Meet our Emcee
Nina Sossamon-Pogue is a nationally recognized keynote speaker, bestselling author, and former Emmy-winning television news anchor who brings clarity, energy, and credibility to every stage she steps on. With a career spanning elite athletics, broadcast journalism, and corporate leadership, Nina knows how to engage audiences, manage complex programs, and keep events moving with confidence and warmth. Known for her emotional intelligence and ability to read a room in real time, she adapts seamlessly to audience energy, timing, and tone. Blending her signature science-backed resilience framework with decades of live TV experience, she creates connection, elevates speakers, and keeps audiences fully engaged. Whether delivering a keynote or emceeing an event, Nina brings professionalism and authenticity so that every moment feels purposeful and is memorable.
Meet our Speakers
In a time when people are more selective, teams and volunteers are stretched thin, and loyalty can’t be assumed, the real advantage isn’t more programs or better pitches. It’s stronger relationships.
Learning Objectives:
Understand why relationships are the single greatest driver of influence, revenue, retention, and renewal, and why leadership and sales both rise or fall based on the strength of those relationships.
Identify where they are assuming trust, loyalty, or engagement instead of intentionally building it, and learn how to strengthen relationships with members, boards, teams, and volunteers before performance, culture, or retention suffers.
Apply a relationship-first approach to leadership and sales, using authenticity and intentional connection to create buy-in, long-term loyalty, and momentum without relying on pressure, scripts, or constant persuasion.
The Relationship Advantage
Push with Purpose reminds us that failing is a part of the growth process. It reminds us that when you know your why, you can endure the grind, lead under pressure, and keep pushing forward no matter the obstacle.
Learning Objectives:
Identify the relationship between purpose, and sustained performance under pressure.
Apply practical strategies to align daily decisions and behaviors with a clearly defined purpose in high-stress or challenging environments.
Evaluate how intentional effort and disciplined action can improve resilience, accountability, and leadership effectiveness.
Push with Purpose
We live in an era of relentless change, where technologies, markets, and expectations are shifting faster than most strategic plans can accommodate. In our new world of work, organizations won’t fail because leaders lack vision. They will fail because they get stuck managing today's urgency while losing sight of tomorrow's opportunity. The leaders who thrive won’t be the ones who react fastest; they will be the ones who frame the future most clearly.
Learning Objectives:
Build a human-plus-machine leadership model that leverages the unique strengths of both, creating organizations that are faster, smarter, and more adaptable.
Recognize the power of small-t transformations, the incremental, often overlooked shifts that compound over time and signal where the biggest changes are actually headed.
Develop the capacity to work across competing time horizons simultaneously, balancing near-term execution with long-range strategic positioning.
Framing the Future
Make It Matter
Leaders are asking how to get more out of people, when the better question is how to help people feel like they truly matter. When people feel valued and essential, wellbeing improves, engagement deepens, and performance follows. People don’t give their best because they’re managed, they give their best because they know they matter.
Learning Objectives:
Illuminate what’s at stake for individuals when people no longer feel seen or valued at work—and how this directly impacts wellbeing, mental health, and performance.
Strengthen how people relate to one another, by recognizing the moments that build trust, empathy, and connection on teams.
Shape the future of culture and values, applying The Mattering Mindset™ to create organizations where people feel valued, aligned, and motivated to contribute their best together.
Empower Limitless Leadership
Bringing together three decades of advising leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office, this keynote is perfect for leaders who want experience- and research-based strategies for spotting talent in others and cultivating their greatness towards innovation and growth.
Learning Objectives
Data-driven understanding of the root causes of employee dissatisfaction, disengagement, and disillusionment…and actionable steps that leaders can immediately take to build strong relationships with their teams.
A proprietary framework and shared language for uncovering what ignites passion and connection within their team, driving higher engagement levels, less turnover, and a more cohesive culture so they can inspire, engage, and retain their best employees.
A proven methodology from an expert talent spotter for determining who on the team (at every level) is destined for greatness, which will inspire common goals and remove friction about uncertainty, change, difficult decisions, and strategic workforce investments.
The Unexpected Power of Boundaries:
We’ve been told that innovation requires “thinking outside the box” but what if that mindset is actually holding us back? In this energizing keynote, bestselling author and innovation strategist Sheri Jacobs challenges conventional wisdom by showing why innovation thrives not in unlimited freedom, but within clear boundaries.
Learning objectives
Reframe boundaries as strategic tools that enable creativity, innovation, and smarter risk-taking.
Evaluate their team’s risk tolerance and identify the conditions needed to support meaningful experimentation.
Apply practical strategies to build a culture where clear constraints fuel progress rather than limit possibility.
The Presence Formula
In today’s influence-driven environment, leadership presence is one of the most powerful—and most overlooked—tools leaders have. In this compelling keynote, Michelle delivers a clear, actionable framework for strengthening presence through authenticity, confidence, and purpose. Blending storytelling, humor, and research-backed insights, she shows leaders how presence—not position—builds trust, deepens connection, and drives meaningful impact across teams, members, and stakeholders.
Learning objectives
Strengthen leadership presence by applying the core elements of authenticity, confidence, and purpose.
Build trust, engagement, and connection with members, teams, and stakeholders through intentional presence.
Lead with greater influence by communicating and modeling purpose-driven leadership at every level.
Generation AI isn’t a future trend—it’s a present-day shift in how work gets done. In this fast-paced showcase, Frankie introduces the Citizen Developer movement, where non-technical professionals use AI to solve problems, automate work, and move faster, while IT and developers provide the guardrails that keep adoption safe and scalable. The focus isn’t hype—it’s possibility: how AI acts as a multiplier for human talent and helps organizations turn existing expertise into real momentum.
Learning objectives
Define the Citizen Developer movement and explain its impact on workforce capability and organizational speed.
Identify high-value AI use cases based on impact, feasibility, and risk for early experimentation.
Recognize essential responsible-use guardrails—data protection, transparency, governance, and human oversight—that support safe AI adoption.
Generation AI