We are honored to launch the A/E/C MarketPRO Marketing Success Summit with a transformative keynote address by Judy Sparks, a renowned thought leader in the AEC marketing sector. As the Founder and CEO of Smartegies, Judy has dedicated her career to enabling A/E/C firms to navigate change and seize growth opportunities in an evolving market landscape. In this dynamic and engaging keynote, Judy inspires us to embrace change in our industry. Drawing from her rich experience working with over 250 A/E/C brands and deep understanding of why clients choose A/E/C firms, she explains how to leverage major shifts in marketing, digital transformation, the power of data-driven decision-making, the secrets to personalization, and the innovative potential of emerging technologies. Judy explains the mindset shifts necessary to truly embrace change, agility, resilience, and foresight in adapting to evolving market demands and client expectations. She shares insights on how to foster a culture of innovation and continuous learning within your firm’s marketing and business development departments, enabling you to not only react to change, but also anticipate and capitalize on it. Plus, she gives is practical, actionable strategies to convert these shifts into powerful catalysts for growth. You leave equipped with the knowledge and inspiration to transform your marketing results, drive firmwide success, and thrive in this new era of AEC marketing. Join us as we kick off the A/E/C MarketPRO journey with Judy Sparks, and together, let's embrace the change that shapes the future of AEC marketing.

The best place to find your A/E/C firm's next leaders is within your ranks -- but making the wrong call can be one of the most expensive mistakes you'll ever make. Hear a top A/E/C executive explain how to identify and nurture the leadership potential your existing PMs and designers have yet to tap. Not only will you resolve a future leadership vacuum early, you'll keep top talent from looking elsewhere, a mission-critical task given the high-demand for mid-career professionals with the capacity to inspire others to greatness.

Winning the AEC Talent Game: Why Talent Strategy is the Key to Growth Strategy
Bob Chapman, Chief People Officer, Trilon Group and Michael Converse, Trilon Group, former VP at AECOM ▼ 

As talent professionals in the A/E/C space, there’s always another promising initiative to consider or request for our big-picture expertise, but we can't seem to get to them because of daily demands. The cycle of never ending, never finished ideas keep coming. So, how do you get more done? Learn some great strategies for stepping back from your "day job” and reframing how you attack critical path plans for landing top talent and re-engaging your firm's most important contributors. You will learn practical, easy, and effective methods to implement the strategic talent management changes your firm needs to leverage all the opportunities this economic environment offers. Learn how to:

• Differentiate your "day job" from the high-level firmwide improvements you want to implement.
• Create and keep alignment with all constituents.
• Communicate the "why" of your best -- but most disruptive -- ideas.
• Focus your energies on critical-path talent initiatives
• Identify, engage and leverage the influencers you'll need hit targets

Women currently make up about half of middle management positions. Yet, women make up less than 5 percent of CEOs for publicly listed companies. We also see headlines from prominent business publications like: “Research: Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills” (Harvard Business Review). Women “outrank” men as reported by their managers. In the United States, we claim to have been working on gender equity in the workplace for decades how. So, why haven’t we closed the gender leadership gap at the top?

In order to advance in an organization, you have to be known for your leadership skills, and this applies to anyone regardless of their gender. By leadership skills, we mean that you have to be recognized for “using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others.” If we think about this as a career success equation, there are 3 parts:

1. Use the greatness in you – your skills, talents, abilities
2. Achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes – reaching an organization’s strategic and financial goals
3. Engaging the greatness in others – creating and cultivating a team that is engaged to work towards those outcomes

While all three of these pieces of the equation are important, they aren’t equally important when it comes advancing to higher levels leadership.

Research shows that the advice given to women (from media, mentors, etc.) is over-indexed in 2 of the 3 areas: using the greatness in you (becoming more confident, being more assertive, etc.), and engaging the greatness in others (team building, managing staff, etc.).

Our research (led by Susan Colantuono) also indicates that the skills required to make it to the highest ranks of any organizations ultimately hinges on number 2, where women receive the least guidance, feedback, and mentorship – achieving and sustaining the organization’s business, strategic, and financial outcomes.

In this talk, we will explore the complete definition of leadership and its three pillars, how and why women receive incomplete advice, and what organizational leaders can do about it.

As generations transfer in and out of the workforce, A/E/C talent leaders must refine traditional engagement methods to align with changing expectations. Today's newest employees have unique needs, desires, and expectations, and we need to evolve our thinking if we, and they, are to succeed. This paradigm shift from a historic employer-driven climate to an employee-driven market demands a mindset shift, one that is proving to be a challenge for many senior executives. Mary Moore, Associate Principal and Human Resources Officer at Pulse Design Group, a healthcare architecture firm in Kansas City, will share solutions, strategies, metrics and data to drive consensus, buy-in, and implementation of a new approach to retaining the newest A/E/C talent. You learn proven strategies for bridging generational gaps and enhancing the employee experience to retain, recruit, contend and win the talent war.

• How to break tradition to gain executive buy-in and consensus.
• What hasn't been effective: How to avoid pitfalls before implementation.
• What's worked in internal surveys, focus groups, and feedback to expedite results..
• Embracing and accommodating workforce differences through executive coaching.
• How to make internal committees encourage employee engagement.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are essential in every industry, but extra effort is needed in the A/E/C industries. New expectations from a changing talent pool, and a more demanding client base, means DEI progress is vital to recruiting, retention, engagement, culture, business development, marketing, and government contracting. Most firms have had an initiative with targets, sometimes with mixed results, so let's move past WHY a solid DEI Plan is needed to HOW to draft and implement a plan that delivers on promises. In this session we dive into what's working for you and what isn't, and go beyond hypotheticals and theiory to share creative strategies to get to your goal. In this working session, we will dive into:
Team culture: Reinvigorate your culture, build bonds, and engage your team in an increasingly fractured flexible working environment
Younger workforce: Incoming talent is increasingly demanding a commitment to equity and climate change. Are you up to their standards?
Profitability: Hard-wire DEI into your strategic planning to more profitable and resilient
Stakeholders: clients and their boards, investors, and public sector clients are all demanding bona fides
In this working session you will take the first steps to draft a DEI Plan that will help you:

• Recruit and retain the best talent.
• Engage your team and strengthen your culture .
• Win new clients and more work from existing clients.
• Update your Strategic Plan.

After struggling for over 20 years to find an employee review process that matched our desire to help elevate staff in a meaningful way, HBT Architects, LLP developed and adopted an Employee Balanced Scorecard system. The firm spent nearly a year and a half researching the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) system used by businesses around the world. From this education, the firm developed a BSC approach that worked within the firm’s culture, style of gathering and sharing information and the staff’s request to be more involved in the firm’s strategic direction. Developing the right BSC for the firm required a close look at our Strategic Plan Initiatives and then turning those into measurable objectives that could be shared across different staff levels. Teams of staff from all levels were directly involved in the development of each individual BSC so that the card was well considered and appropriate to the individual’s strength and career path. In this session, Trevor Harrison, AIA will share his journey from struggling with the limitations of traditional employee review processes through discovering the Balanced Scorecard system, developing a version that would work for his firm and then implementing the system. Attendees will learn about the structure used in all Balanced Scorecards and how HBT adapted this system to match the needs of one firm. Attendees will also learn how a system such as this can enhance employee engagement by tying daily roles and overall career progression directly to the longer-range strategic goals of the firm.

• Understand the structure of the Balanced Scorecard system.
• Using the Balanced Scorecard to provide employee "reviews".
• Setting up Objectives, Measures and Targets for Balanced Scorecards that are tied to strategic firm initiatives.
• Developing and implementing the Balanced Scorecard system through staff engagement and involvement.

Senior A/E/C leaders, when asked to identify top internal prospects for advancement into leadership roles, are notorious for moving forward on gut instinct. Even when the supporting evidence is lacking. Study after study shows that managers notoriously over-estimate their ability to spot top talent. And, oftentimes, they miss the next super star on their team because they lack a common definition of what leadership success looks like. So how can you validate (or safely reject) what begins as a sense? Reid Tolley will give us practical ways to augment gut instincts with a data-driven approach to succession planning and emerging leadership. Strong, invisible, but highly tangible relationships between the identification and development of emerging leaders, workforce retention and engagement which will also be highlighted.

Your A/E/C firm's ability to attract, hire, engage and retain the BEST talent has a direct impact on your bottom line. But it's getting harder and harder to find that talent, given a rapidly recovering economy and firms' committment to retaining their key contributors. Website postings and job board ads only attract candidates in an active job search, NOT the 85% of the talent pool who are employed. Skill based requisitions and long hiring processes could also put your firm at a competitive disadvantage. But fear not! You CAN achieve your talent recruiting goals using the tested techniques that global talent expert Barb Bruno brings to her closing keynote:

• Six words that dramatically improve the talent you will recruit and hire.
• Voice mail, email and in mail that will be answered by top talent.
• Triple your referrals of top talent and fill requisitions faster.
• How employee engagement and retention starts with recruiting.
• The impact on recruiting post-Covid
• How Salary Ban Laws are affecting compensation
• New emphasis on DEI