Kick off your Annual Meeting learning early with one of six highly interactive and collaborative learning workshops. These timely sessions will help you put your organization and your professional development journey on the right path forward.
August 15, 2026
Separate registration required 
CEO Summit: A 3-Hour Working Session only for Association CEOs
Your board is already asking about AI. The challenge isn’t awareness — it’s knowing how to lead through it, what decisions to make, and how to protect your mission, credibility, and revenue while delivering what members need next.
Artificial intelligence is not just a technology shift — it’s a leadership test. In the next five years, AI will reshape what members value, what they expect, and where they still demand trusted human guidance. The question isn’t whether AI will affect your association. It’s whether you’re positioned to lead through it.
This hands-on working session is built for association CEOs who are ready to move from uncertainty to action. ASAE has vetted and partnered with one of the most sought-after AI strategists in the country to lead it: Trent Gillespie, CEO of Stellis AI and former senior executive at Amazon. Trent has been called “one of the most trusted voices in applied AI,” and unlike consultants who speak in frameworks and theory, he brings a proven, practical methodology used by leaders across industries to cut through the noise and make AI work inside real organizations. You’ll work alongside your association CEO peers, guided by Trent, to tackle the central strategic question: How will AI change what our members need from us in the next five years — and are we positioned to deliver it while sustaining our mission and trust?
What we’ll cover:
- How AI will reshape member expectations over the next five years
- The risks your association faces — to trust, credibility, revenue, and mission relevance
- Where to build internal AI capabilities versus when to partner externally
- An honest assessment of whether your organization is built to deliver on what members will need next
What you’ll leave with:
- A prioritized three-year AI action plan specific to your association
- A board-ready narrative you can present with confidence
- Specific decisions identified and prioritized — including where to build, where to partner, and where to protect
- A peer network of CEOs navigating the same challenges
This isn’t a lecture or a vendor showcase. It’s a working session, and you’ll leave with something you can actually use.
Content Leader:
Trent Gillespie
CEO & Co-Founder, Stellis AI
Fit for Purpose: Choosing and Building the Right Credentialing Model for your Organization
Credentials have emerged as a trusted tool for strengthening professional skillsets, signaling competence in the marketplace, and raising standards across the workforce.
Come explore the critical considerations for designing, launching, and sustaining high-quality credentialing programs from certification to certificate to microcredentials. It walks participants through strategic decision-making, market and needs analysis, assessment development, eligibility and recertification requirements, and accreditation standards. The session also examines marketplace perceptions, legal and regulatory considerations, and benchmarking data from credentialing organizations. Together, these elements provide a practical framework for building credible, defensible, and value-driven programs.
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
- Distinguish between certificates, certifications, and other credentialing models and identify when a certification program is appropriate vs. other credentialing types.
- Describe the key components of developing and maintaining a valid, reliable, and legally defensible certification program, including assessment and recertification.
- Evaluate strategic, market, resource, and accreditation considerations that influence the success and credibility of credentialing programs.
Content Leader:
Denise Roosendaal, Executive Director, Institute for Credentialing Excellence (ICE)
Facilitation for Impact: An Intensive for Association Leaders
Meetings are where strategy lives or dies—and facilitation is the difference. Over three hours, association leaders, partners, and consultants will step into the facilitator’s chair to learn the mindsets, methods, tools, and resources that transform meetings from updates into breakthroughs.
Drawing on the FACILIT8me association facilitator framework, you will experience live simulations, small-group practice, self-reflection, and peer feedback designed specifically for association environments—boards committees and staff teams alike. You’ll learn how to design, flow, spark engagement, manage dynamics, and guide conversations toward shared decisions and lasting momentum. Whether you lead, serve, or support, facilitation is the multiplier skill every association professional needs to elevate impact and culture.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply core facilitation techniques to amplify diverse voices and drive alignment.
- Design meetings and sessions that generate participation, ownership, and outcomes.
- Evaluate and refine your own facilitation, presence, and process for higher impact conversations.
Content Leaders:
Lowell Aplebaum, EdD, FASAE, CAE CPF, CEO,
Vista Cova
Aaron Wolowiec, FASAE, CAE, CMP
Fellow, Founder & President, Event Garde LLC
AI Strategy Bootcamp: From Quick Wins to Org-Wide Adoption
Most associations have experimented with AI: a chatbot here, a drafting tool there. Few have turned those experiments into something that actually changes how the organization works. That’s what this bootcamp is about.
You’ll work through a practical framework for org-wide AI adoption: how to assess where your organization really stands across people, processes, data, and culture; how to prioritize the use cases worth investing in versus the ones that just look shiny; how to build a 90-day roadmap you can actually execute; and how to lead the change itself, including making the case to your board and building internal champions.
You’ll walk out with a concrete plan, a set of tools you can use immediately, and a clear view of what the next 90 days should look like when you’re back at your desk.
Part of the AI Forward series connecting MMC+Tech, Annual Meeting, and digitalNow 2026.
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
- Assess your organization’s AI readiness across people, processes, data, and culture using a structured diagnostic
- Prioritize AI use cases that cross multiple departments, with criteria for separating quick wins from longer-term investments
- Build a 90-day AI adoption roadmap with milestones, resource needs, and clear ownership
- Make the case for AI investment to your board and leadership using ROI frameworks and narrative templates built for the association context
- Design a change management approach that takes staff concerns seriously, develops internal champions, and keeps adoption going after the first pilot
Content Leader:
John Huisman, AAiP
COO, Sidecar.ai
Mastering Mental Fitness for Purposeful Leadership
Description
Your level of Mental Fitness is one of the strongest predictors of how effectively you lead under pressure — especially when navigating constant demands, competing priorities, and increasing complexity.
Yet most leaders operate below the level required for peak performance, often falling into reactive patterns that impact decision-making, relationships, and execution.
Mental Fitness is the ability to manage those internal responses so you can think clearly, stay focused, and lead with intention. The good news is that, like physical fitness, it can be strengthened with practice.
In this interactive pre-conference, you will learn how to recognize and shift the patterns that interfere with their leadership in real time, with the opportunity to deepen and apply the work during a follow-up Integration Lab later in the conference.
Learning Objectives
- Understand how the core mental muscles drive performance, resilience, and leadership effectiveness
- Identify how saboteur patterns show up under pressure and impact decision-making and execution
- Apply practical techniques to shift from reactive to intentional leadership in real time
This conversation will continue at the “Mastering Mental Fitness for Purposeful Leadership Integration Lab, taking place on Monday, August 17, 2:00 – 3:00 pm in Sagamore 7.
Content Leader:
Amy Yip, CEO
Amy Yip LLC
CAE to C-Suite: Your Roadmap for Success
Designed for association professionals who want to proactively develop their leadership competencies and career pathways, this session provides guidance from C‑suite leaders and executive search professionals to help participants better understand and navigate their long‑term career potential. Competition for C‑suite positions is significant, and it is tougher than ever to get there without a carefully developed and executed career plan.
Drawing on real‑world executive search insights, the session will explore the competencies most often associated with successful executive transitions, as well as common areas of risk and blind spots that can derail advancement. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own strengths, development priorities, and career choices, and begin mapping a more intentional path forward. The discussion will also examine multiple pathways to executive leadership and how networking, continuing education, relationship building, and the domains of the CAE body of knowledge can be leveraged to support sustained growth.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the most sought-after skills and competencies Search Committees and Boards are seeking in candidates today
- Learn about the areas of risk and blind spots that could keep you from reaching your potential
- Develop a career map to help you achieve your professional goals
Content Leaders:
Jim Zaniello, FASAE, President
Vetted Solutions
Tonya Muse, FASAE, CAE,
Association Practice Lead, Social Impact, CEO & Board Practices
Heidrick & Struggles