound up working for them for about 18 years doing lights and sound, and mostly audiovisual and production technology. But a sizable portion of their clients were associations. So already starting to get to know them in that context, in that space. Left them, went out on my own, did about 10 years of event technology consulting for a company I created called Event Technology Consulting, because I'm not very creative.
So that consisted of a lot of trying to get people the right technology for them, a lot of asking questions, "What are you trying to actually do with it?" And then have worked my way around back into production again, working for another production company here. And then now, most recently, have worked my way into being the director of industry relations and partnerships for EventMobi.
EventMobi is on the software side, so we're providing the mobile event app and the event management software that comes around it. But it all links together, right? This association through working with different types, different sizes of organizations, and then culminating in this new position with EventMobi where, when you and I were talking in the pre-show, I was saying I think 40% of our customer base is associations.
And since then, I actually looked it up, and it's al- it's almost 50% of our business is actually with associations. So definitely have been stewing in this association world for quite some time. 
Sharon Pare: You absolutely have, and it sounds like you've worked in production, AV, event technology, your own consulting thing.
Now you're on the partnership side and industry relations, too. So just given your experience and working with a lot of these type of member orgs o- over all this time, what has changed the most since you've started? 
Brandt Krueger: That's the funny thing about this industry, right, is it's a lot of the more things change, the more things stay the same.
And so looking back over that career, obviously it's a very different environment, and we're doing things very differently, but it's always been very incremental. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just the nature of this beast that you only get one shot at it. Other than the very lucky folks who are doing a road show or something like that where they're doing the same program multiple times. There's this it has to be bulletproof mentality that is pervasive across the event industry, whether it's associations or corporate.
That all is pretty much the same. And even special events like weddings and birthdays and things like that. You've got this, you've gotta get it right in one shot. So that makes us slow-moving, especially when it comes to technology. And so that's something that is part of my career as being someone who's enthusiastic about technology.
It's constantly like pulling the rope a little bit. "Okay, guys, come on. We can do this. We can do this." But having to prove it and having to show the value, show the ROI, all of these magic buzzwords that we use, is really, it really is a struggle. And so the more things change, the more things stay the same, and that's part of why I wanted to come on is to talk about some of the things that maybe we haven't changed in a while and might be worth looking at.
Sharon Pare: I was just about to ask, why is it that the event professionals, why do you think it is that they struggle to adopt those new ideas even when they know that change is coming down the pipe? What is it that you think they're struggling with the most? 
Brandt Krueger: There's a couple different reasons, and thinking specifically about the association space, a lot of it is because we've got situations where maybe someone is inheriting the event, or they're new to leadership.
And so things get passed from person to person unless you're in one of the lucky associations where you're able to hire full-time staff. There's a through thread. There's a consistency of staffing and personalities from event to event. But on these, on smaller associations and chapters and things like that where people are constantly moving through, if you're lucky, there's a master doc that you can be handed off from, from president to president almost with a, some kind of ceremony of, "Okay, here's all the things you need to know," if you're lucky that.
And so that contributes to it as well because we're copy and pasting. So that can be a big chunk of it is that we're just, "I'm sliding into the position. Okay, great, what did we do last year? Okay, great, let's do that again." But then also again is that second half is that bulletproof-ness, that we need to make sure that everything we're doing is grounded in reality, is grounded in safety.
That's a big part of it as well, just feeling comfortable and feeling safe around the technologies and around the event design itself. 
Sharon Pare: So that's why a lot of these orgs are running that same playbook year after year is- Yeah ... it feels safe, it feels comfortable, and they're just not trying to step out of the box at all.
Brandt Krueger: But unfortunately, the times they are a-changin', right? And so when we think about, obviously I was focusing on kind of what hasn't changed, but what has-- What hasn't changed is the purpose of associations, which mainly is education, networking, learning from each other, meeting your peers, getting better at your job.
All of these things are core fundamental parts of being a member of an association. But now, if I wanna learn something, the first place I go to is YouTube, or now, like an AI buddy, right? Is, "Hey, how do I fix the toilet again?" So we, we, this is the way that we do things now, so I can get my education online, and especially with online events and things like that.
Networking, we've never been more connected as a society, whether it's LinkedIn or social media or Instagram, all of these things. So how do we stay relevant in those scenarios, and how do we keep our membership up, and how do we keep our sponsorship up? These are real questions that associations are struggling with, and the answer, unfortunately, might mean we need to rethink some of these things.
Sharon Pare: Are you seeing any signals or signs that some of these associations might be operating on, on autopilot? You said a lot of them are. A new president comes in, new executive leadership comes in, and they're just basically copy and pasting some of those prospectus that they're seeing. What are some of those signs that these associations are just, quite frankly, doing the same thing they've been doing?
Brandt Krueger: Sometimes it's literally copy and pasting. I saw that all the time in the audio visual world. Are we forgetting a date here 
Sharon Pare: And there sometimes to change too?
Brandt Krueger: Yeah, exactly. And hey, everybody's guilty of it. I've seen it in my own writing of oh, yeah, I'll just take what I did last year, uh, and then you forget to change a date.
Exactly. That happens all the time because we're just, we're all busy and we're trying to shortcut things. But y- yeah, literally you'll see things copy and pasted from year to year. It's like that equipment doesn't even exist anymore. And so it's only natural that same type of thing would apply to sponsorships, would apply to exhibitors, that I think one of the biggest challenges of being part of an association is, especially when it's this transient site where you're moving in, you're there for a year, and then you move out of leadership or something like that.
One of the biggest challenges is that's not your main job, right? So the f- the folks that are doing it, they're stepping up and being parts of c- of leadership of their organizations. The folks that are doing that, that's not their main job. And so frequently, planning events is not their main job. Again, unless you're lucky enough to have someone full-time on staff, these are people that are frankly amateur, and I don't mean that in as, as, as a negative, it's just the reality of the situation, event planners.
And so that makes it even more, "Oh, here, what's the handbook? Okay, here's the handbook. Okay, great. Okay, great. I'm gonna... Okay, we need, it says we need a gold sponsor, a silver sponsor, a double platinum diamond trilithium sponsor," you know, all of those things that we need. And so it's just k- a little bit of the nature of the beast, right?
Sharon Pare: So I wanna go back to you talking about how these associations wanna be bulletproof about some of the sponsorship levels that they're putting out there year after year. What do you think is the biggest disconnect between what the sponsors want and what the associations think the sponsors want? 
Brandt Krueger: All right.
Now we're getting into the meat, right? So this is the good stuff. We're getting there. This is where I could soapbox for days. And I did first kind of start to notice these things in audiovisual and production world, where you would go to somebody, and I would always be, ask, the first question out of my mouth is, "What is the purpose of this event?"
And they'd say, "It's our annual conference." "Okay, great. So what is, what's the purpose of it?" "It's a conference that we put on annually." Okay. And so you, you'd really, it'd be like pulling teeth to try and actually get to, "What are you trying to do here? What would you say you do here?" And, uh, and get to the meat of the matter.
And so the same thing applies to sponsorship, that the biggest disconnect is not actually knowing what your sponsors want, what they need, what are they trying to get out of it? There may be a benefit to them of just, "Here's 10 grand. Please slap the gold label on me and put the logo on the website and call it good."
That might be what their brand strategy is. But the biggest mistake is not slowing down and really asking that first. So don't start with the pitch deck of, "Okay, so we've got three sponsorship levels, and this is what it includes, and here's the bullet points." Start with the conversation. Start with, "Hey, I just wanna know more about what you do.
I wanna know more about what the services you provide. I wanna know more about you as a person, as a marketer, a potential sponsorship person." And then what are you trying to get out of that? Because sometimes it is just okay with the logo, but sometimes it's, "See, there's this particular subset of your group that I really wanna get in front of."
So great, now the wheels can start spinning. "Okay, how do we find a way to get that sponsor in the room with those people so that they can have a conversation? What do you think about a pre-show dinner with special invite-only VIP standing, and then we'll make sure that those people are in the room?
Would you be interested in throwing $10,000 at something like that?" So that's where you can start to get creative and go past, and this is gonna be the through thread of today, is just blow past the gold, silver, diamond, platinum sponsorship levels and start really working with how do we make this going to be effective for the sponsors so that they get money out of it and wanna come back year after year?
Sharon Pare: No, I think that's amazing because there's nothing more I hate than a vanity sponsorship or a vanity partnership, right? "Okay, great. Here's my logo," but then that's it, right? And I don't think there's true value or impact or ROI from anybody doing anything in that way, and I think we need to get used to doing some of these targeted things like a sidecar to an event, like these pre-show dinners and things like that.
So I'm totally with you on that. But I guess my question is do you think sometimes the reason that these changes aren't happening is because the orgs are too focused on protecting their existing sponsorship revenue to experiment with some of these newer ideas? 
Brandt Krueger: Yeah, I think that's probably it. And the other thing, again, because it's not your day job, it's, you might not even have time to have these conversations. But it's so important that even if you have those existing relationships, right?
There's no harm in settling, having say, "Hey, you've been great. You've been a great sponsor for the last five years. Can we go out to coffee, and go out for coffee and just chat about what are you getting out of it? What do you like? If you're comfortable with, that's great, but is there more that we can be doing together?
Or is there less but more targeted?" Maybe this is, maybe that person is taking up a spot, so that's something that we have to think about as well, is retargeting. That they might be taking up a higher spot that could be absorbed by somebody else. They're not getting what they're needing. This person's at a lower tier level because you've already sold out the gold.
They're not getting what they're getting. Is there a possibility of switching those two or adding tiers and things along those lines? Those are the kinds of things that start to materialize when you have those conversations. 
Sharon Pare: I wanna get into that in just a little bit, but one thing I wanted to ask really quick is if an association keeps running that same playbook year over year, what will typically happen?
Brandt Krueger: Yeah. So at best, I think you maintain. So at best, I think you're just gonna maintain current sponsorship levels, and maybe you get to increase it every now and then, but don't increase it too much. It might not even be enough for inflation, because everybody's costs are going up. So it's like you might not even be increasing your sponsorship levels enough to even cover the costs of what last year's conference again came from.
So at best, you're maintaining, but unfortunately, I really think if you're not having these conversations, the most likely outcome is that people are gonna start putting their money elsewhere. Having joined the marketing team at EventMobi, I'm already seeing those conversations, right? Of, "Oh, that would be great," but that's not our target market.
That's not the ICPs. It's not all the-- Marketing loves their acronyms. We love our acronyms in marketing. And so be- more and more marketers are being asked to really show the numbers. Like, how many leads did we get out of this? Not just, "Hey, good, we got the attendee list," right? It's not just about the attendee list.
It's gotta be targeted. How many of these convert? All of those kinds of things. And so it really is becoming more and more important to have these conversations to make sure that they're getting what they need out of it, because otherwise they're just gonna go find another place to spend the money. And maybe that's gonna mean you lose one of your top tier sponsors.
Sharon Pare: Now that we're getting out of the conversation of doing the same thing that we've b- been doing for a really long time, and maybe suggesting that the association's not continue to sell the same sponsorship inventory all the time, what would you say are some of the other business goals that the sponsors are actually trying to achieve at events now?
Brandt Krueger: Yeah, and I wanna be clear. Some, for some people, the tiered level is fine. That's exactly what they want out of it. They get to put their na- It's name recognition. Like Coca-Cola, they spend their money just to keep their name in front of you. You know who Coca-Cola is. You know what they do. But they just spend that money to keep that mind share, and so that might be enough.
That might be part of the strategy is doing it. But sometimes it's about being, like I said, in the right room with the right people, and being more targeted, and being more conscious of exactly, so these people, they need to walk away with a nice spreadsheet that's not only the here's all of the people that attended, but here's the specific titles of people that are gonna be perfect for them so that they're walking away with what they need to show their bosses to, to get ROI.
So it's getting into those specifics of what you need, and it might n- it might even be one person. We're sponsoring this entire event because I wanna be in a room with that one person who's going to be there. Right. However that happens. And so the rest of it doesn't matter. And so why are you then wasting your sponsorship real estate for someone who 's not even what they're interested in?
So now you've got less room on the mobile app. You've got less room on, on the brochure or on the stage or wherever you're trying to do because you've got this logo that's taking up space, and they don't even care that logo is on there. That's, that is a spot that could've been sold to somebody else. So it's why it's so important to have these conversations.
Sharon Pare: Now for a word from our episode sponsor. EventMobi connects registration, check-in, communication, and attendee engagement in one system. Built for associations, corporate teams, and agencies running complex, high-stakes events. Now with the new Badge On wireless solution, print badges instantly from anywhere in the venue.
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The control your team needs with no enterprise overhead. So we started talking about in the pre-show some of these anti-trends. I thought it was a really interesting topic, and I wanted to spend a little bit more time about this. But you were talking about some of these unique sponsorship opportunities that really nobody's talking about.
And there were a few things that you were talking about that folks are starting to... I think it was the sponsorship of nothing and I wanted you to explain that a little bit before we start to go into some of the sponsorship trends that are starting to come about now. 
Brandt Krueger: Yeah, and so one of the reasons that we've been focusing on this at EventMobi, again, is just to help te- because we wanna m- we want our association customers to be successful, right?
Because if they're successful, we're successful, and all rising tide boats, all of those kinds of good things, right? So we put together a sponsorship template that has a lot of these things of, "Hey, you might not have thought of this, and you might not have thought of this, and you might not have thought of this.
If you wanna go tiered, here's the tiered. If you want a bunch of a la carte stuff, here's a bunch of a la carte stuff that you may not, may or may not have thought of." So we'll put in the show notes a link to this, to the sponsorship template that we've got in there, because it's got things exactly like that.
So one of the ones that I've been shouting from the rooftops for years is this idea of sponsored blank space, that I just l- you know, when you go to these conferences, they just jam-pack them, and I understand why. You know, you need, as the attendee, need to go to your boss and say, "I'm going to this thing, so look at all these education sessions I'm gonna go to.
Look at this big name speaker that's gonna be there." And so you're pitching it, so the y- you kinda have to do that. 
Sharon Pare: Right. 
Brandt Krueger: But what I love, and I've only seen this on a very rare occasion, is this hour of nothing is brought to you by tech. I would remember Shmoshmo Tech because sometimes you just need that hour to step away.
Not a break where there's snacks or anything like that. Maybe, I mean- Mm-hmm ... you can have it there. But to be really clear, this is a time for you to go back to your hotel room, call your spouse, check your emails, hop all of the, just all the things that we don't have time to, or just sit in the sunshine. Go out of the convention center, find a sunny spot, and sit there for a half an hour, and then come back, and then let's do the last session before lunch or something like that.
So I always see that as a tremendously missed opportunity, is that sponsored white space of just this amount of nothing is brought to you by Shmoshmo Tech. 
Sharon Pare: No, that's an incredible idea because I'm sure you've seen some of these TikToks and Instagram shorts, or is that YouTube shorts? You know what I mean, Instagram reels.
Brandt Krueger: Yeah. 
Sharon Pare: And where they're showing that you really only have five seconds to get from one place to the next. They jam-pack everything between that 9:00 to 5:00 time. You have five seconds to go to your hotel room to just decompress, and then boom, you're out again, on your dinner for the rest of the evening.
But doing that sponsorship of nothing, I think that's a really incredible idea just to give you a few minutes, like you said, to go into the sunshine or catch up on a few of those work emails so you can focus on the educational sessions that are actually happening during the conference. So my next question is…what's a sponsorship trend that everyone seems really excited about?
So this is gonna be a hot take from Brandt. But what is one everyone seems excited about that you think is a little bit overrated? 
Brandt Krueger: I'm gonna take that question and I'm gonna twist it a little bit. I'm gonna do my best- Twist it up ... poli- do my best politician impersonation and answer a different question than the one that you asked.
So I think it's, again, not so much a hot trend, but I think it's something that, that's, that it's a missed opportunity that people- Okay ... can and should be doing. That people are doing this for- to be sure, but I think more people need to be doing it as well, and that is when you're looking at the various parts of your technology, again, I came up through technology consultant, one of the things that always drove me nuts was that people would just take whatever was offered for free, and I get it.
And then that counts as a sponsorship, right? So you've got a mobile app, you've got your event registration platform, you've got your audiovisual provider, you've got your speakers, all of these things, a lot of organizations are leaning into, "Oh, they'll do it for free? Okay, great, you're on the agenda. Oh, they'll do it for free?
Okay, great, you're our audiovisual company. Oh, they'll do it for free? You're our catering company now." Like, all of those things. But what I would encourage people to do, and this I think would make a massive improvement in the quality of our events, because we do it in the industry, we do it in association, then we do it in corporate, like this is across the industry, is get the sponsorship to pay for the thing you actually want.
So do the research, find out what you actually need as far as event registration software, as far as badge printing software, as far as your mobile app, as far as your audiovisual company. Get the people, get the s- the suppliers that you want to work with, and then get them sponsored. So it's the same, it winds up being the same amount of sponsorship money, only you get to have a better quality experience for your attendees, you get to have a better quality experience as a planner because you're using the tools that you want to be using, and then that opens up the possibility to have more sponsors.
Believe it or not, many associations struggle with, "I w- I'd love to have more involvement from the sponsors, but I don't have anything to offer them because the gold package is 10, the silver package is like all of those kinds of things." So this gives you an opportunity to bring more people into the fold, and bring even more people that can be headline sponsors, audiovisual sponsors, a mobile app sponsored by, all of these kinds of things.
So that's my little twisted take on what you asked. 
Sharon Pare: No, I love it. So essentially, if an association wants a mimosa bar in the morning at 8:00 AM, get a sponsor for it, right? 
Brandt Krueger: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep, exactly. That's-- And i- if-- and the more sponsors, the better in that aspect, right? So maybe you can have a catering sponsor, but then it's also sponsored by somebody else.
Sharon Pare: So getting some of these sponsors are gonna help subsidize really the operating cost of the event at the end of the day too. So we gotta be creative. Yep. What is something that you think associations should stop selling tomorrow? Then tomorrow, what is something that you could suggest that they need to think twice about?
Brandt Krueger: I'll be honest with you. So I, the experts tell me that there's still a place for gold, silver. If you haven't figured it out, I'm not a fan of those kinds of things. It- but I, again, go back to this idea of paying attention to what will actually improve the quality of your event, paying attention to what will improve the quality of the event for you, for your attendees, for your internal stakeholders, for your sponsors, for your exhibitors.
In the pre-show, you and I were talking about my studio setup, and I was like, "This didn't just magically appear," right? It's like, I didn't just go out and go, "Okay, I want this mic, I want these lights, I want this computer." I built it up over years, and I just kept cycling through. Okay, start with audio.
What's the best microphone I can afford right now? And then go to lighting, and then go to camera, and then go to can I make my internet faster so there's less stutters and stops and things like that, especially during pandemic era, like that was huge. Right. And then keep cycling through. So I would say, if you can't afford to have all of these conversations, I get it, like I said, we're busy, we're volunteers, we're passing through, we don't have time.
Maybe try and get one a year. So what can we do to improve our sponsorships this year? 'Cause that's what we're talking about today. What can we do next year to improve the quality for our exhibitors? What can we do the next year to really spice things up, do something different for our attendees that's gonna be consistent, not just this year, but every year- Yep
Can we change? And then just keep cycling through those questions over and over again every year. Never get complacent. Never just, "Here's the playbook," and it's done. It's evolving, it's a living document that gets passed on from person to person. 
Sharon Pare: So really taking a cr- maybe not crawl, walk, run, but a crawl, walk approach to every year, and just adding just a little bit of something that year to pizzazz it up just a little bit and offer something new to the sponsors.
Okay, that's awesome. 
Brandt Krueger: Yeah. Oh, and just a real follow-up on that, like the advantage to doing it that way is then you're not throwing all the spaghetti at the wall at once, right? So you'll be able to measure, did that make a difference? So if you're not doing, blah, scattershot, everything's everywhere, let's change one thing this year on our sponsorship package.
See if it moves the needle. Let's change another thing. Okay. What happens? So just take your time, be incremental, and then you'll be able to see whether or not it's actually moving the needle 
Sharon Pare: No, that's really great advice. Now, I know that you've recently attended IMEX, maybe the past week or two. Were there some themes or conversations that you were hearing in the hallway, eavesdropping in on at the exhibit hall was-- or even in the sessions?
Was there anything that just kept coming up over and over that maybe we need to think about a little bit more? 
Brandt Krueger: First of all, it was a great show. It was so much fun getting to see folks that I hadn't seen in a while, 'cause I did this- Is it in Las 
Sharon Pare: Vegas as well? 
Brandt Krueger: Yeah, it will be in Las Vegas. Oh. This was the Frankfurt show.
Yep. So we were at the Frankfurt show just two weeks ago. It'll be Las Vegas again in the fall. Right. I'm a huge fan of IMEX. I love that program. It's mainly destination-focused, so it's talking about where you are gonna take your annual conference. Mm-hmm. But the tech pavilion has been getting bigger and bigger.
So a couple of interesting trends, and I've been trying to actually follow up to see, okay, was this my imagination or was this real? And, uh, once they got done with the show, like half of IMEX, they take their two-week European holidays and all that kind of fun stuff. Love you guys. And so what I felt like I noticed was more pavilions on the show floor, and so this is something that I think folks can look at.
Okay, wow. It is talking about-- So, like, Italy would have a 40-by-40 booth, but then would have all of these little sub hotels, destinations, cities, things like that all throughout the Italy pavilion. Okay. Now, that in itself is not new, but what seemed new was there was more of them and bigger. So that, that Italy 40 by 40 expanded into two 40-by-40s that, that spanned across an aisle and was just this massive pavilion and with all of these subcontractors, or not contractors, but sub, sub-exhibitors, I guess that's what you'd call them.
And then there was a French event tech pavilion of French event technology providers. Okay. So it seemed like there was more of that, and I think that's, I think that's a very usable steal for association folks is, like, how do we get more people into our trade show at a lower level? So you could sell that 10-by-10, I'm gonna make up some numbers here.
You could sell that 10-by-10 for $10,000, but you could sell it to 10 people for $2,000 each and make more than you were gonna make on that individual- That's right ... 10, and bring more people into the fold at a lower price point. So you might be able to start getting people in at a lower price point at a lower lift for that kind of thing.
Sharon Pare: Yeah, that is very interesting. It almost sounds to me like going to Epcot and getting all the countries just in one spot, but at a just- Yeah ... smaller scale. 
Brandt Krueger: Yep, absolutely. 
Sharon Pare: All right. And I think we're wrapping up here a little bit. Brant, it was really amazing to have you on, to have your expertise, to have your sound effects, too.
We might have to ask you to come back just to do some sound effects- Just some sound effects ... like you mentioned. But is there just one thing that you wanna leave any of our listeners with today? If there is, do you have Brant's final thoughts before we get into the rapid fire? So it's not so final, but pretty final.
Brandt Krueger: It's a semi-final. The semifinal thoughts. Semifinal. Honestly, and this has been throughout my whole career, again, I touched on it as I was talking about consulting, is like, if you wanna get the right suppliers, if you wanna get the right software, the right speakers, the right vendors, it's all about communication, and that goes in all directions, right?
There's just nothing better than actually sitting down with attendees and asking them what they wanna get out of it. So you wanna find out what you can do to improve, don't just send a survey. Take 15 of them out to coffee, and really take the time to have face-to-face, as much as possible, conversations about what it is that they enjoy, what it is that they, they like, what they don't like, that you're just not gonna get from a survey.
Same thing with your exhibitors. Same thing with your sponsors. Same thing with your internal stakeholders. I'll be honest, it's why I love, if anybody's familiar with the event design canvas, it's one of those things that if you do it right, it takes a couple days to do, but even just thinking about it helps you think about what do each of your stakeholders need?
What do the exhibitors want? What do the sponsors want? Just having that mentality, I think, is a fantastic way to go through your event career, is just constantly reevaluating with all of your stakeholders, 'cause it changes. It changes from year to year what's gonna be important, and just having those conversations over and over again, and never letting it just be done, I think is a big part of it.
Always evolving, always changing. 
Sharon Pare: No, thank you so much, and I know that you've spent many years helping folks just navigate this change within the industry, albeit maybe slower than some, but we're getting there, right? And it's baby steps. It's that crawl, walk, run approach, and soon enough our associations and membership organizations are just gonna be doing spectacular events, especially with EventMobi involved.
Before we get to our rapid fire, where can people connect with you and learn more about EventMobi? 
Brandt Krueger: Now, I, for me personally, I always say the best way to connect is on LinkedIn. So just reach out to LinkedIn. I'm the only active Brandt Krueger that's on there. There is another guy whose thing hasn't been active in 15 years, and LinkedIn has a policy of never removing, right, accounts.
They never- So it's okay. That guy isn't, so just do a search for me. I should be the one that pops up. And then of course, EventMobi.com is the easiest way to find us there. 
Sharon Pare: All right, rapid fire. I only have a few. 
Brandt Krueger: Okay. 
Sharon Pare: So my first one, do you pull in or reverse into a parking spot? 
Brandt Krueger: Always front first, yes.
Sharon Pare: Always front first. Yes. 
 
Sharon Pare: Uber or Lyft? 
Brandt Krueger: Uber or Lyft? 
Uber. Have you Waymo'd? 
Sharon Pare: No, have not had that opportunity. 
Sharon Pare: Hard or soft taco? 
Brandt Krueger: Soft taco, no tomatoes. 
Sharon Pare: And still or sparkling water? 
Brandt Krueger: Ooh, I like both. Depends on my mood. 
Sharon Pare: It depends on the mood. I love it. 
Thank you to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents Industry Partners Series.
Again, Brandt, thank you so much. I think I hear some applause in the background. 
Brandt Krueger: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. 
Sharon Pare: That came right from Brandt. Just visit him for SoundEffects. 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.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on topics impacting the association space, visit Associations Now online at associationsnow.com. Thank you, Brandt.
 

Recorded live at ASAE’s Marketing, Membership, Communications + Tech Conference, guest host Brittany Lancor of PropFuel sits down with best-selling author and MarketingProfs CCO Ann Handley to discuss the power of “strategic patience” in a culture obsessed with speed. Handley challenges associations to focus on meaningful engagement over vanity metrics, communicate in members’ own language, and prioritize authentic, human-centered messaging. She also shares practical advice on creating more effective email communications and explains why AI is best used to uncover insights and support strategy—not to replace the human connection that drives engagement.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/nKZs2BI23bQ
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Brittany Lancor: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I am Brittany Lancor, senior marketing manager of PropFuel. We are recording today from ASAE's MM&C conference here in Washington, DC, where association professionals from across the industry are gathering to share ideas, build connections, and explore what's next for the community.
Today, we are so excited to welcome Ann Handley, the world's first chief content officer, best-selling author, and CCO of MarketingProfs. She just delivered the keynote address on the first day of this conference, so we are going to ask some questions. The first question I have for you is where did you get your suit?
This is amazing. If you are watching from home, you have to look at this suit. It's wonderful. 
Ann Handley: So you're asking who am I wearing? 
Brittany Lancor: Yes. 
Ann Handley: Is that the question? Yes. Yeah, first of all, [00:01:00] thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here with all of you, be here with you. So who am I wearing? Today I am wearing Alice + Olivia, and I'll tell you, my biggest stress today was not even the keynote, it was, do I include the bow?
Brittany Lancor: I love it.
Ann Handley: Or do I leave it off? It's detachable. 
Brittany Lancor: The bow was the great choice. 
Ann Handley: So I don't know, I went for it, and I like the way it kinda waves around on stage a little bit, 
Brittany Lancor: like- Yeah ... I'm prancing around and doing whatever. Yes. It looked great. Yeah. Okay, next question. Oh, yeah, I guess the questions now. Who are you?
Help us, like give a quick introduction of who you are, help the audience understand who we're talking with today. 
Ann Handley: So yeah, obviously Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. I've been in marketing for a million years, a million dog years. That was like a million plus years. I founded a company called ClickZ ages ago, which is one of the first sources of digital marketing at a time when digital marketing was a sort of brand-new thing, and from there founded MarketingProfs, and I've written a few books about marketing and content, particularly Everybody Writes, which is a [00:02:00] Wall Street Journal bestseller.
It's been translated into 19 different languages. The whole ethos of that is really helping marketers, not just content marketers, but all marketers and all businesses really figure out, how do we communicate in a way that's authentic and real, and uniquely us? And honestly, that's a message that we need more than ever now- Yeah
in the age of AI. So yeah, author, entrepreneur. Speaker, obviously, and yeah, just friend of Brittany. 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah? Yeah. And did I see you're also a dog mom? 
Ann Handley: Oh, yeah. Most important thing. Yeah. Yeah, my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, his name is Augie. He is a stage five clinger. I love him so much, and he loves me just even more.
Because love is just that. Do you have a dog? 
Brittany Lancor: I have two. 
Ann Handley: Oh, you do? 
Brittany Lancor: Yes. 
Ann Handley: What kind? 
Brittany Lancor: They're mutts. One's a terrier, blue heeler mix. 
Ann Handley: Oh, wow. 
Brittany Lancor: And the other is a pit bull terrier mix. 
Ann Handley: What are their names? 
Brittany Lancor: Archie and Pepper. 
Ann Handley: Okay. Yeah. This is the information that you're here for, people. This is. Archie, Pepper, and Augie.
Just- 
Brittany Lancor: Yes ... 
Ann Handley: remember that. 
Brittany Lancor: Keep that in mind. Yeah. Okay, [00:03:00] so I am actually so excited to talk with you about all of the things related to the keynote. 
Ann Handley: Yeah. 
Brittany Lancor: So MM&C is Membership Marketing and Communications. And we also have tech as a part of this conference, right? Yes. So the marketing piece of things is so relevant to the audience that's here and the audience at home.
So your keynote is about strategic patience in an, in this instant results world. We're so ready for things instantly, right? So for association who are under pressure to do more, and move faster, not always with more resources, how do you decide what should move fast and what is okay to move slower?
Ann Handley: Yeah. So that's such a huge issue right now. So here's the deal. So marketing, and I think business in general, has a sort of addiction to speed, right? And it's like we always want to go faster from a customer or from a member standpoint. We always want to move them from, from the first time they hear about us to signing up for us [00:04:00] faster and faster.
It's very much a treadmill that we're on. And it's easy to say, "Oh, that's because of AI." AI has just tossed rocket fuel on that impulse. But the truth is that marketing and business has always had this sort of addiction to speed. But you can look at anything that we do. It's like we always think that faster is better.
And so my whole philosophy is that with my experience of being in marketing for 25 years, is that faster is not always better, and that I'm challenging the convention that, that we need to always think about the fastest way to do things because sometimes the fastest way is not the best way. Yeah. And so, so in answer to your question, the idea of, you know, when should we move fast and when shouldn't we, that's essentially what my whole keynote unpacked, and it comes down to how, to a couple of things.
Number one, how we're measuring marketing, how we're measuring the impact that we have. And I think we need to think about it a little differently 'cause a lot of marketing is measured according to very specific [00:05:00] metrics that look at results, how fast we were able to do something. How did, did people click?
Did they download? Did they join? Did they renew? And yeah, all that is important, but there's a lot of other smaller signals before that, that I think if we pay attention to, can start to inform the very question that you asked, like when do we move fast and when do we move slow? To give you a really specific example, one of the things that we don't look at enough in marketing is not the sugar rush metrics of those sort of did they do this or did they do that, or did they act, but before that, like the emotional resonance of it.
You know, are we connecting with people who we wanna connect with? Do they feel inspired by us? Not just do they wanna buy, but what kind of language do they use? And so in the keynote today, I shared a framework for how do we move away from those sugar rush metrics of marketing and into something that's more, more substantive that measures the resonance of our programs.
And by the way, like I just, I feel a need to mention this because I'm in marketing, but I have a new book coming out [00:06:00] around this topic in February of 2027. It's called ASAP: As Slow As Possible, When to Take the Long Road in a Shortcut World. It's about this very topic of marketing, but also it's broader than that because I think especially where AI is encouraging us to...
Not encouraging us, like demanding in a lot of ways that we move faster. I think at the same time- The opposite is also true, right? That there are moments when we need to specifically step away from it, slow ourselves down, and just say, "Okay, here's a situation that matters to us as an organization, or that matters to me as a person."
Brittany Lancor: Yeah. There's so much to unpack there, though, too, and I think the other piece of it is there are certain things that are going to take time. Yeah. So, and my background is marketing as well, so all of this resonates so much with me. Yes. There, the s- it's the slow game, right? Yeah. So, you wanna go as fast as possible, but like you had said, you need to figure out how to make a message resonate with an [00:07:00] audience, and sometimes that takes time.
Ann Handley: And the thing is, this is not anti-speed. I love speed. I'm addicted to it just as much as anybody else. And so it's not a slowdown all the time, uh, but it's when speed becomes the only point that we get into trouble. And so I think it's that distinction that you make. Yeah, sometimes do more, move faster, but sometimes know when to pull back.
And that knowing when, through either permission or recognizing those moments, is essentially what I'm, I've been obsessed with lately. And honestly, I've been thinking about this for ,no joke, 10 years. I first started talking about this at an industry event in 2016. On the main stage I talked about it, and I saw it then as very much like a marketing thing, which is content marketing specifically, around how we're creating content, how we're connecting with others, like how we're thinking about building audiences.
I saw it then in a very tiny way, but the more that I started thinking about it, and the more that I started seeing signals from elsewhere, and then AI comes in and throws rocket fuel on this whole situation, and I'm like, "Oh, gosh- Yeah ... [00:08:00] now is the time." So yeah, you could say I've been writing this book for, for 10 years, and it finally is happening, 
Brittany Lancor: So amazing. Congrats. 
Ann Handley: Thanks. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for it to come out.
Brittany Lancor:  I'm really excited too. So one of the things you mentioned, veering away from one of the questions that I have next. You mentioned signals. And again, that's  another thing resonating with me, because that's something that's been popular in the association space is like, what are some signals that you look for in the marketing side of things that stand out to you?
Ann Handley: So yeah, a couple things that I think we ... Sometimes they're the very smallest things, too. For example, some signals that, that I think about, they fall into three different buckets, I guess I would call them. One would be the impact that your work is having. The other thing is the echo that it has, so the sort of resonance that it has.
So just some very specific ways of thinking about these three things, of these things differently. So one of them is, just to get really elemental and basic about it, would be looking at things like a scroll depth on an email newsletter, looking at the response rate on an email newsletter, for [00:09:00] example, or any of your programs or any of your assets.
And by that, it's somebody literally hitting reply and writing back to you. Another way to think about what the response rate is call- what I call the OWBR, O-W-B-R, or the Open to Write Back Rate. That's specific to email, of course. And encouraging those conversations. So an email newsletter becomes less about the news and more about the letter, more about how do we actually connect with somebody?
How do we actually build those relationships? Because the thing is, people don't decide to join or engage with you because they've heard about you. They decide to join or engage with you because they feel a connection. And so, I think it's important to surface those connections, and we don't do a great job in marketing at that now.
And the good news is that AI can help you surface some of those things. Yes. But yeah, it's, that's a very specific example. Another is if you're looking at echo, for example, how do we think about that? What are the signals we look for there? Look at the language that your members or would-be members are using, [00:10:00] things like inspired, things like reassured, things like I feel smarter.
Some specific words that you hear either through customer service or sales conversations or when people write back to you. And by the way, this, I'm, we're talking about this a- specific to associations, but I do this all the time, like even as part of my own email newsletter. Yeah. I look for these moments because the job of my- newsletter is to not just sell stuff or convince people that they should buy from me, but instead to nurture that relationship.
And so I think it's just thinking about your programs and your assets with a, in a different way. Again, to get away from tho- that sort of, the metrics matter, like the basic metrics matter, but at the same time, think of them more, more broadly and put the two together to get a fuller picture- 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah ... of how your programs are resonating.
Yeah. I like the echo effect. Yes. I think that, so prior to working in my current role, I'm on the vendor side now, but I worked for associations in the Chicagoland area, and [00:11:00] one thing I've noticed associations get really stuck on is this idea of talking in their own voice instead of leaning into the voice of the member.
Yes. And there's so much power to that, 'cause as you were talking about, people wanna feel like they belong, they wanna feel like they're a part of something that, like, is suitable for them. And one way to do that is to talk how your members talk. Yeah. Instead of get into this really fancy, like, using jargon that they just don't use, how can you talk with your members in a way that they're speaking?
And that's all about asking them questions, getting feedback from them- 
Ann Handley: Yeah ... 
Brittany Lancor: in their own words, figuring out, just having conversations with them. Yeah. 
Ann Handley: Yeah. How are they referring to certain things? For sure, and I think there's easy ways to do that. A lot of times marketers or businesses will say to me, "Yeah, but we don't have the staff to do that.
We don't have the people to do that." And I'm just saying, look at what you're already doing. Mm-hmm. Choose those moments that are gonna, that are gonna resonate the most and have that sort of echo quality to them. Yeah. And as you say, just tweak things a little differently. Using social media, for example.
Maybe instead of having a post [00:12:00] come from an association, because the reality is, no shade, but nobody wants to have a relationship with an association. They wanna have a relationship with their people. Think about your director, executive director, your board, like all of those people become these sort of ambassadors for your message.
Right. Having, right, like people, that is your frontline. It's not on social, for example. Yeah. It's not your association itself. And then using very human language. Yes. One of the things that I do a lot is I will post something on LinkedIn. I write like a person, because I am a person. Yeah. Spoiler. Real human being here.
Just saying, just saying. And then I look to see in the comments. To your point, like how are people talking back to me? What are they saying in a way that can inform maybe how I think about things? Nor are they agreeing with me. I'm not talking about the people who just write, "Great post," or who robo-comment Feedback
with AI. Yeah, but the people who just add comments in their own voice, and I look at the, not so much the substance of the comment, although, like I look at that [00:13:00] too, but just the words they use, the language they use, the way they describe things. You can get a lot of sort of intelligence from that. Yes. And so, yeah, that's just a simple way of doing it.
And the other thing I'd say too is to your point about speaking in a more, like human voice, like one of the easy things that I think associations can do is have your communications come from a person, like an actual person- Yeah ... not just the association. Yes. Right down to the, like small 
Brittany Lancor: things, because signals, right?
Ann Handley: Yeah. The email address that you use. There shouldn't be noreply@association.com, or even newsletter@association.com. Yeah. It should come from Barbara or Philip or Jasmine or anybody who happens to be, give someone the role of hosting at your newsletter is how I think about it. Yeah. Almost like an emcee. And there's lots of evidence out there that the more personal your newsletter is, the more, the better it'll perform, the more you resonate.
And so just some simple things like that, some simple practical things that I think you can do [00:14:00] differently- 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah ... 
Ann Handley: to inspire the, a, a deeper level of connection, and ultimately commitment. 
Brittany Lancor: Yes. And as someone with a large newsletter list- Yeah ... I feel like that's good feedback for the people who are listening.
Ann Handley: I'm telling you, it's like people always say to me, like I have about 50,000, 51,000 people on my email list. Amazing. And people are like, "How did you do that?" And yeah, I did that. I just, I'm like, I'm just my own weird, nerdy self. Yeah. And I just write to one person at one time is how I think about it, because think about the person who's receiving your newsletter, right?
They're not sitting in an auditorium full of people, so it's not dear friends, it's dear friend. It's one person, one time. They're sitting on their couch, scrolling through their phone. They're sitting at their desk on Monday morning maybe, whenever it is. But literally picture them in your mind, and think about the one problem or issue that you're trying to help or solve 
Brittany Lancor: for them- 
Ann Handley: I'm telling you, it changes the way you communicate.
I love it. 
Brittany Lancor: I'm doing a session tomorrow, and one of the questions is, like, how would you approach this communication- 
Ann Handley: Yeah ... 
Brittany Lancor: [00:15:00] if you were speaking to, if you had an association of one person? If you were speaking to one member, what would that look like? You probably wouldn't send an email from membership@association.org.
You would send it from brittany@association.org, 'cause I wanna build that connection with you. And I think a really good takeaway for associations in this aspect would be so many associations have volunteers that they can lean onto. These people volunteer actively, they raise their hand, they wanna be involved.
Yeah. You can lean on those people to ask them to review communications or even build some communications so that you're speaking in the voice of the member, 
Ann Handley: which or could you give them a guest editor once a month or whatever. It's one of your members. It's a way to surface them and reward them for their volunteer.
You can obviously help them- Yeah ... with that, but yeah, I think there's lots of ways to do that. The pushback that I sometimes get is, "Oh, we're gonna make a superstar out of this one person, and it'll be more their brand than our brand," and do not worry about that. I'm just like, "I'm gonna look right at you, and I'm gonna say do not worry about that.
It's [00:16:00] not gonna happen." The New York Times, for example, massive list, massive brand. Yeah. Their morning news, their Morning Morning Edition newsletter comes from one person, who writes a specific letter to me as I'm sitting on my couch scrolling through it, or in bed or wherever I happen to still be, just looking at the day's news, and it's one person.
It used to come from a guy named David Leonhardt, and he was the... But when The New York Times made the shift in 2020, it was directly in response to the pandemic, because they felt like they needed to give a sort of human face at a time when we were all very disconnected. So yeah, 2020 they made this shift.
The New York Times did. And they installed David Leonhardt as the emcee or the host of the newsletter, if you will. David has since left. He's since gone on to do his own thing. He's left The New York Times completely. I don't even know where he went. You know why? 'Cause I didn't follow David Leonhardt there for The Times, and don't worry about it.
Brittany Lancor: Yeah. 
Ann Handley: You, don't worry about it. You get it. 
Brittany Lancor: Just don't worry about it. [00:17:00] The viewers at home. I think this segues into another question I have for you. So you highlight judgment and trust- Yeah ... as the real keys to connection. Yeah. What would you say are a few practical ways that associations can earn trust through their communications?
Especially when one thing you're, you will hear consistently from associations is that members tune out from messages, because they're overwhelmed with this noise of everything else that's going on, or this idea that- Even one specific association sends me too many emails as a member. I think you've touched on it a little bit prior to sending from a person rather than a department or an organization.
What other ways? 
Ann Handley: I mean, it's a little controversial, but send less. I think no one is ever sitting around and thinking, "God, I wish I had more email. Why don't I get more email? I need to sign up for more email newsletters. I need to sign up for more stuff." No one is ever thinking that. No, not once. And I think doing less with more intention is one way to do that.
Obviously, there's a [00:18:00] point where there is gonna be diminishing returns, but I think we have this sense that this sort of treadmill that we've been on, we send three days a week. Look at your data, look at what is actually resonating with your audience, and lean into that. And maybe you don't need to send, yeah, three times a week, or if you do, maybe you reserve it for those moments when it's really important and it's really important messaging.
So yeah, so I think send less. I know Jay Schwedelson is here. He's your email guy. He and I don't necessarily agree on this 100%, 'cause I think Jay is like, "Just keep sending. Just keep hammering." And I'm like, "Dude, I love you, but no." So 
Brittany Lancor: sorry, you gotta have that balance in life, right? 
Ann Handley: Yeah. Because again, I think if you're going to take the time to build those connections, you make your email newsletter or at your email worth opening, and so that takes a little bit of time and effort.
Like for example, I send my own email newsletter every fortnight. That's every two weeks if you're not in the UK, which of course you're not. But every two weeks, and I don't use bi-weekly, by the way. Do you know why? Why? Because bi-weekly means either- [00:19:00] Yes ... twice a week or every... What is that? So anyway, I send- Every other
every fortnight, which is every two weeks. It's a very specific word that means only that, and the reason I do that is because I don't have the capacity, just the ability to write more frequently than that, and that's truly okay. And do you know what people say to me a lot of times on sign up? This is the other thing, actually, this goes back to your question about how do you build that connection.
Yeah. All right, let me finish my thought, and then I'll h- Okay ... circle back to that. Sorry. As a- No, 
Brittany Lancor: We never know. We're getting messy. That's okay. The best way to do it. 
Ann Handley: So people write back to me and say, "I appreciate the fact that you only send every two weeks." Because again, people don't need more email.
Sure. So that's a big piece of feedback that I do tend to get. Again, like echo, right? I'm looking for that. I'm like, "Okay, that's good. That means that my stuff is resonating." And two-week cadence, totally fine. Fortnightly m- cadence, totally fine. If you learn nothing else today, learn that fortnightly needs to, needs our love.
Brittany Lancor: Learn that fortnightly means every two weeks. 
[00:20:00] 
Ann Handley: Exactly. No. What I was gonna say to you is when you're asking about the ways that we can strengthen our relationships with our, through email specifically, one of the things that I think is vastly undervalued is when someone does raise their hand, sign up for your email newsletter, they are giving over your email a- their email address.
Yeah. That is a moment where you will never have more opportunity for just stronger connection- Yeah ... with that person, that one person. And so what do you do with that opportunity? 58% of brands out there, not just associations, but all brands, send a welcome email. Which is crazy. 58, that's a huge opportunity.
And I think what's important there, though, is don't just send a welcome email, like, "Thanks for signing up. We appreciate you. Love, comma, association." I think instead, that's your opportunity to say, "Thank you so much for signing up. Welcome." Either, "Here's what to expect," or yeah, "Here's what to expect. Here's how often you'll hear from us."
Brittany Lancor: Yeah. "
Ann Handley: And then one thing I'd like to know from [00:21:00] you," and make it a super simple ask. Have them hit reply right back to you, right at the beginning, and it can be something silly. I have a colleague who has his own email newsletter who asks, "What's your favorite restaurant in your city?" And he literally keeps a database that when he visits that city, he knows what restaurants to go to.
Amazing. That's a fun sort of question, but how do you not answer that? If you got that email, you would be like, "Oh, I gotta tell them about-" Something, whatever your favorite restaurant is. Yeah. Davio's or whatever. I have to just say that my questions are, I ask two questions when you sign up for my email newsletter, and if you haven't, you really should, just so you can experience this.
Yeah, test it out. Test it. That's the way. I ask two questions. The first question is, how did you find me? Yes. 
Brittany Lancor: Why is that? Always good to know. 
Ann Handley: Yeah, it's really helpful because I like to know who is referencing my work, who is suggesting me. Maybe it's from my talk here today, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's they just saw me randomly on LinkedIn.
It helps me understand who's recommending me and what [00:22:00] kinds of people, or h- or how they're finding me. Well, it's like what's working and what isn't. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And then the second thing is I ask them, "What did you hope to learn here?" So sometimes people will give me really insightful things that I can then build future newsletter editions around.
But, "What did you hope to learn here?" Super easy questions. And sometimes people are like, "I don't really need to learn anything. I just wanted to say hi." And I'm like, "Great." Yeah. So- See what this is about. Exactly. So I send everybody that sign up. About 62, 63% of people who get that initial welcome email from me specifically open it A s- a smaller subset, maybe half that, so maybe 30%, something like that, write back to me directly and say, "Here's how I found you.
Here's what I hope to learn." And then this is key. This is key. I always write back to them. I always say, "Thank you for telling me. I love Jay. I really appreciate the fact that Jay is recommending me." Yeah. And then I say, "And thanks for letting me know what you hope to hear, learn here." Super [00:23:00] simple. Do I have that automated?
No, I do not. Could I? Yes, I could, but I don't want to. This is, again, one of those as slow as possible moments, because it's more valuable for me to understand who's recommending me and to start that relationship with a specific subscriber. And I'll tell you, Brittany, people are always blown away. "I can't believe you did that."
Now, immediately, people here listening or watching might be like, "We don't have, possibly have the bandwidth for that. We don't have time for that." Here's what I do. I set aside a half hour a week- Mm ... and I batch respond to all of them. I read them all, and I respond to them all directly. That's it. It- half an hour a week.
Yeah. Half an hour a week for basically nurturing my audience, and that, to me, is just a choice I've made. It's, you'd be surprised at how many people won't write back. It's not as big of a lift as I think a lot of people think. 
Brittany Lancor: No. And for those who genuinely don't have the bandwidth because they have so many members, there are systems that exist.
It's incredible how relatable this is to something like [00:24:00] Profitwell. Literally, the, what I like about this email newsletter example is that the onboarding for an email newsletter, so if an association has an email newsletter, the onboarding for that email newsletter is an opportunity to connect with a prospect- Yes
and learn more about what they like and what they need and what they're interested in to help them get connected to membership, right? You can also directly translate this into what a new member onboarding process looks like. Yes. So when a new member joins, just like when somebody joins the e-newsletter list, most associations are very quick to be like, "Here are all the really great things that we do.
I hope you'll do something with it." And our spiel is always, what if you just ask them a question, and A, help the organization understand what are they looking to learn from you? Yeah. What's most beneficial? And then you can build trust with each individual member at a larger scale, because you can then send them on a journey.
We help automate the process, if that's what somebody would choose to do, because if, again, if it's at a larger scale. But [00:25:00] there's so much benefit to really asking a single question- Yes ... and learning from them, and then, again, building trust based off of showing them a response that tells them, "Oh, we hear you.
Here's how we can help you." 
Ann Handley: Yeah, and I think the key is ask a question that is stupid easy to respond to. Yes. Don't ask them a hard question. No. It feels like homework. Just ask them a dumb, fun question. Yep. Not that my questions about, how did you find me and what do you hope to learn? Those are solid questions, but it doesn't take a lot of thought.
They can just write back and say, "Uh, I don't know. I want to learn about association marketing." And I'm like, "Great." Yeah. I talk about that once a year, so you know. 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah, and then the response is, "Great. Here's something directly relevant to what you're looking for." Right. And that's that trust. Yeah, and if you were, 
Ann Handley: if you could actually build it out into more of a nurturing engagement path, right?
Right. Where you could say, "Oh, you're looking for this? Here's a resource specifically for you." Yeah. I don't do that because I'm functioning at a different level, but an association could absolutely do that. 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah. 
Ann Handley: Yeah. 
Brittany Lancor: And if you ever get to a [00:26:00] point where you want to do that, we can help you. 
Ann Handley: Okay, there we go.
This is perfect. Great. We turned this into a sales opportunity 
Brittany Lancor: for me. For you. For all of us, everyone's invited. So you also talk about communication, that all of these are really connected, right? Yeah. So you talk about communication that helps members feel seen and valued and really eager to belong. So what does that look like in terms of, I guess we're getting specific to what we were just talking about, but what does the tone look like?
What do content choices look like? What channels are you using in a way that doesn't feel too fake or marketing-y- 
Ann Handley: Yeah ... 
Brittany Lancor: So to speak? 
Ann Handley: Yeah. I don't think there's any magic to this. I think you're probably already using the channels that you need to use. I think it's how you show up that makes all the difference.
Sure. And if you're using social, use it as a discovery channel, number one, but also using it as a way to show your voice, showcase your people. Start that connection with a potential member or your existing member so that they will, they will be part of your [00:27:00] group, or they will renew. Keep that as an ongoing thing, or volunteer, whatever your conversion metric is.
And so yeah, I think it's just thinking through each channel and figuring out, how do we use this more effectively? And if they're not working, dropping them. You don't have to be everywhere. You just have to figure out the ones that are gonna resonate for you. The one that I wouldn't not use, is that right?
Wouldn't have not u- I would use, would be a w- We could simplify that a little. Yeah, say the one that, I know. It's funny to be in communication and just like- ... this is complicated on purpose. I wouldn't not use. This does serve a purpose though. The emphasis of that. Yes Email for sure. Email is... You have sessions on email at ASAE.
It's, I will, I don't want to say I will die on that hill because I find such joy in, in email. This is weird enough to say, but it's so true. I hate that phrase, die on this hill. I want to celebrate on that hill. Yeah. Because email is actually- Live on that hill for a little bit. I want to live on it forever.
I want to pitch a tent and have my dog there and- 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah, build a fire, because it's a great... Invite 
Ann Handley: all the people there. [00:28:00] Email is an amazing channel, and I think always will be. But I think that most of us are not using it well. And so- Yeah ... if you're gonna start anywhere, I would start there.
And then secondarily, social as a discovery platform. Like I said, a lot of people are using social as a conversion platform. That's really where it falls apart. It's not a conversion platform. It's a way to, to get people to find out about your organization, to feel like they can know you, get to know you a little bit more, and then ultimately raise their hand to opt into something, to volunteer to be part of your group in one way or another.
Yeah. A lot of times I think people use social incorrectly. Also, it's, it's really a way more of a discovery platform than anything else. Yeah. And then just everything else that you're doing. You know, like just webinars or podcasts or whatever it is that you're doing, like always just look for those moments where you can add in that sort of a human element.
Brittany Lancor: The human touch. 
Ann Handley: Yeah 
Brittany Lancor: Yeah, I 100% agree. I think oftentimes people are saying, like, "Email is dead now," and it's [00:29:00] not. No. It's just that it's been used inefficiently. And so how do you use it in a way in which- Yeah ... you are still relevant? Yeah. The messages that you're sending are still relevant to- Yeah ... the individuals.
Ann Handley: Exactly, and I, I think another thing that you need to keep in mind about email is that, yes, I think email is 100% still relevant, but the bar has gotten a little bit higher- Yeah ... for email because of AI. For example, we're already starting to see, some of us, uh, already have our inboxes managed by robots.
Not everybody, but I think eventually that's kind of where things are headed, where what's gonna happen is your in- your email arrives in somebody's inbox, and a robot decides, based on the parameters that you set, but a robot will decide, "Okay, this gets your attention. This is something that I can just handle on my own, this autonomously.
This is something I add to your calendar," whatever the case. But there's another level or layer between you and a would-be member or your existing member right now, and that's really important to be [00:30:00] aware of, just the way that AI is changing the inbox specifically. And so you might think, "That means that email is dead.
Like, how can we possibly break through?" The thing is, it used to be about deliverability. The metric used to be we need to be able to get into the inbox. Deliverability was the big issue. Now, it's really about selection. It's about someone choosing to hear from you. That only adds pressure to, or adds opportunity I should say, not pressure.
It's opportunity to do all the things that we're talking about, like having it come from a real person, making sure that you are connecting with one person at one time, making it feel like, "Oh, this is something that I wanna hear from Brittany," or, "I wanna hear from me," or whoever. It only makes it more important that you- Yes
think about how personal and how inherently just emotional you can make something feel. 
Brittany Lancor: Yes. Yeah. Wonderful. I feel like we could go on for- We can ... 
Ann Handley: forever. What are you 
Brittany Lancor: doing? Let's- Yeah, sorry. Yeah. We're gonna just join this podcast series all the time. Okay, one last question because- Okay ... we had, we were just talking about AI.
Yeah. So this [00:31:00] one's pretty relevant. I feel like some associations are still a little bit hesitant to jump on the AI bandwagon. Yeah. They're still trying to figure out what it means for membership and marketing and communications. So what would be a smart starting line for AI that still protects the human voice- Yeah
and the, the voice of the member, right? And what are some common missteps that you're seeing for people that are using AI? 
Ann Handley: So, yeah. Okay, let's start with the missteps first, which kind of informs the rest of the question, but I think the worst thing you can do is to start experimenting with AI and having it write all of your communications for you, and then editing it.
I am vehemently opposed, violently opposed to that perspective for a few reasons. Number one, because we are in the communications business. We are creative, we are storytellers, we are communicators. And so the idea that you're going to outsource that skill that we inherently possess and have nurtured for so long to a robot, I [00:32:00] am completely just, no, just don't.
Is it fast? Is it efficient? Yeah. But again, it goes back to our initial question here. That's not the point, right? Don't outsource those original first drafts. Any first draft that's important, don't outsource it to AI, number one. I see it all the time. Don't outsource any, even the first draft of a social post, of an email newsletter, of anything.
Can it help you with a landing page? Sure. I don't care about that. But I think it's important to choose those moments when it's smart to involve AI because it's faster and efficient, it can write a landing page like nobody's business. But also, don't outsource those moments that are important moments of connection for you and your audience.
So that's the first thing. In terms of first steps, getting on board, I think the best thing is to just, you know, play around with it. Just see what it can do for you, and then be very intentional about how you use it. Saying no to AI is also an option. Yeah. Not all the time necessarily, because it is truly useful.
For example, the framework that we were just talking about a few minutes [00:33:00] ago There's, AI can be very helpful at surfacing some of those metrics for you, at surfacing some of those emotional moments and signals that are, that were hard to get to before. In fact, in my keynote, I shared a prompt that you can use with AI to draw out some of these insights.
That's an incredibly useful use of AI. Being, but using generative AI, so that's on the data side of things, but using generative AI to, to write for you, I think when it's important, it's important to say no. And yeah, I think it's important to, to have a distinction. What are we using AI for? Are we using it for data?
Are we using it for generative AI, for writing, or are we looking for it us- using it for forecasting? For forecasting and for data management, great use of it. Huge help, especially at an event like this where the technology folks can help you figure out how to do that. But on the generative AI end of things, like using it for writing or generating content, I'm just, I'm not a fan, especially for the first draft.
It's helpful after you write a first draft to then ask AI, [00:34:00] "Would this resonate with somebody who's a would-be member who has this particular personality who is looking for this?" And how do you know all that? It's because you've been paying attention to all the other signals that you're getting. Yeah. So I think it can be helpful there.
It can help you tweak language. But I think just in terms of generating it wholesale, just not a fan. 
Brittany Lancor: Wonderful. Yeah. Anne, it's been lovely. I feel like we need to have a part two, because we only got through half of the questions that we originally had. But thank you so much. I feel like you had some absolutely wonderful insights for everybody, very specific to associations, too.
It's, for-profits and nonprofits are not so different after all, so. Not so different. 
Ann Handley: I know. 
Brittany Lancor: Thank you, Ann, for your time. Thank you. 
Ann Handley: You did wonderful. 
Brittany Lancor: Thanks, everyone, for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals just like this, discuss the challenges and the opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US, and the world.[00:35:00] 
Thanks, everyone.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions sits down with Leslie Johnson, chief sales officer at Visit Milwaukee, to explore why Milwaukee is gaining attention as a premier destination for meetings and events. Johnson discusses the city's recent growth, driven by the expanded Baird Center, a thriving culinary scene, and major events that have showcased Milwaukee on a national stage. The conversation highlights what sets Milwaukee apart from larger convention cities, including its walkability, affordability, authentic neighborhoods, and collaborative hospitality community. Johnson also shares insights into the city's "Flavor Era" campaign, new entertainment and cultural developments, and the experiences that make Milwaukee memorable for visitors. From lakefront festivals and iconic attractions to local dining recommendations, the episode offers a fresh look at a city that's quickly becoming a favorite among event planners and attendees alike.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbNMxvH6nc
 
This episode is sponsored by Visit Milwaukee.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partners Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Paré, partnerships director at High Road, a HubSpot agency, co-host of Rethink Association, and your host of this series throughout the year.
This episode today is sponsored by Visit Milwaukee. Today, I'm joined by Leslie Johnson, chief sales officer at Visit Milwaukee. Leslie, could you give us the highlight reel and tell us what you're all about before we jump into it? 
Leslie Johnson: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Sharon, for having me today. Sure, yeah. I'm Leslie Johnson.
I'm the chief sales officer of Visit Milwaukee. I've been there just a little over six and a half years. Prior to getting into the space of the DMO side of the industry, I grew up in the hotel and restaurant industry for my entire career. Started with Hyatt Hotels, then decided to get into the restaurant side of the [00:01:00] business.
I worked for Capital Grill restaurants, which has ultimately led me to Milwaukee. I had the ability to open that restaurant in Milwaukee a little over 21 years ago. And then while in Milwaukee, I made a few career changes. I worked for Marcus Hotels and Resorts, where I really leaned into learning more on the hotel operations.
I was a general manager, director of sales and marketing, and then also extended that career into the resort side of the business and worked for Geneva National Resort, which is a very predominantly golf-focused organization. And then that's what led me to Visit Milwaukee. So there's my quick, 30-second elevator speech on my career.
Sharon Pare: I love your 30-second elevator speech, but there are two things you left out, but I'm gonna do them for you since you didn't- Okay ... put your little accolades in. But since you've been on Visit Milwaukee, in 2022 you were recognized as the Milwaukee Business Journal Women of Influence, as well as most recently in 2025, the [00:02:00] International Association of Exhibitors and Events Outstanding Marketing and Salesperson of the Year.
So woo- Good job, Leslie 
Leslie Johnson: Thank you. Both of those awards were because of the relationship and partnership that we have within our organization and the marketing team, and the Women of Influence award had a lot to do with how we came out of COVID and the strategies that we put into place to really stand out and really elevate Milwaukee onto a different level than it had ever been elevated on before post-COVID.
And then same with, yeah, the IAE award was all of the great things our marketing team and our sales team has done since the expansion of our convention center in 2024. Definitely. Those are team awards. 
Sharon Pare: For sure, but you have a little bit of each aspect of that business, and I think that's a lot of the changes that Milwaukee is seeing right now, which I know we're about to dig into.
I will say, and you're probably like, "Oh, we hear this too much," but one of my favorite shows growing up was That '70s Show. Okay. So every time I was th- I was thinking about Milwaukee, I keep thinking about that end credit, when [00:03:00] they're like, "Hello, Wisconsin" in the theme song at the beginning. Yeah. That's what I keep thinking about as we were getting into this podcast.
But- 
Leslie Johnson: But usually it's Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days, so I'm glad that you went '70s Show. 
Sharon Pare: Okay, we're changing it up a little bit, right? And I think Milwaukee's changing it up, too. And I know that's what we're gonna talk about today, and that's really the theme around our conversation. I know Milwaukee's really having a moment.
I know we're gonna talk about the expanded Baird Center. Some Michelin recognition, what, which I know is always a big deal no matter what city you're in, but especially in somewhere like Milwaukee. And the growing culinary and cultural scene. So Leslie, from your perspective, what do you think is driving that momentum right now?
Leslie Johnson: It's so great that Milwaukee is absolutely having this moment. It- it's something that's been in the making for so many years. We're just now seeing the results of a lot of the, you know, the investments that have come together. With the expansion of the convention center, the incredible culinary growth that you just mentioned there, too.
And a lot of this comes in tandem [00:04:00] with hosting such large events like the national, with the RNC that we hosted in '24, which seems like forever ago. As well as a couple of industry events, hosting Connect Marketplace. It really helped us step confidently into our identity, and I really think it gave us the ability to give the exposure of our city to people that have
would never have had an opportunity or, I don't want to say a reason, there's always a reason to go somewhere, but- Yeah ... oftentimes as we know in our industry, the first time that they're gonna experience a city is through a meeting, through a conference. They had to come for a reason, and then they fell in love with the city, and we heard that over and over again every time that we host any sort of industry event.
And so it's great to just see that our name is being recognized nationally in so many other ways, and it's giving us that ability to have Michelin also- 
Sharon Pare: Yeah ... 
Leslie Johnson: recognize us and say, "You know what? They do have a very strong culinary scene there in Milwaukee, and we need to go see what it's all about." 
Sharon Pare: So let's talk about the Michelin stuff now, right?
[00:05:00] I think that there is this campaign that Milwaukee's running right now called the Flavor Era, which I think is a really cool concept. Can you share a little bit more about when you say the Flavor Era, tell us a little bit more about that. 
Leslie Johnson: Sure. Yeah, so the Flavor Era campaign is really Milwaukee embracing who we are in a bold and confident way, right?
When we talk about flavor, we mean everything that gives our city personality, from our culinary scene to our neighborhoods, our festivals, our people, and honestly, the way visitors feel when they're here. We're not trying to just copy another city. We've leaned into what makes us distinctively different, what makes us Milwaukee, and I think that authenticity is really, wow, what today's traveler and meeting planners are looking for.
When you think about the culinary scene and look at the culinary scene in Milwaukee, we are not a chain-heavy city. And I, as I talked about earlier, I brought a big chain to downtown Milwaukee, and it was a challenge 'cause Milwaukee is, "No, we don't do chains. We have some amazing creative chefs here in Milwaukee."
And Ca- Capital Grille did a great job of [00:06:00] incorporating themselves into the market and really embracing the local culture and the people to build that restaurant to what it is today. We've stayed true to that, and from the culinary side of things, but yeah, it's more of it's like that swagger. We were always that Midwest, like shy, like we're not overconfident.
We're not gonna speak loud and proud. We're just gonna be here in the corner, and Milwaukee's completely changed that tune. 
Sharon Pare: Yeah. You started getting into this about the flavor, right? Yeah. And you know, how, what it means for meeting planners, and I know a lot of that is centered around the food and some of that, the local experiences, the local culinary experiences.
But is there a little bit more to that flavor that the meeting planners and the attendees will love about Milwaukee that you wanna share? 
Leslie Johnson: I think for planners and attendees, you know, flavor really means the experience that feels memorable and is rooted in the place instead of the intangibles, right?
Like, in Milwaukee, attendees are not just gonna be sitting in a room, meeting room all day. They're gonna be walking around the lakefront between sessions, discovering incredible restaurants, experiencing our festivals [00:07:00] and really interacting with our hospitality community, which is genuinely welcoming individuals.
I hear that all of the time from planners of, "We love everything you have about your city. You have all the tangibles," but it's really the people and the way they make you feel and how welcoming they are that they are just so appreciative when they come to our city. 
Sharon Pare: That's awesome. And I think that being able to visit a city where it's your first time and you're not really sure what to expect, and finding hospitality that's above and beyond, a lot of the times that's what brings you right back to that city, right?
So- 
Leslie Johnson: Right. The connections you make and the things that you didn't get to experience. Exactly. 
Sharon Pare: The 
Leslie Johnson: little things that you did that you're like, "I want more of that." 'Cause you come for a conference, and we've all been guilty of it. We go to the convention center, we go to the hotel, we go back and forth, and maybe we go out for an evening.
But when you start to see a lot of these cities, there's so much more to, to experience that you just didn't get an opportunity to do. But that's that flavor we want you coming back for more, right? Yeah. You just gotta come back and taste some more of it. 
Sharon Pare: So it, it seems like that evolution of the [00:08:00] brand for Visit Milwaukee also changed how you guys are also approaching sales and partnerships too, right?
So how would you say that your messaging and sales strategy has evolved, even in the recent years? 
Leslie Johnson: A lot of that evolution changed back in 2020 One, we were one of the only cities when a lot of cities were pushing pause on the growth of their city, their expansion of their convention centers, whatever it might be.
Milwaukee was one of those very few cities that stood up and said, "We're gonna conti- continue to move forward. We are gonna approve the expansion of this convention center, and when all of this craziness is over, we're gonna be in a different place, and we're gonna be ready to be a different type of city than we were going into COVID."
And so I think that having that commitment from our community and our city leaders has really helped us stand out quite a bit. And with that, though, we had to have a really strong strategy behind it on how are we gonna make sure that we're getting this messaging out there and getting this branding out there into an audience that has seen Milwaukee, they know of it, they're [00:09:00] somewhat familiar with it.
But how do we show them that we're something new, we're something fun, we're something bold, and we're proud, and we are gonna show you how proud we are. And we've partnered with such organizations like ASAE to really say, "Help us tell this story because your audience is so important to our city to bring their conferences and their s- their events to Milwaukee because we know that we can take great care of them.
We know they're gonna have an amazing time with us, and so we just need help showing that." And part of that is a- in that partnership with ASA, they came to Milwaukee and they experienced it and they said, "You know what? We wanna have our annual conference there in 2034," which for us is a huge win. It is the Super Bowl of conferences for- It really is
for our, our industry. And so to have that feather in our cap has just helped catapult us again into another level of meetings and conventions for the city. 
Sharon Pare: Absolutely. Now Milwaukee's showing up differently in the industry now because now you will have the Super Bowl for our industry in 2034. I wanted to ask 'cause you mentioned this earlier, but how were big events like the [00:10:00] RNC or CONNECT Marketplace, how did they change perceptions for Visit Milwaukee?
Leslie Johnson: From the RNC standpoint, we technically were supposed to host the DNC in 2020, and of course COVID changed all of that. And so for us in a positive thing to have the RNC come to us shortly after and say, "All right. Your city clearly had the infrastructure to, to host the DNC. We're really interested in looking at you for the RNC because of your infrastructure, because Milwaukee could be a great destination for that."
And- What that really gave us, it, it gave us the ability to s- have an audience, a worldwide audience. We had people from all different countries reaching out to us, saying how great Milwaukee looks. They did such a great job of showcasing and highlighting the city. But from the RNC standpoint, what they really appreciated about our city is because of how condensed we are as a city, we're very walkable, we're very, it's easy, very easy to get around, that they were able to do their convention at the Fiserv Forum.
They were able to utilize our convention center and the theaters that are all right there within walking distance, and create [00:11:00] one secure perimeter for all of those events, which is really convenient for them and their attendees versus multiple venues, multiple security touch points. And so not only from an attendee standpoint was it a phenomenal experience for every one of their delegates that came into the city, but it also showcased so well as you broadcast it out around the world.
And so it just, it gave us so many eyeballs on a city that maybe they didn't even know about, or maybe they knew very little about, then they got to see how beautiful of a city we are. So that's it from the RNC standpoint. From Connect, we knew with the expansion of the convention center, we know meeting planners oftentimes are just, they're a little bit hesitant to, to buy something new that they haven't had the opportunity to experience, touch, see, feel, be a part of.
And so we knew it was important for us to host some sort of industry event as we opened the convention center. So we opened in May, we hosted in August, so we had a few months to work out the kinks. Sure. But the team just knocked it out of the park. And I'm not gonna say something that's not true. I really have the Connect team that tells me all the time.
We've scored the highest of any of their other [00:12:00] conferences that they've had was when they hosted it in, in, in Milwaukee. And I think a lot of it goes back to the genuine people that they got to work with, the experiences that their attendees got to have that were very authentic and unique and different, and it wasn't just your same opening reception at the same ballpark or whatever it might be.
We're at the Harley-Davidson Museum, the one and only in the entire world. And so- 
Sharon Pare: Wow ... 
Leslie Johnson: they got to experience that. And so every trade show we go to to, from that day forward, we are told on a regular basis like, "That was such an amazing conference. You guys really did a great job." And it also drove a lot of business our way too, which obviously was the goal.
Sharon Pare: Of course. So these events, the RNC and the CONNECT Marketplace, not only did they put you on the national stage, on the global stage too, there's a lot of eyes on Milwaukee right now. And I think maybe you guys are starting to see a shift, right? 'Cause a lot of these associations are thinking a little bit differently about where they're hosting now.
So maybe we could talk about that. Why [00:13:00] are a lot of the associations looking beyond those tier one destinations and considering someone like a tier two? 
Leslie Johnson: Sure, yeah. Tier one's definitely, they have, they're important. You're, there's certain conferences that just can't physically fit into smaller destinations.
And where we've seen now with either associations rethinking how their annual conferences are gonna look, or is it gonna be more regionalized, or maybe their attendance is shifting. We've really been able to take advantage of a lot of that. And a- again, when you go into a tier one city, you're one of many.
You're one of many conferences, meetings, events, leisure activities. There could be a Taylor Swift concert going on. There could be all these things that are impacting their attendee experience as well as their experience. Whereas a sizable association that chooses Milwaukee, you kinda own the city.
You are what's most important thing that's going on in our hotel community, at our convention center, our theaters that you may be using for breakouts or general sessions, [00:14:00] to our restaurants. Our restaurants are very involved in what we're doing. From the Visit Milwaukee standpoint and business that's happening at the convention center, they pay very close attention to who's in town to ensure that they're giving the quality service.
They're aware of who the attendees are going to be, what they're like, what they might not like, what their agendas are so that they're staffed appropriately. And when you work with a smaller destination, you have that level of involvement from your community that you just don't necessarily get sometimes.
No fault from a tier one city. It's not their fault. They're just so big that it's hard to get everybody on that same page, whereas in some of our tier two cities, you definitely get that personalized touch that, and then you get the Midwest hospitality on top of it, so. 
Sharon Pare: Yeah, you can't beat the Midwest hospitality.
I'm not going to throw any shade on my Northeast folks, but I do live in the Northeast, and it's tough to 
Leslie Johnson: come by some of those Midwest hospitality type folks. 
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Sharon Pare: It really seems like Visit Milwaukee is really equipped to be able to deliver on all of those expectations. You talked about the hospitality, we talked about the food, we talked about everything just being in this, in this nice little bubble. What would you say are some of the advantages that Milwaukee offers associations specifically?
Leslie Johnson: I think it's important. From what I hear from [00:16:00] clients, they wanna work with cities that really work well together, meaning our hotel community to our convention center community to our bureau. We have a great working relationship. And I, I can't say that was always the case, and it's something that has been really a focus of our organization as well as our, our hospitality commun- community in general.
But we also have the support of our mayor, our common council. Like, all of our city leaders truly understand the importance of tourism and what it means for our city. And so when we ask for a favor, it is n- rarely is it ever met with any objection. It's absolutely whatever you all need. You need us to be here.
You want us to do this. We're here to help and support. And I think that is one thing that really helps Milwaukee stand above and beyond from other cities, because when we're putting together a proposal for the city, everybody is putting their best foot forward to make that happen for that group. 
Sharon Pare: It sounds like you have a lot of really great partners that you work with in Visit Milwaukee, and partnerships are truly the way to go when it comes down to it, right?
'Cause you're, it's a team effort for any of these [00:17:00] organizations that are coming in. I have another question, too. But how does Milwaukee balance the affordability for the associations while delivering the premium experience that you're giving to those that come to the city? 
Leslie Johnson: I think we're just overall an affordable destination.
It goes in realizing that in order for us to capture this business and in order for us to con- remain attractive to these planners is we have to be priced with what their expectations are, too. And n- not saying that we're, we're not managing the ex- we're not delivering on the expectations. It's just we know that we're a tier two city.
Their expectation is that we're going to be more affordable. And our restaurants, they're not overpriced. Some of our new restaurants that are just coming on the scene, I was just at, it's called Cassis, which is one of our new restaurants. It's a French-inspired restaurant. And it's fantastic and, but the price point is so approachable for everybody.
And, and we try to make sure, 'cause we know that we ha- we have to take care of our locals, too. It's not just [00:18:00] tourism that's filling our restaurants and filling our, our bars and our theaters. It's, it's a, they have a l- a lot of locals, too, and so they wanna make sure that we remain affordable for those individuals, too.
And that's just who we are in Milwaukee. We're not trying to be something fancy and expensive. We are approachable, affordable, friendly individuals, so it's just who we are 
Sharon Pare: I love that. And I could use a break from these $50 lunches in Washington, DC and come to Milwaukee and not spend that for a weekend.
How important are some of the sustainability and inclusion con- consideration for the meeting planners today? I know that there are some certifications that Visit Milwaukee has. Can you share a little bit about that? And I know that those might be some important points that some of our listeners might like to hear a little bit more about.
Leslie Johnson: Yeah. I think this is something that, uh, has continually been evolving in our industry for years. And it was important pre-COVID, it's definitely more important these days, and there's definitely a lot of t- conversation around it as we go forward. [00:19:00] And so with the expansion of the convention center, we were very thoughtful on all of the pieces that we included in that convention center to make sure that it was...
It had the ability to be gold, LEED Gold certified for the building. And so we're very proud of that. And then we as Visit Milwaukee are also working with Culture City. And actually our city is the one that started the initiative, and Visit Milwaukee is now rolling that out to our hospitality community too, and encouraging them to really take consideration into getting the certification or the Culture City certification for helping and welcoming the in- accessible experiences for all attendees.
And we're just in the midst of doing that right now, and our convention center has already gone through it. We wanna make sure that we're always forward-thinking on these topics and these items, and so that everybody that comes into Milwaukee can feel welcome and has the ability to experience the city at the same level of anybody else 
Sharon Pare: So I wanna dig into, we talked about food, we talked about the [00:20:00] Michelin-rated restaurants, we talked about supporting a lot of those local restaurants and the chefs at them as well.
I wanted to get into the culture o- of the city a little bit more too. What would you say are some of the new developments or openings that are helping reshape Milwaukee's now national stage profile? And beyond that too. Yeah. 
Leslie Johnson: So we went through a little bit of development pre-COVID with the expansion, with the re- the new Fiserv Forum, which is where our Milwaukee Bucks played, and also won their championship in 2021.
No big deal, right? No big deal, no big deal. It's not like thousands and millions of people were watching that. It was such a great thing for the city. But it left a lot of real estate in and around the Fiserv Forum for development. And the city has done a fantastic job of creating an entertainment district right around the Fiserv Forum, and they just opened up the Landmark Credit Union Live.
So it's a concert venue that can accommodate up to about 4,500 people, and a general admission [00:21:00] style. So if it's not a band that's gonna be big enough to be at the Fiserv Forum, this is a great place for those types of acts, bringing more and more activity downtown. But I'm really excited too, we also are opening our, it's gonna be the new Nature and Culture Museum of Wisconsin.
So we have our public museum, which will be closing, and then this will be taking in place of that. And it's a beautiful building that is now starting to do hard hat tours. We're super excited to get inside of there. We understand there's gonna be some great event space, some rooftop space. We love our rooftops in the Midwest in the summer.
So looking forward to learning more about what that's all gonna look like once it's all come together, and how that's gonna be something that groups and they can book out for receptions or whatnots. And then another fun development that's in the final pieces of is the 120-year-old Harley-Davidson factory building is now- Cool
being converted to... They're working with Central Standard, which is one of our local distilleries, in creating, like, an event space as [00:22:00] well as distillery, distilling out in that area. And so again, another new spot that we're gonna be able to promote and utilize for, for groups that, again, another place that, another piece of history that only in Milwaukee can you experience it 
Sharon Pare: So something I didn't know about Milwaukee is that Milwaukee has always been known as the city of festivals.
Oh. Can you name some of the festivals that you guys, all the fests that Milwaukee has and how does that ... You have a fest for everything. We 
Leslie Johnson: have a fest for everything. 
Sharon Pare: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that and how it translates into the experience for the meeting and event planners too. 
Leslie Johnson: Yeah. No, we're so fortunate that really k- kicking off that first weekend in June with PrideFest, every weekend we have some sort of festival that's taking place.
Majority of them are gonna be down on the lakefront at the Henry Maier Festival Grounds, which is where Summerfest, which is the wor- world's largest music festival, it takes place every July, June, July [00:23:00] timeframe. And so we have Polish Fest, we have Festa Italiana, we have our Juneteenth festivals down there.
Polish Fest. I guess I had Polish. German Fest, which is my favorite 'cause you get the big pretzel and the beer. We have such a German- Gosh ... German community. And then we have a new one coming up this year, which is called the Freshwater Food and Wine Festival, so that's gonna be brand new in September, which I'm excited about.
But, and we do find that groups do appreciate having that, those ... They can tail end their ex- their conference into those festivals. People can stay longer, invite their families- Yeah ... come and really get to experience w- so a festival post-conference or pre-conference. I actually have a couple of clients that are coming and pre, be- their conference is right before Summerfest, and so I've got their entire loading team heading over to Summerfest on that Saturday, so.
Sharon Pare: Outside of just being in the conference at the convention center, which I know you give an experience outside of that, but this really gives them a true feel [00:24:00] of what Milwaukee's all about, so I think that's really neat- Yeah, exactly ... you were saying. 
Leslie Johnson: Or the city of festivals. Sitting at a picnic table, listening to these amazing bands on the- Yeah
on the stage overlooking Lake Michigan. It doesn't get much better than that. 
Sharon Pare: It really doesn't. So what would you say then surprises first time convention attendees about Milwaukee right now? 
Leslie Johnson: They always amazed at how many people, I'll even quote some of them say, "I didn't know you were on the ocean," 'cause we're
Because of how large Lake Michigan is, they don't realize it's a lake. That's why we call it the third coast. So it's, it's a little educating sometimes. But yeah, when you first fly into Milwaukee over Lake Michigan, what a beautiful entry into our city that is. You- that often surprises people. The fact that you can
Our water, our waterfront is so incredibly accessible too. So it's all owned by the county, and so it's all parks and paths and running paths and walking, bike paths in the marina there. And so those attendees that do have the opportunity to get down there, and we encourage conferences too, if you're gonna [00:25:00] do a 5K, if you're gonna do some sort of fitness or recreational activity, try to get down to the lakefront because of just how beautiful it is, and attendees just really enjoy that.
They are oftentimes surprised by the, again, the walkability and the going into any of our bars right there on MLK Drive, right, that's right near the convention center district. You're with the locals immediately. It's not like there are these over-commercialized restaurants or bars. And they always appreciate just that vibe that comes with that whole entertainment area.
And obviously the expansion on the Baird Center, I can't say it enough what a beautiful building that is, and the intention that was put into the building of that convention center, people very much appreciate. You just don't feel like you're in a convention center. And so from attendee standpoint, it's much, much appreciated going into an exhibit hall with one, one entire wall is glass, and you get to s- feel like you're outside a little bit or get a little bit of a vibe of the happening outside.
Yeah. Versus a dark dungeon. 
Sharon Pare: Yes, exactly All right. I wanted to wrap [00:26:00] up with a little lightning round. You've been in Milwaukee for what? 21 years now is what I think I remember you saying, and we'll just start with the first one. Your favorite restaurant. Don't worry, nobody's getting a cut of this, but- Okay.
All right. 
Leslie Johnson: My, my favorite, my favorite- Your favorite. Yes. It's the Calderone Club. Mama's still in the back making the meatballs, and it is a fantastic Italian dining experience. It's located right by our convention center. It's, it's... If, if you're like, "Where can we go for 
Sharon Pare: some great food?" But there are so many great foods, but that's a tough question.
It's like asking me who my favorite child is. Oh, that... Okay, fine. I'll give you two more. You wanna give us two more favorites? 
Leslie Johnson: I will say Cassis, which I mentioned earlier, is now- Yeah ... on my list of faves. It has a beef tartare that is to die for. And then you want a third? This is, like, a local spot. It's called The Swinging Door.
It's where I go for lunch if I want a really good beet salad, but they have amazing chicken [00:27:00] tenders. It's a, it's like this little quaint, you gotta know it's there kind of spot. It's like the neighborhood 
Sharon Pare: restaurant. Sounds like a speakeasy sandwich spot or something. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. How about the most underrated neighborhood?
Leslie Johnson: I think Bay View is a definitely a- Okay ... neighborhood. It's kind of south of the city. Is, it is up and coming. A lot of great restaurants are starting to open in that area. So if you're- Okay ... coming to Milwaukee, you're gonna wanna jump in an Uber and head down to the Bay View area and check out some of the restaurants down there, for sure.
Sharon Pare: Got it. Best local hidden gem. That means if you got to the end of this podcast, now you get the local's point of view on where to go. 
Leslie Johnson: I told you The Swinging Door is a great spot. That's cute. That's a local spot. 
Sharon Pare: We can stick to it. We- Local spot 
Leslie Johnson: Blue at the top of the Pfister, as much as... I, I don't know if I would call it a local spot, but it's a rooftop.
It's got beautiful views of the... and it's on top of the historic Pfister Hotel. So, it just [00:28:00] gives you that elevated, elegant experience, if that's what you're looking for. A great martini with a beautiful view, it's a great spot to go. Or they do Sunday teas as well. 
Sharon Pare: I hope you know I'm revisiting this podcast for the 2030 World's Fair.
I'm gonna be like, "Leslie said all of these." Okay, one last question. Okay. One thing every first-time visitor should do when they get to visit Milwaukee. They must go to this one place, or they must do this one thing. 
Leslie Johnson: I would say you, if you want, if you're a history person, or you're into, you can only do it in Milwaukee, you have to visit the brewery district and see, like, where Pabst Brewing's starting.
Go to the Pabst Mansion, and sit in the rooms that the beer barons once sat in and made what it is today. Going into the Miller caves and where they used to store the beer, that's only Milwaukee. Harley Davidson, as we talked about, only Milwaukee. 
Sharon Pare: I said one thing, but now we've got five. So, you know what?
That's even better. 
Leslie Johnson: You made me do five earlier, so [00:29:00] I, now we're just up. Now I'm warming up. 
Sharon Pare: So Leslie, this has been such a fun conversation. I know that Milwaukee's going into this new era right now, and it's really exciting to watch. Obviously, I'm really excited to get there in, in 2034, but maybe I'll get there before then.
You need to come sooner. I might need to come sooner. But thank you again for your time today and for sharing all the fun stuff that is happening in Milwaukee right now. 
Leslie Johnson: Absolutely. Again, thank you so much for having me today. It was an absolute pleasure. 
Sharon Pare: Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Series.
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. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
And for more information on topics impacting the association space, [00:30:00] visit Associations Now online at associationsnow.com.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Catherine Galli, MPH, digital content writer at the International Coaching Federation, sits down with Wendy-Jo Toyama, MBA, FASAE, CAE, chief executive officer of the American Epilepsy Society, and Megan Henshall, chief impact officer of The Neu Project, to explore findings from the ASAE Foundation and MPI Foundation report, “Enhancing Neuroinclusive Practices in Association.” The conversation examines how associations can create more inclusive environments for neurodivergent staff, members, and event attendees by moving beyond accessibility checklists toward intentional belonging. Toyama and Henshall discuss persistent stigma surrounding neurodivergence, gaps in awareness and implementation across organizations, and the importance of making neuroinclusive efforts visible and actionable. They also share practical strategies such as quiet and resilient spaces at events, inclusive facilitation techniques, clearer accommodation pathways, and ongoing feedback mechanisms, while emphasizing curiosity, co-creation, and intersectionality as essential components of meaningful neuroinclusion.
A special thanks to the sponsors and supporters of this important report:Choose ChicagoVisit Kansas CityMGM Resorts InternationalDiscover Puerto RicoMyrtle Beach Convention Center MPI Foundation
 
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/l9p_s7Bz6QU
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Catherine Galli: [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 Catherine Galli, digital content writer at the International Coaching Federation. Today, we're excited to welcome Wendy-Jo Toyama, CEO of the American Epilepsy Society, and Megan Henshall, chief impact officer at The Neu Project.
Welcome, Wendy-Jo and Megan. Today, we're discussing the joint report through the ASAE Foundation and MPI Foundation, “Enhancing Neuroinclusive Practices in Association,” of course, which was done in partnership with Ferguson and The Neu Project. For those who may be new to the term, let's just dive right in.
How do you define neuroinclusion, and why is it especially relevant for associations right now? 
Megan Henshall: I can jump in first, and then I would actually love to hear your answer, too. So at The Neu Project, we define neurodiversity as all of us, right? We all have a [00:01:00] brain. Some brains are, quote, unquote, "neurotypical," some brains are neurodivergent, but there are billions of neurotypes and combinations of different ways of thinking and cognitive function.
And so neurodiversity really speaks to, to all of us, and I think we're gonna dig into sort of the neurodivergent experience in this conversation today. But it really is important to note that it is speaking to brain health across everyone and how we support people with cognitive functioning, sensory processing, regardless of their neurotype 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah, and then taking it to the next step, neuroinclusion then would be creating that sense of belonging so that everyone can feel seen and heard.
So creating an environment that really embraces that neurological difference. And I think it's particularly important because, as Meg said, it cuts across all aspects of associations, and so we have members who are [00:02:00] affected by practices that are either barriers or neuroinclusive. We have staff. So it's really important to build this to be able to be effective and welcoming and create a sense of belonging for everyone.
Catherine Galli: Thank you. That's a great explanation, and I think it really centers everybody into the topic today. So in the association industry, this report on neuroinclusion is a first. What are some of the most surprising or unexpected findings that emerged from the data? 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: I will just start by saying I think associations have a long way to go on being a welcoming environment around disabilities in general.
And so I think what surprised me is that there are some things that are going well or strengths we can build on. Like, I think it was not as bleak as I thought it was maybe going to be. For me, there are places where things are happening that we can build on. So that was one surprise to me. 
Megan Henshall: One of the things that jumped out to me when we did the individual interviews, and we [00:03:00] interviewed samples across the entire association population, but in a, a particular interview with a senior leader, so executive, there was a comment made of, "I don't think this affects my particular organization.
Everyone in my organization is very high-functioning." And so it's not- 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: There's  that as well, yes. 
Megan Henshall: I hear it all the time 'cause I travel constantly and talk with a bunch of different types of organizations and in different industries about neurodiversity, neuroinclusion, neuro-informed design, and I hear it a lot.
There is still a lot of misunderstanding and stigma around what a neurodivergent person is and how they present. So I think one of the biggest sort of aha moments from any of these conversations, not just the brilliant work that we've done with ASAE and MPI, is that there are neurodivergent people in every rank, and a lot of this is completely invisible.
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yes. 
Megan Henshall: And so it's really important to know that, and until that sort of awareness exists in your body, it's really hard to [00:04:00] support it, accommodate and advocate for it. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah, that was shocking when I read that finding. The other place that I was surprised about, and I think we probably need to dig in a little bit more, is there's a pretty big gap between member perceptions and staff perceptions.
That came out, and it will need more exploration, I think. 
Megan Henshall: Yeah. 
Catherine Galli: It's interesting that you note visibility in there, and Wendy-Jo, you mentioned the connection to inclusive design and making things inclusive for people with different disabilities, and I think you've also tied it into inclusion in other topics within associations.
I love that this study really tries to look at all of the different levels and how that fits within members, their experiences at different events, and then also for staff themselves. And you mentioned this gap between staff and members. When you compare those perspectives, [00:05:00] where do you see the biggest disconnects in how neuroinclusion is experienced?
Wendy-Jo Toyama: The one area that I noted a disconnect was around communication, in that the scores are very good about creating design the way it's formatted and looks pretty effectively. But where it is-- where there is a gap is in the actual messaging and the content itself. So not being explicit about being inclusive and thoughtful and intentional around neuroinclusion was one big gap 
Megan Henshall: This is a constant thing too.
What we saw in the ASAE research is no different than most other organizations who are on a journey to try to implement a neuroinclusive practice. I think a lot of times we educate ourselves, we build an awareness, then we start to implement practices or tactics, and yet we don't story tell around those things, and we don't co-create with the people that we're building for.
This is a real challenge across [00:06:00] all design practices, not just this one. But I think a lot of times people, especially event people, who are all heart, right? We care so much about others. We're doing these things in service of others, yet we're not talking about the real intention and thought and care behind those things, and we're not asking for feedback and conversation and dialogue around them when we do try them.
So it's really hard to learn, and it's really hard to iterate and get better. But it's interesting because staff are like, "No, we're doing the thing." It's really hard to make it as impactful as possible unless we're inviting the people that it's for into the conversation and iterating, co-creating, evolving with them.
So it's really interesting to watch how that's always a part of any journey with this work. But it's a really critical part of the journey. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: And Meg, I think when I look at the page that really calls out this gap [00:07:00] between leaders and members, members perceive us being further along than the staff do. And I think it's related to the journey.
I think where it is closest is things around being supportive, creating intention. But where the gaps are the largest are like when you put it into action. So I think allocating resources to support neuroinclusive initiatives. There's a huge gap between what members think and what staff think on that front.
There's a huge gap between development programs and training around neurodiversity awareness and understanding. There's a gap around actively involving neuroinclusive initiatives into your plan. So I think it's a journey gap, if you will. 
Catherine Galli: It's interesting to hear both you, Wendy-Jo, and Meg, you've mentioned that there's this communication gap as well of we're trying to implement these neuroinclusive practices, and yet nobody knows that they're being [00:08:00] implemented, or perhaps members are not able to find the information they need.
Can you explain that gap a little bit more? 
Megan Henshall: I can speak to our experience working with companies and also my own experience advocating for myself. So I got diagnosed with autism at 40 after my son was diagnosed at three, so this has been a professional journey for me, but also a very personal one. But I think there's a lot of fear around work like this, and there's a lot of hesitation to lean in because what if we get it wrong or what if we try something that actually isn't helpful?
And I think that is why a lot of organizations or just people hesitate or struggle to openly and transparently communicate around what they're doing and why. I also think there's this cancel culture and asking a question and it not being the right question has created a lot of harm in work like this, and I think that's one of the cultural and societal issues with [00:09:00] this.
And I hear leaders say it all the time, "I really wanna do something about this. I'm afraid of getting it wrong and it ac- and actually making things worse." But the truth of the matter is, if you approach this sort of work with humility and you're honest and transparent about what you're doing, people are grateful.
They're grateful every time. Now, you might get some critical feedback or you might get feedback that you weren't expecting at all, but that just makes us all better. And so in my opinion, at a macro level, I think this is one thing that impacts people's ability to communicate effectively is just this hesitation that, what if I use the wrong word?
Or what if I'm not knowledgeable enough? No one is an expert in neuroinclusion. It is a real-time dynamic practice. We are learning more about the human brain every day. We're learning more about how that brain is evolving in real time, so you can't possibly be an expert. We're all learning. We should be [00:10:00] learning openly and together.
Wendy-Jo Toyama: I want to build on that and say when I became a CEO, I had a strong membership background. I had an MBA. I was pretty comfortable with finance. I didn't know meetings so well, and I certainly didn't know publishing. But that didn't mean that I didn't do those things because I didn't know and I was afraid of making a mistake.
So I think that then you think about what did I do? I reached out to someone I knew who was our editor at the place I worked before. I gained knowledge. I engaged consultants. These are all things you can do around neuroinclusion, and you can certainly start by looking at the research. There's some good articles in there.
But saying, "I'm afraid of making a mistake," is not an excuse for equipping yourself to being able to create a welcoming environment around this. The other thing I would say is something that I noticed when I was reading the report. There's a lot in here around intention, and so again, [00:11:00] not just creating a pathway for people to get an accommodation if they need it, but to actually designate somebody who may be an ambassador or someone that you can put out that folks can proactively reach out to.
So again, shifting from a compliance culture, sure, if you ask, we'll do it, to one that says, "Hey, are there accommodations you need around neurodiversity? And if there are, here's the pathway for that." That's huge, and really the implementation is the same. You'll still make the accommodation. It's all about the front end and how you make it visible, easy, and begin to take away the stigma around it, right?
Catherine Galli: So for association leaders who are wanting to begin this journey, I like that you're starting to mention the skills transferability of leaders are always having to learn new things, and they're always having to apply new things. Just to give our listeners some examples, what are a few simple [00:12:00] high-impact changes that event planners can make to create more neuroinclusive environments?
Wendy-Jo Toyama: So I just attended a large 11,000-person meeting. I was there all day. I do not identify as neurodivergent, and yet when I got home, I'm a little introverted. When I got home, I was just done. And so I know some meetings, ours included, are trying to create a quiet place, a space where people during the meeting can go and take a break, and it's quiet.
It's away from the hubbub. It's created with intention though, not just, "Here's a room." So I think that's one, one thing I would say I am beginning to see implemented at meetings, and I think it's very good. 
Megan Henshall: I couldn't agree more about resilient spaces. I'll give you a funny anecdote. We were at a large culture festival in Texas.
I'll let you do with that what you will. And they had resilient spaces, and my [00:13:00] partner in this work, Rachel Lowenstein, and I walked in just to check it out. We're, like, so curious, and it was, like, an inflatable, almost a kids' bounce house in- Oh. ... its room. And so you had the fan going, which is, like- Oh my God, immediate sensory nightmare. The touch of the rubber thing. It was just so not it. So I think there's a lot of, for resilient spaces, I think there's a lot of mental mapping we've done that they need to be juvenile and they're for children, but adults need these spaces in many ways more than kids do.
Because we, we don't take care of ourselves, and we largely just, like, we don't take care of each other as much as we should, and that was just a really funny example of, ooh, maybe not the gr- the best way. Yeah. It was a funny moment. I also think, like, there's this- Mindset in the event industry and experience design industry at large, that the flashier, the louder activation.
Megan Henshall: [00:14:00] The brighter, the more colorful this thing is, the more you're gonna capture and keep people's attention. And like we know based on neuroscience, that is not at all true. Where you have high highs, you need low lows. People can't sustain high energy all day. They actually can't sustain attention. We have-- The human attention span is actually now less than a goldfish.
Thank you, social media. 
Catherine Galli: Yeah. 
Megan Henshall: So, like we really need to give people breaks. We need to facilitate transitions and give them permission and alibis to go and process and regulate and restore, and sometimes that can be as simple as just giving longer breaks. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Longer, yeah. 
Megan Henshall: They can find their own way. I think giving intentionally designed spaces is really beautiful.
Understanding budget constraints and things, like just give them more time to process between things. And think about how we attenuate and amplify at the right time. If you wanna do the [00:15:00] loud music and the flashing lights, like cool, choose your moment for that and know that you also need to provide an alternative, a counterpoint to that at another point in time, because people need both.
If you want the most out of them, you need to make sure that you're supporting how their brain works. 
Catherine Galli: And that's not even a neurodivergent challenge. That's just a people challenge. I remember going to a three-day conference that was basically a rave for three straight days. Um, leaving and being very overwhelmed.
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. And that speaks to universal design, right? The idea that a lot of times these considerations that get put in place for one purpose end up benefiting everybody. So yeah, better meeting overall. 
Megan Henshall: I planned for conferences for decades, and I would come home from running an event, and I would go non-verbal, and I would be in bed for two days.
And at the time, I thought, I'm just exhausted. No, I was actually having a full- 
 
Megan Henshall: Yeah ...autistic shutdown, [00:16:00] and now I know how to moderate. But there's a lot of things that I go to because I have to for work, or I need to be there to speak, and they're really untenable for me and a lot of people 
Catherine Galli: So you mentioned some of the things that are supportive in events for being able to be more accessible, not just for neurodivergent individuals, but for everyone.
What are some of the ways that associations can better support their neurodivergent members, whether that's volunteering, leadership roles, or even committee participation? 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: We recently had a strategic planning session, and I really appreciated our consultant who we brought in to facilitate that because she did very thoughtful things around this.
It would be typical that they might throw out a question to a group, talk about how X is affecting the field. But she also included, "I want everybody to think for the next two minutes. Let's not talk. [00:17:00] Let's just think. Take out a piece of paper and write down how the external environment is affecting your association."
And I really appreciated that. It gave folks who are not think talkers the chance to gather their thoughts. I think there's little things like that we can do. I think that that was really helpful for a group that I'm sure included neurodivergent folks. 
Megan Henshall: I think one of the reasons I loved the approach to this project we did with ASAE and MPI is it started with curiosity and listening, and I really believe- 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yes
Megan Henshall: Curiosity is a dying human practice because now we can Gemini or ChatGPT anything, and we don't talk to one another anymore. And I think any organization that really wants to get this right, they have to start with listening and a really deep spirit of curiosity to understand the [00:18:00] experience of the people that ultimately they serve or, or building for or designing for.
And I'm always really proud to be a part of a project that-- or a journey that starts that way. So I think it's as simple as asking people on your team, "How do you best like to see, receive information? What is your communication style, and how can I accommodate the ways that you learn or you process information?"
Cool. Tell me a little bit about your chronotype. What are the parts of your day where you're peak creative, and how can we lean into that? I think this idea of job crafting and things in the future, learning strengths-based work and, and just building together, collaboration is gonna be more important than ever in a post-AI world.
And curiosity is not something that AI can replace. Bravery to ask the question is not something that AI can ever [00:19:00] replace. And so these are the human things. This is very human work, right? These are the human things that we need to recultivate, and guess what? They're free, and they're simple. So I, I really do think that's the best first step for anyone who wants to get into this work.
Wendy-Jo Toyama: So interesting to hear you talk about it, Meg, because at the organization I'm at, the American Epilepsy Society, our members are really curious, no surprise. And so we bring a lot of curiosity into our association and into our work. We also talk about neurodivergence at the board table as well as with staff.
And I think, again, normalizing it, bringing curiosity helps us think about how to curate and design a meeting or a day in a way that takes that into account and doesn't make it something that's odd or stigmatized or negative. 
Megan Henshall: Yeah. We're not robots, right? We all have different needs, and it's so important.
And once you throw it out there, people are like, "Oh." 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. 
Megan Henshall: And it creates such rich conversation. It's a beautiful thing. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. There's no IEP for adulthood. 
Megan Henshall: 100. Don't I know [00:20:00] it. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. So we have to figure out how we carry on that, creating an environment where everyone can bring their best self. 
Catherine Galli: That's wonderful.
And even just framing it within curiosity takes away some of the fear for people who are trying to jump into this space to say that, "Okay, I'm going to get it wrong, but I want to learn, and I can learn with the people that I work with and the people that I serve together." That's wonderful. So we've talked about this idea of stepping into starting these practices.
I like that the research kind of sets a baseline for neuroinclusive practice and associations. Going off of that, what guidance would you offer to leaders to measure and improve neuroinclusion in their organizations? 
Megan Henshall: I can jump in. I think when you're doing, again, very deeply human work like neuroinformed design and neuroinclusive practice, I think [00:21:00] understanding sentiment is one of the most important things, because again, this isn't data on a spreadsheet.
This is lived experience, and this is like human beings' everyday lives. And so I think, again, creating a really robust feedback channel that is open and transparent is critical for this sort of work. As you implement, you ask, "How did that land? How did that feel? Was that helpful? How could it be more helpful?"
And I know we're all survey fatigued, but it doesn't have to be a survey, right? It can be an individual conversation. It can be observational audit, right? Just to see how people are engaging with the thing that you tried. We've done this a multitude of ways in the new project. At one point, we brought in behavioral and organizational scientists, and they did an observational audit and helped us iterate and improve.
So I think there are a lot of different ways that you can do this that aren't as potentially annoying or invasive as a survey. [00:22:00] But the feedback loop, people seeing you responding to their feedback and then coming back to them is, it's just so kind, and it's just one of the most impactful things that you can do.
It is very hard to boil this down to two KPIs, but once you have that feedback loop in place, the story writes itself, and then I think you can plug out certain data points or positive or negative side effects of various interventions, so you can build from there. But that feedback channel is really important.
Wendy-Jo Toyama: I love your answer because it is very personal and actionable. I will also say, I do think you could use proxies, right? So I do think that ideally, if you are being inclusive of all your employees and neuro inclusive, you might see employee engagement scores go up. You might see your employee retention go up.
You might see your member retention or your net promoter score go up. [00:23:00] So I think there are other proxies you can look at. You may not be able to draw a straight line, and of course, these kinds of efforts take time. So that's why I like augmenting proxies with what you're talking about. I love the experience audit idea.
I also think there are questions we can ask. Does everyone feel like they belong? Do you feel like you can express your opinion? Do you feel heard? I think there are questions that sometimes feel like soft questions, but they really aren't anymore, right? We're learning that what leaders need is shifting and evolving, and these are essential skills.
But there are qu- there are questions you could incorporate into something else you're doing, right? To your point, Meg, there's... People are tired of surveys, but so I think figuring out what you're currently doing and how you can just tweak it a little to get a little information could be helpful. 
Megan Henshall: Yeah.
I'll give a really tangible example. Based on feedback and sentiment, we heard we're partnering with an organization, we heard we need [00:24:00] something intentional and designed to lower stress and anxiety in this particular environment. And so we created an intervention based on the feedback, we implemented it, and then we actually tracked some biometric data.
Oh. We had a user experience team come in and conduct interviews, and started with feedback, did this intervention, and actually ended up with this incredible data around how this intervention had lowered stress and anxiety rates by 60%. 
Megan Henshall: Uh ... so amazing. The teams felt more creative post-intervention, and they actually felt more productive for up to four hours afterwards.
And so it was really interesting. We didn't know exactly what we would learn, but we knew we were solving a real problem that we had heard from the people we cared about. And so this is just a very tangible example of how that can manifest. You don't always know exactly what KPI you're gonna end up with, but if you're doing the right thing with the right intention, you'll prove yourself right with the [00:25:00] data.
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Right. And here's what I heard. I didn't hear, "Oh my gosh, I have to bring in a behavioral health scientist to measure this." What I heard is, "Oh, she listened to her audience, made changes, and it was effective." That's the part of your answer that I heard that feels very implementable, right? Because, again, we don't wanna not do it because I can't have someone come in and measure it.
I don't have the money to do that, so I'm not- Right ... gonna do it at all. You can still do it, and guess what? You'll still get a result even if you're not measuring it. 
Megan Henshall: Yeah. I think sometimes we get so hamstrung. We're in a prison of date, of data necessity. I love it. And we... There's this really great saying, "The same hammer can build a cathedral or a prison," and I think a lot of times we wield data that way.
Yeah. Boxed ourselves in. Just do something 'cause you know it's the right thing to do and it's needed, and I guarantee you the data will come. Yeah. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: It's incredible. It's like being at the conference the other day, and I didn't have my watch on, so I couldn't count my steps. I'm like, "Oh my gosh." You know?
Yeah, but I guess I'm still taking [00:26:00] them all, so it still counts whether or not I measured it. 
Megan Henshall: Uh, I have the Oura Ring, and sometimes it's a very self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm like, "Oh, I'm not well today."
Catherine Galli: So then for organizations considering getting involved or sponsoring this type of research, what's the real value both for the organization and the broader community?
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Ultimately, creating a sense of belonging is going to be beneficial on so many different fronts, from including all voices, different voices, people wanting to be a part of your association, working or as members. So many different benefits. 
Megan Henshall: Yeah. As someone who regularly says that my autistic special interest is people, I'm often completely befuddled by this mindset of, "We wanna sell you something.
We wanna get something from you, yet [00:27:00] we're not gonna take the time to understand you and meet you where you are." Yeah. And I think we talk about neuroinclusion as, and it's not just the right thing to do, it's also a strategic imperative. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. 
Megan Henshall: There was a really interesting study that came out last year from our friends at understood.org.
Like 52% of Gen Z, decent sample size, identify as neurodivergent. 
Catherine Galli: Sure. 
Megan Henshall: And so it's just really interesting to think there's this whole swath of people that most organizations know very little about, not only how to support them and accommodate them, but also how to get the most out of them, how to help them meet their potential, or how to sell them something even, right?
And so I think it's really important that when you're designing or you're looking to target people, that you do everything you can to understand them, because that's gonna help you get the messaging right. That's gonna help you create the right design interventions, and ultimately, it creates a really virtuous cycle, right?
I understand you, I do the right thing for you to give [00:28:00] back. It creates reciprocity, and it's not as extractive. So I, I just think it's a really important part of business, like good business practice. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: It's essential. 
Catherine Galli: Yeah. I love that, and I love hearing just this idea that, one, it's about being a good steward of resources and being a good steward of people, treating people with respect and kindness, and inviting them to engage on all these different levels.
But also just a strategic imperative- It is ... that the future of work demands that associations or really any organization be prepared for these changes that are happening, and be able to work with future staff and future members who may identify as neurodivergent. So I really like that this research is coming in now because I think it's a great place to spark those conversations and to prepare associations for a future like that, and for people right now who are navigating these different events and [00:29:00] leadership positions, committee participation, and wanting to show up as their best selves.
Mm. And then I had a question about- We talked about the research, we talked about ways to make events a little bit more inviting. That first step can be really challenging. If an association wanted to get started with neuroinclusion today but didn't know where to begin, what's the first step you recommend they take?
Wendy-Jo Toyama: I wouldn't boil the ocean. And I think if you haven't stated an intention, I think that's a place to start. But you do need to follow it with action. You don't wanna be performative in this space. I think one of the things that you could do is begin a conversation with your staff about this. You may not know who identifies as neurodivergent, and if somebody steps [00:30:00] forward, then that might be someone you could co-create with.
So that might be a way to start by bringing it into the room, having the conversation, having by us, for us kind of discussion, and identifying something that would be meaningful and doable and sustainable. 
Megan Henshall: I love that answer. Yeah, look around where you are and invite neurodivergent people. They're there.
They are. Invite them to the process. 
Catherine Galli: Yeah. 
Megan Henshall: So I said earlier, start with listening. I think listening to people in your own organization is a beautiful way to get started there. I will counter, so here's what not to do. Oh, 
Catherine Galli: yeah. 
Megan Henshall: Do not hire a neurodivergent speaker, especially if you're not compensating them fairly.
Have them come talk about their lived experience, and then do nothing afterwards. That is so icky. I see it happening all the time, and people are like, "We did it. We checked the box. We educated people." A 30-minute keynote at a conference where someone is talking about their [00:31:00] disability is not it. Don't do that.
But I, I actually don't think there's any wrong way to start as long as you're doing it from- Start ... an honest, honest place and you're curious. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. 
Catherine Galli: Yeah. Love that. And is there anything else you want our listeners to know about enhancing neuro inclusion in their practices and associations? 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: One of the things we haven't talked about that I do wanna mention is intersectionality.
And I do think that if you are someone who identifies as a person of color or female in a male environment, male in a female environment, you might closet your neurodivergence. And so again, I think it's important for leaders to understand that this is happening. That when you say, "I don't have anyone neurodivergent on my staff," you probably do.
They are probably, there's probably intersectionality happening there, and they don't wanna be an Asian woman and neurodivergent. [00:32:00] So I think that's really important to be aware of. And again, I think what Meg's been talking about, being curious and listening, I think those are some of the ways that you can try to tease this out.
But it's a real- anxiety, stressful-producing situation to be in as an individual if you feel you have to hide part of who you are because, oh gosh, I have this other stuff going on. So I, I just think it's important that people are aware of that. I'm not actually sure what to tell you to do about that, but be aware of it and continue to be curious and listen.
Megan Henshall: Yeah. Less than 30%, I think it's 27% is the latest stat, of people disclose that they're neurodivergent at work or in mixed spaces, right, where they don't have really trusted people around. And a lot of people are undiagnosed. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Sure. 
Megan Henshall: They need this work, and they just don't know they need it. So yeah, I just- I'll give a quick plug.
We have free resources on The Neu Project website. It's just The Neu Project, N-E-U project.com. There [00:33:00] are free resources there specifically for event planners because we know events are one of the most stressful things for neurodivergent people. A lot of them don't go, and so they're missing out on professional opportunities and networking opportunities that matter to them, and their careers, and their growth, and their ability to contribute.
Go check that out. We'll- those will always be free. And I think, while I can't speak for Wendy-Jo, but if you have questions and you just wanna unpack things with a safe person, I'm always open. So you can contact the team at The Neu Project through the website. And yeah, stay curious. 
Wendy-Jo Toyama: Yeah. And  the resource with MPI and ASAE has practical actions in it.
It has links to articles in it, and I believe toolkits will be coming out as well. Again, I think now that you've heard about neuroinclusion and neurodiversity, you're probably gonna find a number of places you can turn. It wasn't on your radar screen maybe before, but now it is. So there are [00:34:00] resources out 
Catherine Galli: there.
That's wonderful. Thank you so much, Meg and Wendy-Jo. Thanks to everybody listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Join us each month to 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 podcasts. And for more information on topics impacting the association space, visit Associations Now online at associationsnow.com.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions is joined by Stephanie Alexander-Priakos, director of meetings and conferences at Visit St. Pete-Clearwater; Myha Gallagher, vice president of brand at Future Partners; and Jill Stone, site selection manager with HelmsBriscoe, for a conversation about the evolving meetings and events landscape and the growing appeal of second-tier destinations like St. Pete-Clearwater, Florida. Drawing on industry research and firsthand planning experience, the guests discuss how planners are increasingly prioritizing affordability, accessibility, safety, and unique experiences when selecting destinations, while also navigating rising costs, convention center fatigue, and growing political considerations tied to location decisions. The conversation also explores emerging trends shaping the future of meetings, including the rise of “bleisure” travel, the importance of walkability and outdoor gathering spaces, and how AI is beginning to influence sourcing and attendee personalization. Alexander-Priakos highlights what continues to drive interest in St. Pete-Clearwater, from its award-winning beaches and walkable downtown to expanding meeting infrastructure, wellness-focused properties, and cultural attractions such as the Dalí and Chihuly museums. The episode also examines the role destination organizations play in supporting planners through site visits, logistics, and creating memorable attendee experiences that extend beyond the convention center.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/dQzqtjc_2N0
 
This episode is sponsored by Visit St. Pete-Clearwater.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, partnerships director at High Road, a HubSpot agency, and your host of this series throughout the year. This episode is sponsored by Visit St. Pete-Clearwater. 
Today, I'm joined by three fantastic guests. First, I wanna introduce Myha Gallagher, vice president of brand at Future Partners, where she helps bring meeting and travel industry research to life through data-driven storytelling and insights. Stephanie Alexander-Priakos, director of meetings and conferences at Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, who's passionate about showcasing the destination's award-winning beaches, culture, hospitality, and group experiences. And Jill Stone, site selection manager with HelmsBriscoe
 
 and co-host of the In the [00:01:00] Genes podcast, who brings more than 35 years of experience helping planners create successful meetings and events throughout the world.
Today, we're talking about trends shaping the meetings and events industries, meeting and events industry, and why more planners and associations are looking beyond traditional convention destinations toward places like St. Pete-Clearwater. So I'm gonna put a little disclaimer here, 'cause as a Florida girl born and raised, and I think I mentioned this to you ladies before, I have to say it's been really fun watching the west coast of Florida evolve. 20-plus years ago. I don't wanna date myself here, but in college a lot of us on the east side of Central Florida, we just didn't head west all that often. And now here in the 2020s, 2026, I think St. Pete-Clearwater has become one of the most talked about destinations, right? Meetings, events, food, maybe sports, and maybe just the overall experience.
So I'm really excited to dig into all of this today. So Myha, I really wanna kick off your work [00:02:00] with the research, because I think it will frame this entire conversation. So Future Partners, which I know you're very heavily involved with that survey, every year you do a survey of meeting planners to understand the trends that are impacting the meetings industry.
So what would you say are some of the top emerging trends as it relates to St. PeteyClearwater? 
Myha Gallagher : Yeah, I'm happy to share that, Sharon. Thank you so much for having us on. The first and probably the biggest trend that we see coming out of our latest survey is the rise in interest among meeting planners in sourcing second-tier destinations.
In fact, nearly 81% of planners that we surveyed agreed that second-tier destinations are growing in popularity for events, and this is really being driven by the demand for new experiences, a perception that second-tier cities are much safer than first-tier cities, and then cost savings in sourcing smaller destinations as well.
And then we're also hearing from planners that their attendees are having [00:03:00] convention center fatigue. Just being stuck in the four concrete walls of a convention center can really drain your energy, and so planners are sharing with us that they are looking for more differentiated experiences and, of course, beautiful scenery to keep their attendees engaged and energized.
And then lastly, unfortunately, there's been a considerable rise in agreement among planners that politics are having an effect on the destinations that they're sourcing. In fact, 61% of planners said they have had to reconsider a destination due to controversial issues in the past 12 months alone. And in subsequent conversations with planners, they've shared with us that, of course, they're planning events for large groups, many diverse attendees, and they wanna make sure that the destinations that they select will be safe and welcoming for their groups.
And this is an area where St. Pete Clearwater has done a fantastic job crafting each message and ad campaign to [00:04:00] really showcase how welcoming a destination they are. 
Sharon Pare: So I wanted to dig in a little bit more. You mentioned this convention center fatigue, this attendee fatigue, right? And like you said, a lot of the attendees say don't wanna be within that traditional sense in those four walls of the convention center now, right?
And perhaps we're gonna dig into this a little bit more in the conversation, but can you touch on that a little bit about are planners now looking for destinations where the city itself becomes part of the entire event experience? 
Myha Gallagher : Oh, absolutely. I think the traditional sense of conventions and convention centers, especially with younger attendees coming into the mix now with Gen Z, planners are really looking for ways to engage that younger audience, and we know there are different tools that need to be used to activate our younger convention attendees.
And one tactic is definitely sourcing more unique spaces, making sure you're in a really [00:05:00] beautiful environment to keep the energy up. And that's not to say convention centers are going away at all. They serve a very specific and vital part of the meetings industry. But for planners who are hosting smaller groups, not citywides, they are definitely looking towards more unconventional and more unique spaces to host their events.
Sharon Pare: And to add to that, what right now are planners ... And don't worry, Jill, I'll be getting to you soon. But what are they asking for that maybe three or four years ago they weren't asking for? Is there anything different? Is there a shift that you've seen? 
Myha Gallagher : Yeah. The top trend around that, I think it comes as no surprise to anyone in the room, is the use of AI.
Many planners are using AI to help with their sourcing decisions, and they're also thinking about ways that AI can be integrated into the meeting environment to [00:06:00] personalize meeting agendas for their attendees. And like every other industry, AI is making its impact, and, and it'll be interesting to see how planners continue to leverage the tool to evolve their meetings.
Sharon Pare: I'm gonna bring it over to Jill. And it's really interesting, Miha, to hear about the research side of things because again, I think it's really reshaping how the planners are thinking about some of these things today, and how they're planning their meetings. So Jill, after decades, I don't wanna say many, but after decades working directly, well, it just shows your expertise and your wisdom around really knowing your stuff.
But after working with these directors and planners and clients after all this time, are you seeing those shifts play out in real time? And maybe you can tell us about a recent experience you had with Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, and tell us a little bit more about that. 
Jill Stone: Sure. Miya took most of my answers, I gotta say.
But I got a few left I think that maybe I can share. She's right. Clients are looking for [00:07:00] lots of different things. Mainly, there's, the safety issue's huge. Politics is huge unfortunately. And I've had clients leave a particular hotel or destination, or just totally discount it altogether because of that.
And then there's other things that happen, laws that are passed, et cetera, that maybe they can't either agree with or get on board with. But yes, I just had a client at the Wyndham Clearwater Beach, and St. Pete was great. They offer free things for clients, and I'm sure Stephanie's gonna get into all the things that they offer and the things that they can do.
But they also help when I'm looking for a destination, and maybe I have forgotten one. They're quick to tell me, "Hey, look at this one, too." And- What I found, especially when I interviewed Stephanie for our podcast, is that they have some great hotels and resorts of all various sizes. So if a client has a large size meeting, let's say 4- or 500 people, that can be done, but also some of the smaller meetings can be at some of the more boutique style hotels or those [00:08:00] kinds of things.
But, and one other thing they're looking for is walkability to things, ease of getting to the destination. Affordability is huge. Second tier destinations like St. Pete/Clearwater are very affordable. And yes, I agree with Miha on the convention center fatigue. If they can get outside to the beach, and more beach, that makes them happy.
And outside venue spaces are key for lunches, breaks, et cetera. So if they can find a meeting space that has an outdoor terrace or a lawn or someplace where they can be outside in a great, warm destination, then they will be signing on the dotted line pretty quickly for that. But also, St. Pete has the
The Renaissance Vinoy is one of my favorite hotels, and it is located in a really cool area, maybe not so much beach, but they've got shops and restaurants and museums and things that are so walkable and people wanna get to and experience. So there's all kinds of things you can experience in their destination.
All of it, [00:09:00] actually. You can have a city experience or you can have more of a beach experience. And a lot of planners are looking for that now. They've got attendees who want, we call it bleisure. They wanna expand and they wanna go someplace they wanna go. And so it's on their bucket list to get to. So those are the kinda things that my clients are looking for.
And another thing that's easy for them is if they are just using one hotel, one contract and one contact makes their whole life a whole lot easier, too. So anything we can do to help the planners find what they want with ease and make it easier for them, that's my job to do, and I try to do that. Try to do that every day.
Sharon Pare: It sounds like Visit St. Pete-Clearwater definitely gets you outside of those four walls because it has so much to offer. You mentioned having the boutique hotels, obviously, and I know this too, some of the most beautiful beaches. Bleisure, this is my first time ever hearing of business and leisure just put into one, right?
What are some of your clients prioritizing the most right now when they're selecting destinations? I know you talked about [00:10:00] walkability and some of the other things. Is there anything else that the clients or your clients are really looking for, too? 
Jill Stone: With the way the economic things are happening right now, affordability is one of the key things.
Which it does, second tier destinations do tend to be more affordable. It's easy to get into their airports, which are smaller, so their attendees don't feel like they're lost in a huge Airport, and at, and typically where they're going is very close to the airport. No one wants to be hours and hours away from the airport.
So those destinations tend to have ... In St. Pete, I know, I know Stephanie will talk about all those things too, but they do have all those things. You, depending on where you wanna be in their area, you're very close to things. And yes, walkability. The Wyndham, for example, there was a pier and lots of restaurants just within walking distance.
And so it was perfect for both. They got both experiences, the beach, and a little bit of the city experience too. So for my client, that was very much ... They're, the, and they're, the, and they [00:11:00] also we have to think about not only do the attendees, because they're s- pretty much in meeting rooms all day, their spouses wanna come and bring their kids sometimes.
And so this was perfect destination for that, and the kids got to be outside flashing around and, uh, running around in the sand. 
Sharon Pare: Jill, I, I think that's such a good setup for Stephanie, 'cause now we've talked about what the planners are looking for. And Stephanie, I, you're from the Visit St. Pete-Clearwater side.
So I wanna talk about really what makes the destination work so well for groups. Why is St. Pete-Clearwater a great place to have a meeting or conference? 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: First of all, m- going from what Jill had said over here, we do have award-winning beaches. That's what we're famous for with Clearwater Beach and St.
Pete Beach. They've had accolades. I've lived here 19 years now, and they've been having accolades of the best beaches in America for as long as I've been here, and I think it's an awful lot longer than that too. But the weather. This is why I moved here. [00:12:00] Coming from the UK where it rains a lot, it's very gray, it's windy.
I'd had enough of it. I needed some blue sky and sunshine. And I've, I've been lucky that I've been in this industry all of my life as well, and I must have traveled to over 80 different countries now, and I've lived in six different countries. And there is nowhere else in the world that I would rather live and work than St.
Pete-Clearwater. For me, it has everything that I can possibly want, and I don't think I'm alone because we get a lot of meetings that are held over in this destination. One of course, like you said, because of the weather. We actually hold a Guinness World Record, St. Pete does, and it is for the most consecutive days of sunshine in the world at 768 consecutive days of sunshine.
We have all year round great weather. I love it. The groups are really busy in January and February when it's really [00:13:00] cold and snowy up in Chicago or Boston or Cleveland. So we get a lot of people coming down at that time of year just to get a break from the cold weather too But our hotels are so different.
Each and every one has its own unique selling point. Everything from downtown St. Petersburg, which really has that vibrant arts and culinary feel to it. We have four restaurants in downtown St. Pete that are in the Michelin Guide. Every single restaurant in downtown St. Pete except two is independently owned and operated as well.
Very proud of that. And like Jill said, everything is walking distance. I will make one correction on the Vinoy, though. It's no longer The Renaissance. It is the Vinoy Marriott Autograph Collection. Oh, sorry about that. That's okay. And the Vinoy is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. They went through a major renovation.
The hotel is just... It's fabulous. Very Spanish style. [00:14:00] Lot of history to it. They have great meeting space. Their largest meeting room is 12,000 square feet, and they have a total of 35,400. So it's a great option in downtown St. Pete. And like Jill said, everything's walkable. It really is. And they have a marina right opposite the hotel, so you have the choice of doing your deep sea fishing charters.
Go and see some dolphins. It's just about guaranteed every time you go on the water you're gonna see some dolphins. We get a lot of people that asking for natural light in their meetings now. When you'd mentioned- Yes, that's so important ... yep, and Mihad mentioned this convention, they, they don't want to be in those four walls where they don't know what's going on outside.
Sharon Pare: Or those basements sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes you end up in, in a cave, and you haven't seen the light of day for 72 hours, and then by the time you get out of it, it's dark, right? Yeah. 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: Yep. So, okay. Right. That's good to know. Yeah, so a lot of hotels with, with meeting space, space with [00:15:00] natural light. We have up and down the beaches, too, and in downtown St.
Pete. And I think that's really important, but our hotels are smart because they do have the option to bring down those blinds if they do need to st- If people are looking outside and watching the dolphins too much in the middle of the meeting, we do have options. We can fix that, so it's all good. That sounds sad- I would be-
but, you know, that makes sense. Go ahead, Jill.
Jill Stone: I would be watching the dolphins. That would be a whole... probably more fun than whatever's on the screen. But no, I like that idea, too. And you can see outside when you want to. And like I said, they like to get outside, so if there's a way to do that, too, they're happy there.
And I know there's... You, Stephanie, you have a lot of hotels with that capability. A lot of people 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: are bringing in the wellness tourism into their meetings as well. The wellness... We've got three properties that are recognized by the Wellness Tourism Association, which is The Vinoy. We also have the Don CeSar on St.
Pete Beach and the JW Marriott on Clearwater Beach. So we're seeing that groups are looking for different experiences as well, and [00:16:00] incorporating that wellness into their agenda.
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Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: I want to go back to the Don CeSar Hotel, which is another iconic property that we have on St. Pete Beach. [00:17:00] They are 98 years old, and are gonna be celebrating their 100th anniversary soon. Mm. And both properties have really great history to it, because both of them were actually used as hospitals during World War II, and they've been renovated, and they just look amazing.
They look fantastic. The Don CeSar just opened a brand-new ballroom with 7,400 square feet, so they have some really good meeting space, too. Our newest hotel is the Opal Sol, part of the Opal Collection. That's up in Clearwater Beach. Very nice. As they have a connecting walkway across the street to their sister property, the Opal Sands Hotel.
So we got really excited because c- the two- Mm-hmm ... properties, it's almost 500 guest rooms and 80,000 square feet of meeting space. So even though we are a tier two destination, we still can host some of those larger groups.
Sharon Pare: I was just about to ask that, so thank you for segueing yourself into that. Okay, good to know.
Okay. 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: Yeah. So again, like we said, between the Opal [00:18:00] Sol and Opal Sands, up to 500 guest rooms. TradeWinds is our largest hotel on St. Pete Beach with 768 guest rooms. They can also be very creative because they can put tents on the beach, too, as does the Sheraton Sand Key up in Clearwater Beach. And TradeWinds actually held an event over there with 4,000 people.
It's rare that we do something like that, but the ca- capabilities are there. I think the maximum that Sheraton Sand Key has done has been about 1,200 utilizing those tents out on the beach. And that's the wonderful thing about this destination, is that they can utilize different things, meeting all day and then go have their reception or their dinner on the beach with their toes in the sand and a drink in their hand, perhaps.
And also, one of the other things that a lot of the groups seem to really enjoy in our destination is that they get the hotels to themselves. So I- I've heard the phrase they like to be a big [00:19:00] fish in a little pond So rather than being in one of those hotels that may have five, six, seven plus meetings going on at the same time, they literally have the whole hotel to themselves.
And that's one thing that they really enjoy doing. And then we're also renowned for the different things that we have available in our destination. So we do a lot of, uh, pre/post room nights for the groups because of that bleisure like Jill was talking about. They do like to stay at the end of their conference or at the beginning of the conference.
They'll have their family with them or just wanna relax for the weekend after the conference has finished. And we have different places like Tarpon Springs is our Greek sponge docks, and that actually is known for the world's largest Epiphany celebration. And they go out and they will dive for the sponges, which are natural.
And oh my God, the food is amazing. It really is . We love our food over here, too. And then we've got Dunedin, which is our little [00:20:00] Scottish village over there, and every April they host the Highland Games. We just had the Valspar tournament up at Innisbrook, which is another r- resort of ours, and we had golfers like Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka, and Justin Thomas that were playing there.
We have had Tiger Woods play there as well. We just closed up our Sugar Sand Festival on Clearwater Beach. That's 17 days of celebrating Clearwater Beach's most natural assets, the sugar sand and the sunsets. And there was over 1,000 tons of sand and 24,000 square feet of art exhibits. We also just had our Firestone Grand Prix in Downtown St.
Petersburg. A little bit like Monaco, they close off the streets of Downtown St. Pete and have the race over there. They literally close down the streets and they build that racetrack in Downtown St. Pete. It goes past the Dali Museum. We did actually get 1.6 million viewers at the Firestone Grand Prix. [00:21:00] So yeah, we have some really cool things that go on down here, and I'm gonna just segue into the Dali Museum because that's one of, one of the other things that we are famous for.
We have nine museums in Downtown St. Pete, including the Dali Museum, and Salvador Dali chose Downtown St. Petersburg for the only museum that he has outside of Spain. We also have the Chihuly Museum. Chihuly Museum is the only one outside of Seattle, which is where Dale Chihuly lives. And if you're not familiar with the Chihuly Museum, if you've ever been to the Bellagio in Las Vegas, it's where all the glass art is just everywhere.
Beautiful, too. Yes, these are really good. And we have 600 art murals in Downtown St. Pete right now. It's very much a vibrant, just an amazing destination. But you can't beat the beaches, like I said. So you have so many different choices of options, places that you can be I've done site tours with so many clients, and the more I get to know them and feel [00:22:00] what they're looking for, I'm gonna be, "Okay, downtown St.
Pete is gonna be for you, St. Pete Beach is gonna be for you, or Clearwater Beach is going to be for you." And that's another thing that we do at Visit St. Pete Clearwater. We live here. We know our destination, so we can help planners like Jill, if she's not quite sure what's gonna be the right fit, we can make recommendations for them.
We really can put the two things together. We can help our meeting planners as well find offsite venues. We've got some great offsite venues from sunset dinner cruises. We have some really cool boats that we can take up to 350 people for a dinner cruise right now at Starlight Cruises. We just had St.
Pete Athletic Club opened up, and that is pickleball. But their meeting space, believe it or not, is phenomenal. They literally have 18,000 square feet of meeting space in a pickleball venue. So again, we've got restaurants that we can do offsite venues. Clearwater [00:23:00] Marine Aquarium, oh my goodness me. They call it the Wall of Wonder because you can actually place your tables and your chairs in this particular area, and then you havethe whole glass aquarium where you can see the dolphins swimming past while you're having entertainment, while you're having, again, food and beverage for your group.
So we have some very cool venues. We can help the planners select everything like that. We highly encourage site visits for everybody. We want them to come down and see the destination. Our planners know their clients, and we know the destination, so you put the two together and it's a perfect combination.
And we will assist. We will arrange private transportation from the airport for the clients. We arrange all the accommodations, and we arrange the whole itinerary. And one of our amazing team members will literally take your client from A to B to C to D and be with them for the whole time and answer any questions that they may have.
And then like Jill was [00:24:00] talking about as well, we do have a lot of complimentary services available. One of the things that we have is a welcome sign at Tampa International Airport, so it can be "Welcome such and such group." And that's gonna be the first thing that they see when they arrive into our destination.
And there are 80 direct nonstop flights into Tampa within the domestic United States, and there's 20 direct nonstop international flights. So Tampa, again, a really easy airport to fly into. Voted the number two airport in the United States. We're very proud of that too. And you are literally 25, 35 minutes to get from the airport to the beaches.
And just coming from a couple of conferences myself in Los Angeles and San Diego, boy, that traffic's bad. You're not wrong. So it's a lot easier and a lot faster to get to our beaches, that's for sure. And then the other thing we do with the complimentary services, we have a lot of media and videos available.
We even send [00:25:00] out postcards if people want to go to the clients saying, "Save the date. Can't wait to see you in Clearwater. Can't wait to see you in St. Petersburg." Not many people get nice things in the mail anymore, but you can get a really great picture of the St. Pete or the beaches in our destination.
And we do have a few incentives available. So if it helps secure the group in our destination, reach out. That's what we're here for. We want our hotels to secure the business. We're there to help both the hotels and the planners. So anything that we can do, we're here for you. 
Sharon Pare: That's awesome, Stephanie. So thank you so much for that.
I wanted to shift over to a little fun section. A few things I wanted to ask about St. Pete Clearwater, and basically give our listeners a cheat sheet for some of the things they should do. Stephanie, you gave us a wealth of knowledge around the things to see, the Guinness Book of World Records, the new hotels.
Even Jill didn't know about one, and you gave her the news today, right? You heard it here [00:26:00] today. So Jill and Mihai, I want you guys to participate as well, but I wanna have a little bit of a fun time with this. And Stephanie, I know you've been in St. Pete Clearwater for about 19 years, so you might be our expert on this, but I'd love Jill and Mihai's take as well.
So beaches, if you all had to pick one, one at a time, which one would you go to? I- 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: I'm gonna jump in real quick over here. Like I said, I've been to so many different countries, and this is absolutely my favorite because of the beautiful white pure sand that we have. We have 35 miles of it, so I can't pick exactly which part.
You've gotta pick one, though, Stephanie. Gotta pick one. We g- we need to see a cheat sheet. 35 miles of beaches from St. Pete to Clearwater. How's that? Okay. All right. Jill, what about you?
Jill Stone: I like the Gulf areas of Florida 'cause their sand is beautiful. When I actually did take a few minutes last year with my client being at the Wyndham Clearwater, I had five minutes.
Yeah, and it was beautiful. And so I gotta say [00:27:00] Clearwater. It really does- That's Clearwater Beach ... and it's not painful to walk on- Right ... when you're trying to get to the water. 
Sharon Pare: How about you, Mihai? Your eyes lit up earlier when I said, "What is that one beach?" 
Myha Gallagher : Yes, that one beach absolutely is Clearwater Beach.
I am a California girl, grew up in SoCal. And so I never made my way out to Florida until we started working with St. Pete Clearwater. I went out for a meeting, stepped out onto Clearwater Beach, and I was like, "I get it. This is why everyone loves this place so much." Yeah. The sugar sand, that is such a perfect description for it.
It is ethereal, soft, amazing. Can't wait to go back. 
Sharon Pare: And the sunsets too, right? Everyone forgets, like, y- you can't catch that sunset on the east side of Florida, but just make your way out west, you'll watch a dolphin- jumping through on the, in the water and watching that sunset all at the same time, right?
Okay, next. Rooftop. Is there a rooftop, a hidden gem rooftop that you would recommend? [00:28:00] 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: The Canopy at The Birchwood, Downtown St. Pete. There we go. Start. All right. Canopy at The Birchwood. All right. Meha, how about 
Sharon Pare: you? 
Myha Gallagher : You know, I haven't been on a ton of rooftops in St. Pete/Clearwater also, but someone from the Visit St. Pete team did take me to this speakeasy where you had to walk through... It looked like a laundromat, and then you had to walk behind the laundromat, and you go into this- That's cool ... beautiful speakeasy. I don't remember the name, so if you're listening to this and you wanna go, hit up the Visit St.
Pete/Clearwater team. 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: It's actually called Dirty Laundry, and it's a really cool place because it looks like a laundromat, but they have a secret door that takes you into the speakeasy. So another great place that we have in Downtown St. Pete. 
Sharon Pare: That is very cool. That's why it's a speakeasy. Favorite local coffee shop.
Stephanie, looks like this one's for you. 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: Kahwa. It's K-A-H-W-A. 
Sharon Pare: Beautiful local really tasty coffee. [00:29:00] Okay. Awesome. All right. Famous landmark. Stephanie, I know you mentioned the Dali Museum. If you had to pick a number two, any other famous landmarks that people should be looking at while they're there?
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: Oh my goodness me, you're gonna ask me to pick one. Hang on a second. Just one. Just one. First come to mind. I'm gonna say the pier on St. Petersburg. It's relatively new. It's absolutely stunning. There's so many restaurants over there, just so many different things to do on our pier.
And again, you can hold a meeting there as well. They actually have 10,000 square feet of space at the pier that you're surrounded by water again- Yep ... on the Tampa Bay Area. Stunning. How about you, Jill? The Don 
Jill Stone: CeSar. Mm, you see that- Don CeSar ... pink building and you know where you are. Uh, and I, yeah, I was j- like I said, I was just there last year and as soon as we saw it, I was like, "Oh, I know where we are."
So again, yeah, [00:30:00] my, one of my favorite landmark anyway. Okay. 
Myha Gallagher : Meha? I would say the Chihuly. The glass art pieces are incredible and otherworldly and, like Stephanie said, the only other place to see them is either at the Bellagio or in Seattle. And yeah, it's a can't-miss if you go to St. Pete/-Clearwater. 
Sharon Pare: All right. This one's gonna be a tough one for all of you. Your favorite restaurant. Meha, I'm gonna start with you this time Oh gosh We'll leave Stephanie for last. 
Myha Gallagher : Um, I gotta say, every restaurant I've eaten at in St. Pete/Clearwater has been fantastic. But the most memorable dining experience I had was actually, it was outside of the Sandpearl Hotel.
They had set up those outside tents, and we were dining on this seafood buffet out on the beach, and it was just so incredible. My CEO and I talk about it [00:31:00] all the time because we're big seafood fans, and it was just so special. So any restaurant, and then also dining on seafood on the beach. 
Jill Stone: Okay. Jill? You can't beat the beach and the seafood.
I, uh, actually, the Wyndham's restaurant was really good. I know it sounds crazy to eat in a hotel. But some ... But it was ... They also have a, a patio that is right on the beach. And so we got a chance to do a little bit of both. So I really liked that restaurant. 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: Stephanie? One of my personal favorites is Caretta's on the Gulf, and it is actually inside the Sandpearl Hotel.
But I love their buffets that they do. They do a brunch. They'll do a Thanksgiving. They do a Christmas over there. And the attention to detail and just the standard of their food is superb. 
Sharon Pare: All right. We're about coming up on time. But what I wanted to ... Some final thoughts, right? So if an association planner listening today is considering [00:32:00] trying a secondary market for the first time, what would you want them to know about St. Pete-Clearwater? 
Stephanie Alexander-Priakos: I would just tell them to just come down and see for themselves. Jill, Meha, anything from 
Jill Stone: you two? Stephanie's right. They should see it. They should also really consider that because what they've been spending, maybe in some of the larger cities, they could get so much more in a smaller destination.
So they really should. And again, the beach. Can't beat it. 
Myha Gallagher : I'd say St. Pete/Clearwater is a slice of heaven. It turned a California girl into a Florida lover, and I can't say that there's any harder task than that. Thank you all. 
Sharon Pare: Jill, Meha, Stephanie, this has been such a fun conversation. I appreciate you all joining today and sharing your perspectives.
And honestly, it's really exciting to see St. Pete-Clearwater make a name for itself on the map and become a major player [00:33:00] in the meetings and events space. So thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOWw Presents: Industry Partners Series. 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.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts And for more information on topics impacting the association space, visit Associations Now online at associationsnow.com.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions sits down with Georgina Donahue, Director of Community Innovation and Strategy at Higher Logic, and Rachel Mace, CAE, Director of IT and Database at the National Pest Management Association, to discuss how associations can better understand members and use that insight to drive smarter strategy. They explain how most organizations have plenty of data but little usable intelligence because systems don’t integrate and staff lack a unified, individual-level view across programs, leading to decisions based on gut instinct and missed warning signs like “silent churners.” The guests distinguish reports from behavioral signals and patterns that predict engagement and renewal, share examples of targeted outreach and pandemic-era webinars boosting recruitment and retention, and discuss using engagement scoring, dashboards, and guidance to act at scale. They recommend auditing where data lives, focusing on high-signal sources, and making incremental improvements rather than chasing perfect data.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/QCQXIDc_cYI
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Series, an original podcast from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, Partnerships Director at Highroad, and your host of this series throughout the year. This episode is sponsored by Higher Logic. 
Today, we're excited to welcome Georgina Donahue, Director of Community Innovation and Strategy at Higher Logic, along with Rachel Mace, CAE, Director of IT and Database at the National Pest Management Association.
Our conversation today is about how associations can better understand their members and turn that insight into smarter strategy. Georgina, Rachel, welcome to the show. 
So I think this is something a lot of associations are quietly dealing with, so why don't we jump in? So let's start with something most associations don't want to say out loud. Most of them are making decisions about their members based on very [00:01:00] little actual insight. Why is that, and how common is it? 
Georgina Donahue: I think that most associations have more data than they've ever had, right? They have data coming in from all over the place. They have their AMS records, their event history. They have a community platform.
They have email opens, right? So they have this huge bulk of data, but the problem is that almost none of it actually talks to each other, so they end up flying blind even though they have this embarrassment of riches, but they can't access it. They don't know which members are thriving and which ones are drifting, which ones are gonna silently churn in a couple months from now.
And the problem actually is not just small organizations who don't have the resources to wrangle the data. It's large, sophisticated tech stacks see this problem as well because the data exists, but it's just really siloed 
Rachel Mace, CAE: Yeah, I would have to echo that. There's a lot of silos. [00:02:00] Almost every time I start a job at an association or even at a vendor that services associations, the first thing we have to deal with is untangle the glut of information that they have, what they want to actually access and use.
And then we also have to talk through, okay, once we decide what we're gonna use, how are we gonna get it there? Integrations remain such a huge problem with most associations. We find that our data lives in completely separate places, and that data doesn't pipe into new places very easily. So that's been a big issue, and it's not the association staff's fault.
We are not integration engineers. We are not high-level data scientists. We came here to work in the nonprofit industry and serve our members. We don't have a background in that expertise. So that data mess exists everywhere, large associations or small associations, and we find that more and more association professionals, whether they like to admit it or not, are starting to realize that they can't make decisions based on the gut anymore, which is how we were making decisions.[00:03:00] 
I can even recall way back in the 20-teens encountering a situation where an association professional said, "I have an idea. We're gonna use the power of social credit, so to speak, to get people to reach out to each other and encourage them to join the association." But the problem was this professional was working in a trade association environment, so the other member associations or prospect member associations were competitors, and it's very hard to convince a competitor to join the same association as you.
But their gut said, "I've seen referral campaigns work throughout the private sector or in professional societies where it's the individual that's the member." So they went with their gut, and that campaign didn't work out, and they thought this is a personal failure. It's not. It's just you didn't have access to the insights and data that you needed to safely feel you could experiment with those types of campaigns in a way that's a bit more controlled with a bit more information behind it 
Georgina Donahue: Yeah.
I think the other thing that we're seeing in the space is that [00:04:00] as our industry standards for social interaction and for engagement with for-profit brands, for social brands, anything, it rises, right? We're used to having the Netflix algorithm know exactly what show we want to watch next. We're used to logging into a new platform and selecting our content preferences immediately, and then having really sophisticated algorithms understand who we are, know who we are.
So at the same time that our association professionals are trying to sort through this, sometimes relying on that gut instinct, the base of members, their standards are rising because they're used to it in other areas, right? And so that gut instinct is becoming less and less effective for them because there was some grace, there was some buffer there, right?
And now members, because of what they're experiencing in the consumer space, do not have [00:05:00] that grace that they're willing to offer. They're a little bit more frustrated, and they expect us to know who they are, and they expect us to tailor and segment our message specifically to their journey 
Sharon Pare: I wanna dig into the gut instinct part a little bit later, but you, Georgina, talked about something you call the silent churner.
Can you explain what that is? Is that like the quiet quitter? I- is that a little bit similar? Tell us a little bit about that.
Georgina Donahue: It kind of is. It is. It's the most dangerous member that you have, because everybody has the members that are squeaky wheels, that maybe they're frustrated, maybe there's some dissatisfaction, and they are telling you the areas that they would like to see improvement.
While sometimes a sassy email might be difficult to receive in the moment, they are giving you very clear instructions about what they need in order to continue to receive value from the association. The silent churner is the most dangerous. They just go quiet, and then by the time they don't renew, they've already made the decision not to renew three or [00:06:00] four months ago, and they've already been quietly stepping away, so they stop attending events, they stop posting in the community, they stop sending sassy emails asking for their hopes and dreams to be fulfilled, right?
And many associations don't find out that a member has churned until the renewal doesn't come through, and it's way too late to make a change because there's already a history of taking a step back and looking for other resources for support. 
Rachel Mace, CAE: And this is an area where I feel like associations, their gut actually is probably correct.
They already know who's not gonna renew inside. We know that if you're a new member and you don't do enough with us in that first year, you're probably not going to renew. We know if you're an existing member and your engagement falls off, we know you're not going to renew. We know if you're nearing retirement, you're not gonna renew.
So we in our guts understand and know who isn't going to renew, but the challenge is identifying them proactively and being able to do something about it six months before that renewal cycle [00:07:00] hits. Because once you get to the renewal cycle, it's a little too late to ask someone to open up their wallet and invest in membership again.
So we really need intelligence to tell us, "Hey, I've flagged these bottom 20% of engagers. I need those people to do something, anything." And what they really need, I've always told this to people, is you need to put them in a low barrier to access activity, not something that's gonna require a huge outlay of cash.
If I'm new to ASAE, I'm not gonna tell you to go to the ASAE Annual Conference. That's a huge outlay of cash. But I might say, "Hey, why don't you go into ASAE Collaborate and ask a burning question? It's a private, safe space where you can ask something that maybe you wouldn't wanna ask on LinkedIn or publicly."
It's a great way to get me engaged, give me something sticky to do, and maybe I will think about that as I renew next year. It's not the big ask, it's the ask that's practical and reasonable for me, a low engager. But we as association professionals, [00:08:00] we know that the low engagers, those are the ones who are gonna silently churn, if anyone 
Sharon Pare: I want to unpack this a little bit more, and I know you started to dig into this a little bit too, Rachel, but what's actually causing this?
Why can't most associations see the full picture of their members? 
Georgina Donahue: I think the reason why it's so endemic across the entire sector is not because association professionals don't want to have a better view, or it hasn't occurred to them that a better view would be advantageous. I think that they're really, they really want this.
But the tools that they use were never designed to talk to each other by default, right? And a lot of times you're making really the decisions about your technology choices, about your technology s- stack. You are choosing best-in-class tools, right? And the best events platform and the best member management platform and the best education platform, but they weren't designed together.
They were designed separately. And so it means that [00:09:00] no single staff member has a unified view of the individual member, right? The membership team sees one thing, the education team sees another thing, the events team has a different perspective. It's all broken up, and it's organized by program, right? I can see which events had the most attendees, but it's not broken out by the individual human, by the person.
I don't necessarily just want to see, okay, which event topic was the most popular. I want to see, okay, who are my bottom 20% and which events did they say no to or yes to, and what kinds of conversations in the community pulled them in, and what kind of emails were most valuable to them? It's this lack of a unified view by individuals across programs is just really elusive.
Rachel Mace, CAE: Yeah, and it's not a problem with the association staff, although they often take the blame and feel guilty when they talk about this issue, but the actual issue is [00:10:00] an architecture problem. These platforms are sold to you, and one of the things that they're trying to give you is the best possible user experience.
So they want you to have the best possible user experience. So their investment when they deliver these tools to you, these best-in-class tools, is often on that user experience. Integrations is often a place where th- we forget, hey, we have to integrate this data, or we have to pull this data into some sort of central mechanism where we can see the whole picture of the whole member, and that's often thrown by the wayside because we wanna make sure that, A, member-facing things are good, and B, association staff user experience is good.
But when I worked in the vendor space, a lot of times integrations were the most frustrating things we had ever had conversations about because we had everything we needed to give the association staff what, what they were asking for, but then we would get held up by simple things like, "Oh, we can't integrate that data because that data doesn't really exist there.
It's a calculated column." And I'm like, "We can't get that calculated column?" And they're like, "No, we have to create a new [00:11:00] table." And you would go down these rabbit holes of these crazy blockers, and you're like, "Wow, how is it 2020 whatever, and I still cannot integrate my data relatively seamlessly?" And it's something that I'm not even seeing AI do a good job of addressing.
These integrations still continue to be a challenge. And I know that when I worked at American Bankers Association, when I first got there, I thought, "Well, I will have so many more resources to integrate the data and see that big picture of the member." And I remember walking in there at that big association with all the investment they can make in technology, and it's worse.
They have more systems, more layers, more silos. I'm like, "Wait, I can't even figure out who's engaging with each other in the community, and I work in membership." So I-- it can be even worse at big associations because you have layers of silos of people that are like, "I'm not gonna make you an admin in my system," or, "That's my system, and I don't really wanna pipe that data back there."
So we have this huge problem, and it's compounded by [00:12:00] silos. It's compounded by architecture. It's compounded by integrations. So even in 2026, where we expect AI will solve all our problems, this is something that I'm not sure that AI at this point can solve. 
Sharon Pare: So it really sounds more less a people problem and more of a systems architecture problem, right?
So I guess let's build on that. There's a difference between having data and having insight. What does member intelligence actually mean in practice, and how is it different from just pulling a report? 
Georgina Donahue: The data points that you gather are just the stuff that your systems log, right? The logins, the registrations, the email opens, all of that, right?
The signals and the insights are the story that multiple of those data points together paint for you, right? And you need to be able to pull from many different mediums in order to see the story that those data points are telling you. So behavioral signals are what actually predicts [00:13:00] engagement and renewal, and that's the narrative insight that you're really looking for.
So the signals that matter most aren't demographics or clicks or logins or sessions or anything like that. They're the patterns, right? The login frequency, the types of content that's being consumed. And so that's the difference between data and intelligence. It's the context. So a login, if you tell me a login to an online community, I can't really do very much with that.
But if you show me a member who logged in every single week for six months and then stopped logging in at all three months ago, that's a signal. Did the email go dead? Did you get a new job? Are you starting to feel like this is not the right place for you? Are you feeling boxed out? Is there a clique going on that you don't wanna enter into, right?
Things like that. And so those are the types of insights that we're looking for. I'll give an example, and I know Rachel has a really good example of [00:14:00] this too that she'll share. So I previously worked for an education organization, and we provided educational sessions and training, and there was an online community for all of the alumni of that program.
And we had resources about each of the courses in the community, and we were able to manually, mind you, because the architecture wasn't supporting us either, we were able to pull a list of everyone who had reviewed community library content on topic A, and then we cross-referenced it with everybody who had taken the course on topic A.
And we found about 50% of the people who were viewing those library resources hadn't taken the course, and we wanted to drive education. So we created a targeted outreach campaign and said, "Hey, I can see that you're really interested in this topic. I would love to support your development and ongoing education.
I have a course for you. It was so successful, Sharon. It was crazy. We were all [00:15:00] delighted. We had a 50% close rate and success rate on that course, and people were genuinely grateful and so happy. And so that is a story that we built from the data, and then a success-driving approach that we used to bring something really personal that came from that, that we never would've gotten from just how many people viewed library documents, right?
I know that Rachel has examples of this as well, when we finally wrangled the data enough to paint that picture. 
Rachel Mace, CAE: Yeah, and I'll lead with the example. So I had the privilege of working with American Bankers during the pandemic, and I say privilege because what I witnessed in terms of how they came together to serve their members was nothing short of jaw-dropping.
So as we went into the beginnings of the pandemic, we had some staff members become subject matter experts on what was going on with the virus, just general stuff from the CDC, and really being thoughtful about how they delivered that messaging. It was a [00:16:00] source of comfort for the staff and a source of kind of that predictable, what's the next step?
Where are we going from here? Is there a plan? And that person and the people supporting that person realized that this was so beneficial to the staff. The staff were giving a lot of good feedback. They took that feedback and said, "Maybe we should be offering this to our members." And they started these webinars offering that to that m- to those members.
And as we're seeing these members hop on these calls, we're also seeing that non-members are hopping on the calls, 'cause we didn't feel, at that point, it was a crisis, we didn't feel we should be exclusionary. What happened was a lot of these non-members getting on the call saw our commitment to delivering timely, relevant, and good information to our members.
They became members. We saw a jump in our retention rate and a jump in our recruitment rate as a result immediately during and following the pandemic because they were like, "Look, this is an organization that's going to support us even through the worst of times." And because we were [00:17:00] providing these resources and being intentional in how we evaluated that data, are we getting non-members coming?
Are we getting members coming? Okay, these five non-members came. Can someone give them a call? Because we were taking action and being very agile in what we were doing with that data, we were able to break records that I don't think even the highest level of management thought were possible, and that's because data is not about reporting.
It is not about sending a metric to your boss and saying, "Okay, we're up 200 members this year." Great. Awesome. It's about informing. We're up 200 members this year because it appears people really love the webinar series we did about the state of the industry. That's the story. That's the why. And if you cannot isolate these things to the why, and you're just reporting, you'll never move to that next step of growing.
And associations do need to grow because there's a lot of competition out there. And Georgina said earlier, the expectation is that you're listening to your members' behaviors. You're watching [00:18:00] what they do with you and adjusting your strategy to match that energy of what they're expressing to you via behaviors what they want.
Sharon Pare: Let's take a quick break for a word from our episode sponsor, Higher Logic. Higher Logic unifies your community, marketing, learning, events, and more into one connected engagement platform so every member touchpoint feels personal. With AI-powered campaigns and vibrant online communities, your members feel seen, supported, and excited to engage every day.
Because everything works together, your team spends less time managing technology and more time advancing your mission. Plus, you get built-in strategic guidance and hands-on support to boost retention and turn passive members into passionate advocates. See how Higher Logic is revolutionizing engagement by booking your demo at higherlogic.com.
So we talk about that bottom 20%, [00:19:00] so let's flip that for a second. On the flip side of the at-risk members, you also talk about power users, your most engaged members. Are most associations actually leveraging those people? 
Georgina Donahue: Yes, many are, but many wish that they were able to do so to a greater capacity, right?
Because engagement data is not just gonna tell you about who to save, and we've talked a lot about mitigating risks so far in this conversation. But engagement data is not just about who to save. It tells you who to invest in further, who to really give extra love and care and development to because they are really ready for it, and there's a benefit to your member, and there's a benefit to the organization as well, right?
And so the real heart and the real strength of any association is absolutely its members. And so everybody wants to find a way to leverage members for advocacy, for mentorship, for volunteer pipelines, for peer-to-peer recruitment, for board [00:20:00] leadership positions, anything, right? And that's where the real strength and kind of flywheel of success comes from.
So when you can identify the top 5%, 10% of engaged members, it's really likely that you are looking at a list of your next committee chairs, of your conference speakers, of your community moderators, right? And so if we can find a way to identify them and then throw more and more engagement opportunities to help level them up in their engagement maturity, then that is a win-win for everybody.
It feels really good to members to be recognized for your investment and for your desires to grow alongside an association, and it strengthens the organization to have more insight, more knowledge directly coming from the member base. 
Rachel Mace, CAE: And we at the National Pest Management Association do something I actually don't see at associations very often, but it's modeled a little bit after [00:21:00] DELP.
But I don't want to say modeled after DELP, because I don't want to not give them credit. They have done this phenomenal thing, and this is where they identify people who are relatively engaged, and they put them into a program that prepares them for leadership in a board or volunteer leadership in general.
It moves them to the next step educationally so that they always have an incoming class of people who are ready to be the leaders of that industry for the next generation. So one of the things that you wanna look for when you're looking for who might fit well isn't, "I've checked all the boxes." That's a big thing, especially at Association Linux, we would get clients that say, "I'll look for someone who's done a little bit of everything."
That doesn't necessarily mean that your pool of volunteers should come from there. Sometimes your pool of volunteers comes from somebody who attends the annual meeting many times. Sometimes that pool of volunteers comes from somebody who always attends your legislative day. You don't wanna misinterpret that the fact that someone's not engaging in all [00:22:00] the pieces of the pie as some sort of signal that they're not ready to engage as a volunteer leader.
It's a very big problem I think we have, because we're used to wanting to see parts of a whole, and we're like, "Okay, if you complete all five things, you're ready to go." Mm. But you need to meet people where they are. So when you look into your data, you wanna discover patterns. Rachel Mace goes to annual meeting every year, and sometimes she pops into MMCT, but she doesn't always go on to Collaborate, or she doesn't always attend webinars.
Does that mean that she can't be an effective board member? No, it means that maybe she values more in-person encounters than digital connection. So it's very important when you're looking through engagement data to realize that there's always going to be some level of interpretation here. Am I looking for somebody who checks all the boxes?
Probably not. You're looking for somebody who's engaged, and engaged in the way that fits best for them. And that's how you'll discover, when you go through this process, you're gonna have a hidden gem pile, where you're like, "Oh, wait a minute, [00:23:00] this person, we would have never considered as a volunteer, but they really should be a volunteer because they are participating in a meaningful way.
It's just maybe they're an introvert, and they're the inverse of Rachel, and they only want to participate digitally." They can still be an effective leader, even if they're more of a digital participator than an in-person participator. So it's very important as you look at your engagement data not to get too, I call it perfectionist.
Like, with your, with, check all the boxes and do all the things. No. Look for those hidden gems. Look for those insights where somebody is almost all digital. Think about different ways to look at that data, not just, you did an annual meeting, you did the Collaborate, you did this, you did that. Think of it more of, is somebody clustering their engagement in a certain modality?
Are they clustering their engagement in a certain season? Because they could still be an amazing and effective volunteer or a highly engaged member that helps build your membership further. 
Sharon Pare: So you've described a data problem that's really an architecture problem. Everything is siloed, right? We've talked about that at the beginning of [00:24:00] this podcast. What does it actually take to fix that?
Where does that technology come in? 
Georgina Donahue: It's a really good question. It's one that I am really excited about and think a lot about. We've talked a lot about how most associations, the reason that they're data dark isn't a lack of motivation, it's architecture, right? These tools are not designed to share information.
You can have five great platforms, and you still have a zero unified view of who your member is, right? And so it can be very tempting to be like, "Okay, my tools aren't talking to each other. I need different tools," right? The fix is not to replace everything. The fix is not to rip out all of your tools and try to slot in new ones.
It's convergence. It's creating a single space where all the signals from your existing systems can really come together so that then you do have the ability for an individual staff person to look at one screen and see the full member picture, right? And so at Higher Logic, we [00:25:00] know this is the path that is required, creating that converged space for existing tools, because we've invested so deeply in customer partnerships.
So at Higher Logic, we spearhead something, a group that's called the Customer Innovation Lab, and we have enlisted our members, our association members and customers, to really deeply co-create with us so that we're building exactly what they need, right? And so at any software organization, you need to know exactly what the problems are and exactly where the sticking points are in order to provide a solution that is actually going to create meaningful change.
One of the most exciting things about my role and the way that I interact with associations is by participating in this Customer Innovation Lab and co-creating alongside, right? And because of the fact that we haven't just assumed what's necessary, we're using feedback and ideation sessions that are fueling Higher Logic to [00:26:00] develop a new product.
We are creating a 360-degree view of your member, so a single source of truth that pulls together all of your members' activities across Higher Logic tools and systems, and every other system that your association uses, right? So you pull in the data from your AMS, from your email platform, your event tools, anywhere that you are gathering data and any surface area where those interactions are happening with your members.
We have built this tool with integrations at the center and visibility at the center. So for the first time- You can come in and you can look at one record, and you can see the complete picture of that member. And so you can finally know your member as well as they expect you to and as well as you want them to.
So you have your community behavior, your event history, content consumption, all of it in a single place. So I'm really excited to have [00:27:00] worked so closely with our customers and with association professionals to craft this solution and offer it back to the people that are doing such important work. 
Rachel Mace, CAE: And with that being said, you're giving us something new to work with, but the onus is on the association.
We're seeing this shift where vendors are like, "We want to give you what you're looking for." Then when we get what we're looking for, we as association professionals have a big job to do, and that first job is to make sure that our staff, 'cause architecture is a problem, but silos are, too. Our staff need to understand, hey, here is this new tool.
We don't need to silo our Higher Logic or our AMS. We don't need to silo these tools. We need to encourage staff members to get into these tools and start using that data. And if you sit in a role like I do, information technology and database, which is a big many hat role actually, your job also is to serve just like you would serve a member, is to serve your [00:28:00] staff and say, "Look, here is a tool you can use.
Here's what you can get from it. Let me know where the gaps exist," and encourage them to take some experimental leaps into these tools and start making informed decisions. Because a lot of times you'll deliver a tool to someone, and I know this from the vendor side, and they'll say, "Okay, now what?" The “now what” is you, and we need to find a way to come together as association staff.
It's not, "This is my member data over here" anymore. It's, "This is our member. How can we each make a difference serving them?" So part of the role of an IT professional in the association space is to socialize using that data, starting to experiment with that data, and making informed decisions using that data.
It- the onus has to be on someone. Someone has to take ownership of that, or that data will just sit there. You'll have an amazing tool, and that data will just sit there. So it's ex- incredibly important that as we get tools like this, not only do we [00:29:00] use them in the roles that are like the community manager, but we encourage the rest of the staff at large to take part in using these tools.
And then as we get using these tools, if there are deficits, rather than stop using the tool, it's important to relay back to our partners, like Higher Logic or other partners in the space, "Hey, you've built this tool. I really like this tool, but here's where it's not serving me." Because if you don't give that feedback to these vendors, they can't possibly know what you want.
They'll just know that you stopped using it, but they won't know the why. So it is on us also to give data back to them and say, "Okay, I'm having a hard time getting my membership and meetings team using this data because..." and then you answer that question. 
Sharon Pare: So now you have a unified member view, but most asso- associations have thousands of members, sometimes maybe tens of thousands.
How do you actually act on all that data at scale? How do you go from visibility to strategy? 
Rachel Mace, CAE: So this is something that frustrates me as an association professional because [00:30:00] a lot of tools will get you right to that point. I've even worked with several very brilliant people on a predictive tool, and it hands you on a silver platter the data.
It says, "Oh, these are the people that are likely to renew. These are the people not likely to renew." You get that, and then your customer said, "Okay, now what?" You're like, "Well, do something with it." They're like, "What do I do?" And this is because association professionals have a very unfair lot in life because they are expected to be data scientists, strategic professionals, executives.
They're expected to be so many roles, all those hats we always talk about. But at the same time, when you get all this data, you're like, "I don't want to put anything at risk by making a decision I shouldn't make, and this is a little outside of my normal purview." So you have this discomfort with what do I even do with this information?
Georgina Donahue: And I completely agree with Rachel that visibility is step one, but then what are you supposed to do with [00:31:00] it after? Once you have the information, what's the next step? And so the answer there is really surfacing and support. And we, as a vendor that supports associations, think a lot about that. Not just how do I hand the data over, but how do I fully support this group of professionals and help guide them through the best choices based on the data that we have, right?
So one of the things that we've been working on, and that I have the honor of working on directly, is using dashboards and engagement scoring to let the data tell you where to focus. So you shouldn't have to dig through every single record. The system should show you. The system should say, "Here's your at-risk members, here's your power users, here's your enga- engagement that's trending, and here's the next step.
Here's what most people tend to do when they have these types of results. Here are the best practices for how you fix this problem. Here [00:32:00] is the triaging phase," right? "Your data shows this. Here's the diagnosis. Here's the most likely approach that is going to create a positive outcome for you." So that's one of the things that we're building with Higher Logic's new suite of dashboards, specifically for the community product, is really surfacing all of the engagement signals that matter across your full community member base and pairing them with the actions and next steps, right?
We don't just want to give people a chart. We want to give them a pathway, guidance on how to interpret your data, validated recommendations for next steps based on years of community data from our user group, HUG, right? All of the next steps, the signals, the things that point you towards the areas to focus next.
And that way you can really support your membership base without burning out your staff, asking them to do 200 different jobs at an A+ level 100% of the time. Of course, support is [00:33:00] required. 
Rachel Mace, CAE: And I'm very excited about this development because a lot of associations, even big ones, don't have a really big community staff looking at that data, working with that data, fostering the engagement in the platform.
So having this is like having an unpaid assistant on your staff. Now you have somebody kind of serving up this information to you so that you can just be action-oriented. More actions, more experimentation, more work, as opposed to more chasing numbers or reporting numbers. So I'm extremely enthusiastic to see what comes out of this.
Sharon Pare: Because visibility alone isn't enough, right? You want to actually do something with it. All right, so let's make this real. Rachel, let's turn this to you. Let's talk about what actually changes day to day for association staff when they have this kind of member intelligence. How does a job look different?
Rachel Mace, CAE: So one of the things that we were working on in Association Analytics, myself and Heather were talking through what do we inform people about what their job will look like? Because a lot of [00:34:00] times there's a little bit of fear. Okay, I have all these tools now that are doing part of my day-to-day. It's painful work.
No one loves doing VLOOKUPs all day, but at the same time, you're like, "What am I going to do next?" I want to give you hope. This means that you get to use the whole part of your brain. Your job is no longer reacting to data, reacting to numbers. Now you're proactive. Now you get to be strategic. You get to grow, you get to experiment.
You get to actually move the needle on what members want and value. And if something doesn't, you can factor in, "If this doesn't work out, we'll pivot to this." Factor in your pivots. This will make your career so much more robust. Now you're becoming an expert in these types of decisions, as opposed to a reactor who reports numbers.
And if you really want to grow as a professional, it's important for you to get ahead of reaction and start thinking proactively about doing something new. One of the things that really attracted me to NPMA was that even though they have data challenges, they're extremely proactive. They're like, "Let's get [00:35:00] ahead of this.
Members seem to be talking about this. I see enthusiasm behind this." They look out at the marketplace, and they react to those inputs, even though they have to do a lot of it manually, because they are essentially a member-driven decision engine, not a member-driven reporting engine. And they spend less of their time digging and sifting through numbers, and now that they've hired me, I can dig and sift a little bit for them so that they can actually get some validation behind these programs.
But they run on all cylinders member facing. Member facing is the ultimate and first priority, and I would love to see more of that in the association space, because a lot of times we get stuck in our job or we're just reporting internally. We're almost invisible. But once you get out there, your entire staff is fostering relationships with the members that they serve, you're going to see that your members become obsessed with your association.
They're like, "This is somewhere I want to be. I want to be a part of this." Naturally, just by you engaging in that way with your members, your membership will start becoming more sticky. [00:36:00] Your meetings will have a feel of authenticity and enthusiasm that they didn't have before. So it's important to embrace that part of that slugging through reports may be a p- a thing of the past.
Embrace these tools and get out there and start producing things that your members can see and give you feedback on, ultimately value. 
Sharon Pare: For an association that's still flying blind right now, no unified views, decisions based on that gut instinct we talked about earlier, what's the one thing you'd tell them to do first?
Georgina Donahue: I think they're gonna take this advice, Sharon, because the picture and the beautiful vision of the future that Rachel just painted is so exciting, and I'm betting that folks are gonna be really galvanized by that. I would say that the first step is do an overview, take an-- Start with an audit of where your member data actually lives today.
And I'm not talking about the kind of hopeful interpretation of where it should be or the vision of the [00:37:00] future just yet. Where is it actually? And list every system that knows something about a member that you use to make decisions about serving your members, right? And then ask which of those systems has the richest signal source.
Where are you getting the insights from? Where does the story start to jump out at you from in terms of those systems? For most associations, it's community behavior that is the m- that is the richest, the logins, the posts, the replies, and also event data, what people are attending, because those signals are reflecting active engagement more than passive receipt, right?
So that tends to be where it will come from. But of course, look at what makes sense for you. It might be different in your association, so look at that. And then, of course, I also recommend keep an eye on us. Keep an eye on Higher Logic. This is gonna be a really exciting second half of this year, and I am so jazzed to bring this to the space, [00:38:00] because that unified view of your member that is deeply built on visibility, highly sophisticated integrations that you're supported through, as well as dashboards and data that walks you through the next steps, is gonna be an incredible game changer.
And there's all sorts of, of kind of fun and really powerful features that are in there. Dynamic list building, show me everyone who this story applies to, those types of things, as well as automations. And of course, there's a little AI mixed in there, too, as every new product has. And so I'm really excited to see what types of changes happen there.
But for today, start with where the data actually lives. Look for the systems that are giving you the richest signals and the most compelling stories. 
Rachel Mace, CAE: I totally agree, and I will add a piece of advice that I have said for years and I wish that more people would take to heart. And I'm talking to myself first because this was a hard point for me to change in my own personal professional journey.
[00:39:00] I am the culprit of this more than probably anyone else, but stop chasing perfection in data to make decisions. The longer you slug over validating data, the longer you go through the process of, is this the right data? Is it perfect? Most people also are fighting over the last 5% of data and then not making decisions because the last 5% isn't correct.
Instead, enough for a trend, that's all you need to start making decisions. Stop chasing perfection. Get good enough to make an incremental improvement and make those incremental improvements, observe, and then improve more. I have a prioritization board right now, and it's all based on incrementalism. I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel with our tech stack overnight.
It's let's use this one feature. In fact, I'll be finding people at Higher Logic Super Forum to ask a couple of questions to make the user experience for our staff members better on the Higher Logic side because I want incremental improvements so we can continue progressing how we use these tools. [00:40:00] So today you could go look at your members up for renewal if that's the time of year for you, or if this is the time of year where you're opening up registration for a major conference in the fall, look for one incremental improvement you might be able to make to that process.
Can I send a better letter to my members before I even invoice them? Can I send them a quick survey or some sort of communication? Can I normalize talking about what we've done throughout the association throughout the year before I send out the invoice so they know, hey, I'm not just asking you for money, I have delivered for you this year.
Do one thing, monitor it, look at it. Don't wait for perfect data and say, "Look, data's pointing to this being pretty effective. Let's expand on that." Incrementalism, stop chasing perfection, and I think you will see a huge payoff from that effort. 
Sharon Pare: Rachel, Georgina, this has been a really incredible conversation.
I know we could talk more about it, and I know you've got a big conference next week to be able to really [00:41:00] dig into this with your users and of course your clients as well. There's a lot of really practical insight here for associations, so again, thank you so much for taking the time today. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents Industry Partner Series. 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 want to give a big thanks again to our episode sponsor, Higher Logic. For more information or to book a demo, visit higherlogic.com. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on topics impacting the association space, visit Associations Now online at [00:42:00] associationsnow.com.

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP, CEO of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, is joined by Francisco Gómez, Founder and CEO of Factum Global, and Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE, Senior Director of Data and Insights at YPO, for a timely conversation on how geopolitical disruption is reshaping the association landscape. They explore the slowdown of trade globalization, increasing travel and visa challenges impacting events and engagement, and the growing tension between taking action and staying silent as political issues intersect with mission-driven work. The discussion emphasizes the importance of clear, grounded communication with boards, along with practical strategies like scenario planning and tabletop exercises to prepare for uncertainty. The group also examines how associations can stay agile without compromising their core mission, including the role of AI in monitoring trusted information sources and the value of incorporating diverse global perspectives. As the conversation unfolds, they point to a more fragmented, multipolar world, rising cyber and data risks, and evolving member expectations—offering insight into how association leaders can navigate what comes next.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/hc8BmpdGDhw
 
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
 
Transcript
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: [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 Gary LaBranche, Chief Executive Officer of RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society. I am delighted to be joined on this podcast with Francisco Gómez, founder and CEO of Factum Global, a boutique consulting firm specializing in international expansion, market analysis, and strategic growth. Also, joining us is Pietro Macchiarella, senior director, data and Insights at YPO, the world's largest community of chief executives that come together to become better leaders and better people. I've said a little bit about each of you, but if you could tell us a little bit more, starting with you, Francisco.
Francisco Gómez: Thank you, Gary. Pleasure to be here with you and Pietro. As you said, I founded Factum Global, a firm that [00:01:00] specializes in helping both for-profit companies as well as associations and nonprofits expanding internationally. We focus on truly helping organizations understand where to go, how to do it, and how to sustain that growth, and doing this for the last 20 years or so, and delighted to be here.
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Excellent, Pietro. 
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: Thank you Gary. I'm Pietro. Good to be here with both of you. As you said, Gary, I work for YPO, which is the largest organization of CEOs. We have 37,000 member members in hundred 40 countries, so as international as it gets. And myself, I am very international. I've grown up in Europe, I've lived in three different countries in Europe and then moved to the US about 20 years ago. I'm also the chair of the ASAE International Association Advisory Council, which right now is a great place to be because we are the center of, of the storm in a way, supporting associations in their international experience or trying to international.[00:02:00] 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Fantastic. Both of you obviously have a tremendous non-North American experience, and I'm just curious. Currently the world is experiencing what we, in the risk management community, call geopolitical disruption, which is a fancy way of saying chaos is abounding in the our current world today and associations and corporations.
Consumers and people in business have to try to navigate all of that, and that's uncharted territory to say the least. Pietro is, your group is international as it gets. What does geopolitical disruption mean? How are you in seeing it impact YPO? 
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: So first of all, disclaimer from the lawyers: These are my personal opinions and not the ones of my employer.
I will say the one, some of the assumptions that we are taking for granted up until now are gone. If you look at it as being a constant. Since the, at least the 1990s, uh, I think the, [00:03:00] there is an index, I think it's the World Bank has an index that shows the trade ness where you look basically at the imports and export globally.
And you divided by the, the GDP, the global GDP and the index has been growing like crazy. In fact, I think it's being twice as fast as, as a global GDP growth in the past 20 years. And so. We went from, again, trade being about 30% of global GDP to being 60% or more. And then suddenly this has come to a halt.
Everything is being questioned again. And so obviously there's a, this has an impact on any membership organization. In fact, I feel like we are actually more impacted than our members. Uh, because if you think about the, the true political uncertainty affects the, the members themselves. So their companies, if you're a trade organization or in our case a business organization affects the way you operate the, the association and also affects all the members interact with each other.
So it's a, it's a triple head and [00:04:00] obviously that that impacts everything that you do. At the same time, I'm the eternal optimist and one thing that I do say is the problems are often opportunities and if very often we are. Nice to have for members, all of us in the association space. But when there is a crisis, we become actually a must have if we are relevant and if we are relevant to what they need at the moment.
So I do think that right now what I see is actually a bigger relevance for organizations like ours because we are, we are helping members when they need us. 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: That's interesting. So if you are truly valuable, uh, and relevant, you'll be more valuable and relevant in times of poly crisis or chaos, or when the world is not going according to what we had thought it would.
Francisco respond to that. Are you seeing that in your practice? 
Francisco Gómez: Yes, of course. I do think that the main thing, however, is that for associations, your political disruption is truly no longer [00:05:00] something that is happening out there. I think we used to see that as a side thing where we're gonna keep this in scenario planning and we're gonna think about the what ifs, but it was not as real and it is now showing up in a very practical ways.
When you think about travel decisions, event planning, member expectations, partner relationships, sanctions, they are privacy concerns. Reputation, right? So it's all over the place. And what makes it especially difficult is that associations have traditionally tried to stay away from politics. But today I think that this is much harder because there is risk not only in taking action, but also in not taking action.
And that creates tension because associations want to focus on policy and not politics, but in a lot of cases it are now intertwined. So the real challenge is not just whether to speak. But how do we speak in a way that is consistent with mission and values? In the past, many associations tried to stay away and above [00:06:00] politics, but today's silence can be read as a statement too, right?
So that's something that I think most associations are wrestling with right now. 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: So you touched on two, I think, very important pieces there. One. One is that external issues really are internal, even down to when and how we travel. That's a pretty internal, pretty internal issue. And then secondly, the whole idea that you, by not engaging, you are saying something by not speaking out, by not engaging with the chaotic world as it is that can be read, can be viewed as negatively as if you said something.
And I think that's especially true the more. That the association presents to the world, the more engaged with the world. So I was thinking as you were talking, I was thinking for RIMS, one of the ways that we primarily relate to the world is through our certification program, which is growing more rapidly outside of North America than inside North America.
Uh, but also through our convention, which we call Risk World, we bring about [00:07:00] 11,000 people together every year. And Risk World just isn't an educational conference. It's a commercial marketplace. It is the world's largest commercial insurance B2B marketplace, and people from all over the world come there to place their insurance, to buy insurance, the commercial insurance.
So it's actually a very critical part of the whole value proposition to the commercial insurance world. But this year we're seeing a definite impact on some people not being able to get. A visas or not being able to get visas in time to come to the convention in, in Chicago, uh, in Philadelphia also, one of our students, we student groups, we have a, with our partner, Spencer Educational Foundation, we provide a platform for, uh, international student competition in risk management and one of the universities from Africa.
I'm not able to get a visa so far. So we're trying to work through those issues, but this, this constant chaos that we're seeing, the changes [00:08:00] of rules, regulations, consumer preference in, in the case of Canada, we're also seeing significant pullback from our Canadian friends who just don't want to deal with the American economy right now.
How are you communicating those kinds of risks to your stakeholders, to your leaders and board members and others that are important to your organizations? 
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: So I think that there is a difference between maybe concern and panic, and I think panic happens when there's no plan. My, my opinion of that's when leadership to step in, when, particularly when talking to the board, it's really about transparency and having a plan.
So do some scenario planning. Look at what we know, what we don't know, what potentially the consequences of things will be. These are, I think this is the way you moderate some of the risks. Uh, otherwise, again, panic kicks in and that's never a good thing because usually decisions made under panic are not ideal.[00:09:00] 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: That's interesting. Uh, Francisco? 
Francisco Gómez: Yeah, I think I agree with everything. Uh, Piera is saying, I think the key is to communicate in a way that is candid but not alarming. The boards are, and the stakeholders in general do not need drama. They need context. They need scenario thinking. You were talking about that piera and clarity about what the organization is watching.
I usually think in terms of three questions, what is the risk? What is the potential impact? What are we doing about it? It really, that is the conversation you wanna have with the board. And within that question of what is the risk for those watching that may know me, I talk extensively about the risk of inaction, right?
And is related to what we spoke about earlier, is acting has a risk, but not acting has also a risk. And in many cases, that risk could be greater for certain organizations. That helps turn uncertainty into management, and it also helps people understand that risk is not always a reason to stop. In 2025, I saw a lot of organizations stopping.
[00:10:00] Sometimes they were just thinking that things are gonna get back to normal, or let's see what happens in 2026. I see the same organizations realizing this chaos that Gary, you were talking about earlier, is just the world we live in, and we need to learn to live with that and figure out how to proceed more carefully.
The goal is not to eliminate uncertainty, but the goal is to make it manageable. Those of us that have been dealing in international business for years and have been working in countries that are less sophisticated in terms of rules and regulations and those types of things, we're used to that kind of chaos.
So we need to bring that thinking to everything that is happening now and understand this is really not new. It's new in this context, but it is nothing that we haven't faced before. I like the fact that I'm seeing that mentality shift in executives in the association world, and I see them taking action, which I think is very important.
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: As you were speaking, I was reminded of a [00:11:00] quote by Peter Drucker, one of the greatest writers on management theory and management practice, Peter Drucker. He said The danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence. It's. Thinking and acting with yesterday's logic in mind, right? So we have to retrain, relearn our approaches because we can't solve the problems of tomorrow the same way we helped create those problems yesterday.
So that turbulence is not the problem. The problem is the way we think about turbulence or don't think about turbulence. 
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: Yeah, no, I love what you both said. I was gonna add that I think there is, there's one thing that is non-negotiable, which is the mission. That's what we do. That should not change no matter what the crisis is or whatever the context is, how we do it, that changes and that's the flexibility that I think becomes much more important under the current circumstances.
And I think that's what sort of where I see that the majority of the impact is really now we do things and for example, you were talking about [00:12:00] the having an annual event where. It becomes much more difficult to get, and these, for example, from different parts of the world. So maybe the next step is to regionalize some of these events.
And I've seen some organizations associations actually do that. So maybe duplicate that one big event in the us, one in Europe and suddenly you're not dependent on one big event anymore, but you have now the option for members to attend either one. And so again, that how we do it is where you can actually, the biggest impact.
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Hey, I was wondering, as you're talking and I'm listening and processing what you're saying, I'm curious, have you ever done a desktop exercise with your stakeholders, your board members, your management team, desktop exercises for, or our listeners? Uh, our scenarios that you make up in advance, you craft a scenario in advance.
I just used chat GPT yesterday to create one on geopolitical shock plus supply chain and market disruption. It spit back out to me. [00:13:00] Scenario overview with some key stress points and then some exercise objectives, and that it takes you through a 60 to 90 minute process, including things that you drop into the exercise as shockers or stressors to the systems, things like that.
Different timed injections where key decisions have to be made. Have you ever worked with any of those type processes? 
Francisco Gómez: Yes, we do it all the time. As consultant, helping organizations expand internationally. You can imagine the scenario planning is a huge part of it and it keeps evolving though, and in an environment like this, the thinking also needs to be evolve.
It used to be that we would sit down with boards and try to come up with a five year strategy, and it would be a beautiful, shiny piece of paper that boards and executives would use to communicate this is what we're gonna do in the next five years. That is no longer as useful as it used to be. Yes, you have to have a north, you have to have a vision, understand where you want to be in the next [00:14:00] several years, but the pathways to get there are very different, and you need to understand in advance what happens if, right?
So what happens if we go into our preferred pathway and A or C happens then? Where are we going next? Are we going to the V pathway? Are we gonna run some pilots in parallel? How do we start testing some of these avenues to make sure that our strategy is resilient to those changes? So it's not about, and we said this earlier, it's not about avoiding the chaos, we're avoiding the changes that are happening around us, but is how do we build an organization that is adaptable and nimble so that when things start to show up, we're monitoring.
We can see where things are starting to, to look like they're gonna come our way, and we have a plan to navigate those things because we have discussed those possibilities. It's impossible to predict everything that may happen, but I think you can predict certain things. [00:15:00] And what happens if there's a war?
What happens if there's another pandemic? What happens if all of a sudden our number one source of revenue goes away? We have several associations in 2025. That loss substantial revenue when the U-S-A-I-D agency will disappear, they, the appendant is on the contracts in that organization and they found themselves in a situation that they were not anticipating.
So what happens? They could have anticipated that, right? We have X percentage of revenue attached to a single source. What happens if that source goes away? So we could anticipate U-S-A-I-D was going to be disappearing, but we could have anticipated that something could have happened that would jeopardize that source of revenue and we should have been preparing to navigate and try to diversify and get away from that dependency etra.
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: Yeah, likewise, I work for an organization that objectively is extremely healthy. We have [00:16:00] 95% renewal rate, 96% we have, we grow very healthy and everything is great. But the good thing is also I work for some business leaders. So they are used to being paranoid a little bit and what could happen potentially will disrupt our model.
So this is basically my daily life. But it's very interesting how we are gonna see also from, from like how the external environment potentially can impact competition. So what competition potentially can come out of nowhere that we are not expecting. So this is an exercise for example, that we're doing right now where we are looking at how, again, the external environment.
Potentially creates new competitors. So that's, so that's something that is very interesting and I, in fact, I advise anybody who's listening to, to think about that, even if things are going great, just think about potentially what are your, your core competitive advantages and which ones are also the ones that can be disrupted more easily by existing or a new incoming competitors.
And [00:17:00] just see how you can evolve to protect them. 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: So I work for. Bunch of risk managers. Professional risk managers, so risk awareness is front and center in, in all things at all times. Although I, I always, when people say, oh, it must be terrible working for people who are just always worried about risk, it's, it's much more nuanced and strategic than just worrying about.
Bad things that can happen. It's, it really is thinking through the different scenarios and looking for the opportunities and meshing that into our overall strategy. We have a formalized enterprise risk management process where we're constantly and certainly annually, a, a deep dive, but. Continuously evaluating our potential risks and how we might mitigate those or transfer those risks or reduce their potential impact to us.
So it's been fascinating working with them, and I've always been amazed at how willing they are to take thought through [00:18:00] strategic risks, because anybody in the risk management will tell you, but part of the reason that companies and hospital systems and university systems engage in risk management is to grow.
So getting back to this opportunity for where can we find the growth opportunity in these times of chaos, I think is important. Before I forget, I did wanna throw in a couple of things for our listeners. There's a lot written out there about risk, trend, trends and risk and that sort of thing, and we just wanna point out a couple every January, the World Economic Forum.
Publishes an annual global risk report or risk survey, and this year it was issued on January 14th, 2026, about six weeks before the current war in Iran began. And interestingly, the number one expected issue was. Geopolitical confrontation, which was seen more as an economic issue, tie it back more to the [00:19:00] tariffs and that sort of thing.
This, but the number five of the 10 expected risks for 2026 was in fact. State-based armed conflict or war as we think of it today. Very interesting that in January, and this is a survey of hundreds and hundreds of, uh, risks in business professionals, that geopolitical risk, geopolitical conflict was very high on the list.
They also asked what are the longer term risks 10 years out, and almost all of them. Were, or the bulk of them were environmental related, major weather risks, that sort of thing. And only one or two, one or two were, uh, social issues, inequality and that sort of thing. And a few more were technological, but none.
Geopolitical or armed conflict, which I found to be very interesting. Short term, a lot more potential conflict, longer term, more climate change kinds of issues. So there's a number of these indexes. Aon, [00:20:00] the insurance broker publishes one BlackRock. Publishes a geopolitical index and that sort of thing.
Mark on your calendar at the end of the fourth quarter every year, just start doing Anu some searches and get an AI agent out there looking for some of these and maybe provide you with a summary report of what the consensus views are of, are there out there, where do you guys go for your, uh, information?
What sources do you go to manage your way of thinking to guide your analysis? 
Francisco Gómez: Have, one of the things that we advise our clients is to stay on top of technology, and I have to try to leave the same principles that I preach. I build some agents with AI to help me stay on top of, rather than new them, strict guidelines as to which kinds of sources.
You mentioned a Capital World Economic Forum, United Nations, certain news outlets that I trust and it, it feeds me the information on what's. [00:21:00] Happening and then I can go and follow up and try to see what else is out there. So today it's very easy to stay on top of this. It used to be the this thing of trying to look for things, but now you have a way to serve, very easily build agents for information that is gonna be coming to you at the right proper time.
So I highly recommend doing that. I also wanted to mention very quickly, since you were talking about some of these resources, I am part of the A SAE. Executive Management advisory Council, and they recently put out, and I'm talking about in the last two weeks, my colleagues developed a discussion guide on navigating politicized issues.
I highly recommend it. I think it's a 11 or 12 page document. That is helping associations think through this. You can find it on my own LinkedIn. I shared it on ASAE Collaborate or simply reach out to ASAE. I'm sure they'll guide you to the right place to get the guide, but I think it's association leaders helping other association leaders think [00:22:00] about some of the issues that we're discussing right now.
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: Yeah, very cool. Francisco. I can add something like that as well because we, as the International Association's Advisory Council, we actually provide a lot of content to members as well. So we have almost a, pretty much a monthly webinar on hot topics. So if anybody's interested in anything international and associations, please keep an eye on our webinars because there is a lot of content.
In fact, we just did one on. When to speak up, for example, when it was extremely hot topic. But going back to your original question, Gary, one thing I love what Francisco said about basically having AI gather, gathered some uh, news sources for you. One thing I also to do is to look at different perspectives on news.
So one of my daily routine is actually when I wake up, I look at European newspapers when I'm still in bed, I read different, luckily I speak different languages so I can see how they tackle some of the issues and then. In the evening, I usually read Wall Street [00:23:00] Journal or some American media just to see the different perception of, and the relatively importance of different issues that maybe for us are not as as important.
So I also recommend if you can look at the international perspective a little bit, see how other countries are reacting to different pieces of. 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Get out of your own bubble, then get out of your own echo chamber and look for those diverse sources and resources that you know might not stumble over in the normal course of events.
Francisco Gómez: A hundred percent. 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Interesting. Francisco, do you have something to add? 
Francisco Gómez: No, I just say that that's critical because it's harder and harder to just get the news these days. They come with opinions. So 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: yeah, 
Francisco Gómez: we have to make sure that we look at different sources to try to get our own idea of what's actually happening.
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Thinking about that for a second, thinking about the longer term, as we start to bring this podcast to an a conclusion, think about another, a different time horizon of say 24 months or thereabouts. Where's your head at [00:24:00] and where would you suggest other association professionals ought to start thinking about the next series of trends or the continuation or cascade effect of these trends?
What do you see in the future that we should be thinking about today? 
Francisco Gómez: There are a few, right? Obviously, one is the direction of US policy and trade, whether we like it or not, that is impacting the world. This serve continued geopolitical instability is something that we have to think about. You were mentioning Gary travel and vision friction.
I think those issues are going to continue to be increasing with everything that is happening. But I, I do wanna say that. A lot of economists out there for years. Were talking about de-globalization and everybody just going inward and staying away from the world, and we have disagreed from the very beginning.
I don't think that's happening. I don't think that will happen. What we're seeing is a reconfiguration of how we do global business. We see new alliances and partnerships and [00:25:00] trade. Routes that are emerging, and so this global trade will always be there, but we have to take a look at those frictions that we're looking at.
Aside from that, I think obviously cyber and data risks are huge and how AI is changing member expectations and operating models, and this is something that should be at the forefront of any association thinking is not whether we like it or not, is when will your. Operating model, be truly impacted by all of this, and how do you anticipate it and take advantage of those things.
And more broadly, I think leader should prepare for a more fragmented world. Fortunately, like I said, we're gonna see some of these alliances happening. That's gonna create a lot of opportunity, but it's not going to be as easy to navigate as it one was. It's not about being pessimistic, it means being ready.
The organizations that do well. We'll be the ones I think that can adapt quickly without losing sight of who they are. [00:26:00] Pietro was talking about mission. I think that's critical. I think the future will reward associations that are globally aware, strategically selective, and operationally resilient, which I think is very important, is how do we go from strategy to execution and how do we do that properly?
Pietro Macchiarella, MBA, CAE: Francisco, I think you've said it so well. I don't know if I can add anything more so eloquently, but I will say that I also see, I think the sort of polarization of the world, the creation of different regional interest areas, and I think that's part of the thing that will impact how you, you do business around the world.
I also think that there is probably some economic pressures that will happen depending on the different. World economies go and people know. I tend to be still optimistic about the US economy, not so much about maybe Europe. I think that the interesting thing about Asia is that is probably being affected at least short term by oil right now.
And so I don't know what will be the long term impact of that. [00:27:00] Of course, I think you mentioned Francisco technology. I think AI is also sort of, it's an opportunity. It's a great opportunity, but it's also a concern. I was on a call yesterday where as an alman was one of the speakers, and I could see actually in the executives, so AI executives, even some concerns from themselves, meaning this can be a.
Thing from Manco, but it can also be potentially a threat if we don't manage it well. And so that obviously has an impact also on associations and how we manage it for our members and in the interaction with members. Yeah, I think these are my main points. 
Gary LaBranche, FASAE, CAE, AAiP: Thank you. You've both touched on something that's been on my mind and on my radar, and that goes back to the, the, the Trump administration's national Security Strategy white paper, which really explicitly said, we're no longer gonna be us in charge of everything, right?
We're gonna be in charge of our stuff, and you all be in charge of your stuff. So bringing to an end the era of a US [00:28:00] dominated world order, and going back to, I think both of you touched on the idea of multipolarity. In other words, there'll be different regions of influence around the world.
Engineer the way supply chains work, the way sourcing works, the way workflow proceeds, where migration patterns happen, all of those things and that, and also where knowledge flows. So that will be, I think, very interesting for those of us in the association space. So that multipolarity concept, to see where that takes us long term.
We've all, we've spoke, spoken about AI and I couldn't agree with you more I think. It, it's not, in my view, it's not a question of will AI impact us, but to what degree will AI reshape the world of work and reshape the kind of the relationships that we have as individuals and the synergy or collaboration or lack [00:29:00] thereof or lost thereof between organizations.
I think AI and now it's about the impacts of AI on all on, on all of that. And then think lastly, the, the idea of we as individual leaders. How are we adapting and changing to the challenges that are in front of us? Because going back to Drucker, the problem with turbulence is not turbulence. It's the way we think about turbulence and the idea that we have to change our mindset in order to keep up with this new deck of cards that we're being presented through.
Whether it's geopolitical, chaos, or the new world that we're looking at, I think it's gonna be especially true if GDP grows at 2% versus 3%. If US GDP grows at 3%, we have an entirely different, very optimistic forecast in front of us. If we grow at 2% or under it, things get a lot tougher, a lot quicker for a lot of people.
That's it [00:30:00] for us. We gotta wrap this up. So let me just say 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.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on topics impacting the association space, visit associations now online at associationsnow.com. Thank you all very much for listening, and thank you to my panelists, Pietro and Francesco.
Many thanks for your help in trying to decipher and discover where we're going in the future. Appreciate it. Thank you all. Have a good [00:31:00] day.
 

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. 
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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.
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