Jason Young, Workplace Culture Expert

In our current AEC business climate, technical brilliance alone won't secure your firm's competitive edge. The most successful AEC firms know that breakthrough projects emerge when talented individuals transform into cohesive, high-performing teams.

Drawing from his decade of leadership experience at Southwest Airlines, where he helped build the company's legendary culture of collaboration, Jason Young delivers actionable strategies specifically tailored for AEC professionals. This isn't another generic team-building session. Jason understands the unique challenges you face: managing diverse technical experts, coordinating across disciplines, meeting aggressive project deadlines, and fostering innovation while maintaining quality standards.

In this dynamic session, you'll discover how to:

• Transform your star performers into team catalysts who elevate everyone's performance without creating resentment or competition
• Build trust between architects, engineers, and construction professionals who often speak different "languages"
• Create psychological safety that encourages calculated risk-taking and innovative problem-solving
• Develop shared accountability systems that drive project excellence from design through delivery
• Harness the full potential of multi-generational teams, from seasoned principals to emerging professionals

Jason's proven framework has been implemented by Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Tyson Foods, among many others.  His engaging, practical approach gives you tools you can implement immediately—whether you're managing a small project team or leading firm-wide transformation.

You gain a clear roadmap for creating the collaborative culture that attracts top talent, wins prestigious projects, and positions your firm as an employer of choice in the competitive AEC marketplace.

Kenn Sanders, Senior Recruiter, Bunnell Lammons Engineering

The architecture and engineering talent market has never been more challenging—or more full of opportunity. In this session, Kenn Sanders will decode the structural shifts reshaping how AEC firms attract and retain top talent, from generational expectations to untapped candidate pools. You'll learn practical strategies to reduce hiring friction, shift to skill-based evaluation, and transform reactive recruiting into proactive pipeline building. Walk away with actionable frameworks to elevate your recruiting function from administrative necessity to strategic competitive advantage.

• Segment Your Strategy: Learn why treating the talent market as one system fails, and how to tailor approaches by geography, specialty, and candidate demographics to win in competitive AEC markets
• Unlock Hidden Talent Pools: Discover overlooked candidate segments—career switchers, early-career high-potential hires, and remote workers—who often outperform traditional applicants when properly evaluated
• Fix the Funnel, Not Just the Flow: Reduce candidate drop-offs by 40%+ through friction elimination, behavioral evaluation frameworks, and process optimization that attracts top performers
• Become a Strategic Consultant: Transform from resume screener to trusted advisor by leveraging market data, challenging hiring manager assumptions, and leading talent strategy at the business level

Dan Hottinger, Principal, Director of Professional Services, BWBR
Kari Shonblom, Knowledge Manager, BWBR

Many AEC firms wrestle with the same challenge: rapid growth, limited senior-staff bandwidth, and a new generation of emerging professionals eager to contribute. BWBR confronted that challenge head-on by building a targeted upskilling system designed to help early-career staff learn faster, feel more confident, and participate more fully in project work.

This session takes you behind the scenes of BWBR’s approach—beginning with Landmark Learning, the firm’s long-standing training program for emerging professionals, and extending into the broader ecosystem that now supports early-career development. We’ll explore how the program actually works today, the pivotal moments that sparked its evolution, and the partnerships that allow it to scale without overburdening mentors.

We’ll also widen the lens to examine how BWBR captures and structures knowledge across the firm, how “unlearning” shows up in their training model, and how AI is beginning to support both content creation and content discovery. As the volume of available knowledge grows, the key question becomes: what should we teach first, and how do we keep it fresh?

Finally, we’ll look ahead to the formats, stewardship practices, and opportunities BWBR is considering as it shapes the next version of its upskilling system. Attendees will leave with practical insights they can adapt to their own firms—especially those looking to support emerging professionals more intentionally and sustainably.

• How the challenge BWBR faced in supporting emerging professionals shaped their upskilling strategy.
• Core components of BWBR’s Landmark Learning program and how it integrates with broader training efforts.
• Effective practices for capturing, prioritizing, and refreshing knowledge, including the role of unlearning.
• How AI can support both knowledge creation and discovery in the context of early-career development.
• Long-term stewardship models that help learning programs remain sustainable as firms grow and evolve.

Jenifer Navard, CFO, Eskew Dumez Ripple

For architecture and engineering firms, incentive compensation often creates as many problems as it solves—rewarding the proposal writer while overlooking the business developer who secured the relationship, celebrating billable hours without acknowledging the employee balancing caregiving responsibilities, or pitting senior leaders against each other in zero-sum bonus competitions. These common practices can undermine the collaborative culture and work-life balance values that firms publicly champion, leading to resentment, attrition, and decreased morale among high performers who feel invisible.

Join Jenifer Navard, CFO of New Orleans design firm Eskew Dumez Ripple, as she explores how to redesign incentive structures that truly deliver ROI—rewarding collective success, recognizing diverse contributions, and aligning incentive compensation and bonuses with your firm's cultural values rather than contradicting them. This session will provide practical frameworks for creating bonus systems that energize your entire team without unintended consequences that quietly erode retention and trust.

 

• Recognize the full revenue cycle: Learn how to design incentive systems that reward all contributors to business development—from the conference speaker who attracted the client to the proposal writer who closed the deal—preventing resentment and talent loss from invisible contributions going unrecognized.
• Move beyond billable hours as the gold standard: Discover alternative metrics and hybrid approaches that acknowledge high-quality work and client relationships while avoiding penalties for employees with caregiving responsibilities, ensuring your compensation practices align with stated work-life balance values.
• Restructure leadership bonuses to reduce internal competition: Explore models that reward collective firm performance and collaborative leadership rather than zero-sum individual payouts, fostering a culture where senior leaders work together rather than compete for a fixed bonus pool.

 

John Robison, COO, KTGY
Donovan Helminiak, Director of KM, KTGY

The path to becoming a "Learning Organization" rarely starts with a blank page. At KTGY, our evolution began with a realization: the components we needed were already there. But when traditional mentorship models are strained and professionals often don't know what they need to learn — we recognized that connecting these dots and outlining the path required intentional design.

In this session, COO John Robison and Director of Knowledge Management Donovan Helminiak share how design firm KTGY is evolving from isolated learning initiatives to a purposeful ecosystem. They trace the journey from executive leadership programs to technical mentorship, from live training sessions to on-demand resources — all while maintaining the human-centric culture that defines their firm.

They will tell the narrative through two lenses: the Operational view of creating space and championing these programs, and the Tactical view of building infrastructure and advising on strategy.

We clearly see ourselves as "becoming," not "finished." We'll openly share our active pilots, including the implementation of an LMS to scale on-demand needs and our early exploration of how AI might support — not replace — the learning process. We don't have all the answers, but we're committed to learning alongside our people as we navigate what's next.

• Recognize the shift: Understand why traditional "learning by osmosis" is no longer sufficient and how to evolve toward intentional development strategies.
• Audit and connect: Learn to identify existing learning activities — from formal programs to informal mentorship — and connect them into a cohesive L&D strategy.
• Balance the partnership: Explore how executive sponsorship and tactical execution must work together to create sustainable learning cultures.
• Embrace experimentation: ou learn practical approaches to modern tools (LMS, AI) while maintaining focus on human development and acknowledging the ongoing nature of the journey.

Christopher Parsons, Founder and CEO, Knowledge Architecture

Here's a pathway for transforming your AEC firm into a Modern Learning Organization—one that continuously captures, shares, and scales expertise even as projects grow more complex, experienced professionals retire, and AI reshapes the field.

You'll see real-world examples of how leading AEC firms are accelerating knowledge transfer through curated learning paths, expert-led video, modular content, hybrid instructional models, and AI-powered search that delivers the right knowledge exactly when it's needed.

You'll discover practical patterns for blending on-demand education, social learning, and emerging AI agents into a cohesive system that makes your entire organization smarter and more adaptive.

Most importantly, you see what this means for your firm, with clarity on where to start, what to experiment with next, and how to intentionally keep learning and thriving—no matter what the future brings.

Whether you're facing a wave of retirements, struggling with siloed expertise, trying to meet the learning expectations of a new generation of AEC professionals, or wondering how AI will change your firm, this session will help you take concrete next steps toward building a Modern Learning Organization.

Bryce Batts, Founder, Career Collective, and AEC Recruiter

The AEC industry’s talent challenge isn’t just about retention—or hiring—it’s about the absence of a connected talent system. Firms are struggling to attract the right people, keep recruiting pipelines warm, and retain high performers once they’re hired. The result?

Constant hiring pressure, stalled projects, and unnecessary turnover costs.

In this session, Bryce shares a practical, people-first blueprint for attracting, engaging, and retaining AEC talent in a competitive market. Drawing on more than 15 years inside AEC recruiting and talent strategy, she helps Principals, Talent Acquisition leaders, and internal recruiters understand what today’s candidates want, why top performers leave, and how firms can create a continuous pipeline of aligned talent.

You learn how to shift from reactive hiring to intentional talent systems that
strengthen employer branding, improve candidate and employee experience, and create clear growth pathways. The session delivers actionable strategies to build trust, move faster, and create cultures where the right people want to join—and stay.

• Identify the top three drivers of retention and engagement in AEC firms today.
• Apply an 8-Step Talent Blueprint to improve hiring, onboarding, and development processes.
• Build leadership pathways that strengthen succession planning and employee loyalty.
• Evaluate communication and accountability structures that impact retention.
• Align personal purpose with firm mission to create a culture that attracts and keeps top talent.

Crystal Layland, Project Accounting Manager, WSP

AEC firms invest heavily in recruiting, compensation, and employer branding — yet top designers, engineers, and project managers continue to disengage or leave. The uncomfortable truth? Talent isn’t leaving because firms lack perks. They’re leaving because growth, acquisitions, and internal complexity are creating operational chaos that leaders underestimate. This session challenges common assumptions about retention in AEC firms and reframes talent loss as a leadership and operational issue — not an HR one. Drawing from real-world experience managing teams through rapid growth, system changes, and post-acquisition integrations, this session exposes how unclear expectations, inconsistent standards, and poor change communication quietly erode trust and burnout even high performers. Participants will learn how operational breakdowns show up as “people problems,” why accountability gaps exhaust teams, and how leadership behaviors — not policies — determine whether talent stays or leaves. The session introduces a practical framework leaders can use immediately to stabilize teams, restore clarity, and rebuild trust during periods of change. Designed for firm leaders who want honest conversations and actionable solutions, this session provides a clear path to retaining top talent without adding bureaucracy, new programs, or unsustainable workloads.

• Reframe talent retention challenges as leadership and operational risks.
• Identify how growth and integration failures contribute directly to burnout.
• Recognize early warning signs that top performers are disengaging.
• Apply a practical framework to restore clarity and accountability across teams.
• Lead change in a way that retains — rather than exhausts — high performers.
  
  

Jacob Nikolau, Director of Marketing, Mosaic

• 
  

  Your firm likely invests heavily in culture, wellness, and benefits, but a chaotic schedule can undo all of that in a single week. The truth is, high performers rarely leave because of salary. They leave because they are tired of constantly "saving the day" due to reactive planning and last-minute hiring.
  
  

  In this session, we bridge the gap between Operations and HR by focusing on the root cause: the schedule. We will show you how leading professional services firms use forward-looking visibility to protect their people and inform smarter hiring. By looking at the data, you can spot the "red zones" in how work is being managed that hurt engagement and retention, and predict your hiring needs before they become emergencies.

  • Identify burnout risk early: Learn to use simple heat maps to see who is overloaded and where you have talent gaps before they turn into burnout or missed deadlines.
  • Replace panic hiring with a plan: Move from reactive hiring to a forecast that allows you to build a talent pipeline months in advance.
  • Align HR and Project Managers: Help PMs (who need hours) and HR (who need retention) speak the same language so hitting a deadline doesn't mean sacrificing the culture.
  • Make "people-first" sustainable: Understand why good planning is the best retention tool you have. You can't claim to put people first if you treat their time like it’s infinite

Kevin Hinrichs, President, Taylor Design
Stefnee Trzpuc, Founder and CEO, Flow Theory

 

Join a strategic partnership conversation to hear an authentic view of what it takes to launch a knowledge program with an AEC firm, aligned to long-term vision, culture, and a thriving design practice.

Hear the CEO perspective: the wake-up call that made KM a strategic priority, building the business case for executive buy-in, connecting KM to talent strategy and ESOP culture, and navigating the long-view of knowledge management and cultural transformation.

Learn the strategic approach: aligning KM to business goals, conducting Discovery that surfaces critical insights and employee voices, integrating KM with firm operations and practice areas, coordinating and implementing knowledge initiatives (people, systems, and culture), and coaching individuals and teams through organizational change.

Whether you’re beginning to formalize KM or actively planning your approach, you’ll gain both the executive decision-making perspective and strategic implementation expertise needed to succeed.

• Navigate the CEO decision-making process for prioritizing and launching KM initiatives, including how to secure executive buy-in, allocate resources, and position knowledge management as a strategic talent imperative rather than operational overhead.
• Conduct exploration to identify critical knowledge and vulnerability points by learning the methodology used to assess a firm’s knowledge landscape across offices and practice areas.
• Design knowledge-driven cultures that attract and retain top talent by understanding both the strategic frameworks and the real-world cultural challenges a firm faces during implementation, including employee engagement strategies and change management principles.
• Understand the CEO’s role in knowledge management initiatives.

Ellen Bensky, CEO, Turner Fleischer
John Robison, COO, KTGY
Kari Shonblom, Knowledge Manager, BWBR
Moderator: Christopher Parsons, Founder and CEO, Knowledge Architecture

As AEC firms face accelerating technological change, shifting workforce demographics, and an ever-growing volume of knowledge required to practice at a high level, learning and development is being pushed to evolve. AI is changing how information is accessed and applied. New generations bring different expectations, learning styles, and technology preferences. And the pace and complexity of professional expertise continue to rise.

This facilitated, highly interactive panel brings together voices from across the AEC community to explore what learning and development must become if firms are to grow the experts of 2035. Rather than a traditional panel format, you benefit from beign a part of the conversation—guided by a small set of framing questions, but shaped in real time by your questions, reflections, and lived experience from the conference.

Together, we’ll explore how firms can design learning organizations that are more adaptive, more human-centered, and better aligned with how people actually learn and work today. The goal is not to prescribe a single future, but to surface shared insights, tensions, and possibilities—and to leave participants with new ways of thinking about how their organizations can thrive in a more complex, demanding, and ultimately rewarding professional landscape. Together, we will:

• Get into why AEC firms are being asked to relearn how learning itself works, including the impacts of technological acceleration, changing workforce demographics, and rising expectations for expertise.
• Explore how AI is reshaping learning and expertise, from how information is accessed and applied to how knowledge can be scaled and shared across firms.
• Examine how learning expectations and preferences are shifting across generations, and what this means for designing learning experiences that feel relevant, inclusive, and effective.
  Surface emerging tensions and tradeoffs in modern learning strategies, such as speed versus depth, standardization versus flexibility, and human judgment versus automation.
• Leave with new ways of thinking about learning in your own organization, including questions to ask, assumptions to revisit, and opportunities to experiment as your firm prepares for the experts of 2035.

Jonathan Parker, AEC Communication and Leadership Coach

Is your communication style building bridges or creating barriers between you and your AEC talent? In a tight labor market, architecture and engineering firm leaders with technical excellence alone can be a liability, and contribute to turnover and underengagement. Those who thrive master the art of authentic, influential communication.
 
Join Jonathan R. Parker for an energizing session that will fundamentally shift how your leaders connect with their teams.

Drawing on over 15 years of transforming AEC firms and his acclaimed book The Art of the Conversation, Jonathan reveals why your unique leadership voice isn't just about what you say—it's about unleashing the full potential of every person you lead. This isn't theory. This is practical, immediately applicable insight for an industry where collaboration across disciplines, clear communication, and cohesive team dynamics directly impact project outcomes and profitability. 
 
Jonathan will guide us to identify their distinct communication patterns, understand how different voices complement rather than clash, and harness these differences to drive innovation and performance.
 
Whether you're developing emerging leaders, strengthening project teams, or building a culture of accountability and trust, this session provides the framework your organization needs. Leave equipped with strategies to turn communication from a soft skill into your competitive advantage.

• Identify your leadership communication style and understand how it influences team dynamics, project outcomes, and client relationships in technical environments
• Leverage communication differences as strengths rather than sources of conflict, creating more innovative and collaborative AEC teams
• Apply practical frameworks for adapting your communication approach to inspire diverse personalities, generations, and technical disciplines
• Build a culture of authentic dialogue that accelerates problem-solving, strengthens retention, and positions your firm as an employer of choice in a competitive talent market

 

Jo Martin, Talent Acquisition Lead, Tighe & Bond
Caroline Bishop, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist, Tighe & Bond

 

If you work in Talent Acquisition at an AEC firm, you’ve likely learned a hard truth by now: Even strong offers and competitive compensation no longer guarantee a “yes.” Recruiting in this environment requires Talent Acquisition teams to be proactive, visible, and deeply connected to the business, not just filling roles, but influencing outcomes.

Jo Martin and Caroline Bishop share how Talent Acquisition at Tighe & Bond has evolved into a strategic function that has helped grow the firm by over 50% in the last four years, meet revenue goals, and support the firm’s long-term success. Drawing from real-world case studies and insights featured in Build Your AEC Dream Team by Jerry Guerra, this session will focus on what TA professionals can realistically influence and implement within their own firms.

• Align Talent Acquisition with the Business: Translate growth plans and workforce needs into achievable hiring strategies by serving as internal consultants and partnering closely with leadership and business line leaders.
• Foster a Recruiting Culture: How to encourage employee participation in recruiting through ownership mindset, referrals, and shared accountability, without turning everyone into a recruiter overnight.
• Build Credibility That Gets Candidates to Respond: Use an authentic Talent Acquisition presence, including personal LinkedIn engagement, to stand out in a crowded market, build trust with passive candidates, and improve response rates.
• Create a Candidate Experience That Helps Close: Shape interview and engagement experiences that connect candidates to the firm’s culture, people, and opportunities well before the offer stage. 

Ellen Bensky, CEO, Turner Fleischer
Nihar Bawa, Manager, Learning + Development, Turner Fleischer

 

For more than 16 years, Turner Fleischer’s Academy has provided structured learning to support professional growth across the studio. What began as an in-person program has expanded into a broader learning ecosystem, shaped by changes in practice, technology, and how adults learn. Today, that evolution is more important than ever, as firms navigate an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment.

CEO Ellen Bensky and Manager of Learning + Development Nihar Bawa share how Turner Fleischer approaches learning as an ongoing practice rather than a finished product. Central to this work is a Learning + Development team of three professionals with formal backgrounds in adult education, grounding programs in adult learning principles and a deep understanding of how professionals engage with learning over time.

The session will explore how learning programs are continually assessed through feedback, retrospectives, and ongoing dialogue with studio members. Rather than assuming programs remain effective, learning at Turner Fleischer is treated as a living system—regularly reviewed, refined, and adapted as needs shift.

Ellen and Nihar will also reflect on how the learning ecosystem continues to grow. In 2025, two new learning programs were launched alongside the Academy. Looking ahead to 2026, the focus is on defining an overarching learning framework and exploring the introduction of an LMS and video-based training to support clarity, accessibility, and scale—while maintaining the human and social dimensions of learning.

Learn how mature learning programs remain responsive and relevant in a fast-changing professional landscape.

• How adult learning principles support clear, relevant learning across a firm
• How dedicated Learning + Development expertise strengthens organizational readiness as practice evolves
• How feedback and retrospectives inform ongoing learning refinement
• The difference between static training programs and adaptive learning ecosystems
• How mature learning programs support talent development and firm resilience in a VUCA environment

Kristina Williams, Director of Design Technology, Lionakis

What's the smartest format for upskilling your AEC firm's talent? Architecture, engineering, and interiors firm Lionakis has spent years refining how it helps people learn new tools, workflows, and ways of thinking. What began as hands-on, instructor-led training has steadily expanded into a more balanced learning ecosystem, one that blends in-person instruction, peer-supported learning, on-demand resources, and hybrid formats designed around how adults actually learn. Kristina will share how Lionakis is evolving this ecosystem to keep pace with a changing practice, with a new emphasis on on-demand content, simplification and clarity of materials, and the development of structured learning paths that help employees understand what comes next.

She also shares the firm’s early experiments with AI—tools with the potential to guide employees through software questions, reinforce concepts outside the classroom, and provide real-time support during project work. Finally, she reveals how lessons emerging from Design Technology’s learning efforts are beginning to influence the broader firm, contributing to a cohesive, intentional, and modern approach to knowledge and learning management. You learn practical ideas for designing flexible, scalable learning experiences tailored for AEC talent that meets people where they are—especially during periods of rapid change.

• Apply adult learning principles to create more accessible and relevant learning experiences within their own organizations.
• Blend hands-on, social, and on-demand learning formats to meet the needs of different learner profiles and stages of development.
• Design structured learning paths that give employees clarity about their growth, reduce knowledge gaps, and strengthen confidence.
• Evaluate emerging opportunities for AI and AI agents to augment training, reinforce learning, and support people in real project contexts.
• Identify ways for specialized domains—such as design technology—to inform and elevate firmwide learning strategies.

Angela Watson, President & CEO, Shepley Bulfinch

Join Angela Watson, President & CEO of national architecture firm Shepley Bulfinch, as she shares actionable strategies her firm uses to dismantle the internal silos that inhibit knowledge sharing and innovation, and in the process, improve employee engagement and talent retention. You learn how the firm has cultivated a culture of psychological safety where team members feel empowered to admit knowledge gaps, learn from mistakes, and seek expertise across disciplines without fear of judgment. Angela will discuss practical approaches to facilitating cross-departmental collaboration, implementing mentorship programs, and creating transparent career development pathways that retain top talent. Discover how investing in a people-first culture that prioritizes continuous learning and knowledge transfer can transform your firm's performance and employee satisfaction.