With retirements, succession plans, and senior talent moving between firms, critical client and BD knowledge is at risk. It’s time to reimagine how expertise is preserved, reinvent how it’s shared, and revive institutional knowledge before it walks out the door. This session explores how to systematically capture senior staff experience and build an ongoing knowledge transfer program that equips future seller-doers and BD professionals. It provides practical, repeatable strategies to help AEC marketing and business development leaders preserve critical client and seller-doer knowledge. Attendees will learn how to reimagine and reinvent knowledge transfer so institutional expertise is revived, scaled, and used to strengthen pursuit performance, client relationships, and future growth.

It’s deadline day on a major design-build proposal and despite weeks of effort, you can spot missed opportunities that may cost you a shortlist spot. Often, the issue isn’t effort—it’s people. Under pressure, even strengths can become liabilities, from the “Novelist” over-writing late in the process to the “Redline Baron” creating rework and frustration. In this interactive session, Wendy Simmons explores 12 common “wildcard” personalities that can derail pursuits and contribute to burnout. Attendees will identify their own overdone strengths, learn how stress impacts team dynamics, and gain practical strategies to manage counterproductive behaviors in real time. Blending insight, empathy, and humor, this session equips teams with shared language and tools to improve collaboration and ultimately protect both win rates and team well-being.

Wendy Simmons Wendy Simmons is the founder of Middle of Six, a marketing consultancy dedicated to the A/E/C industry. Having worked with over hundreds of A/E/C firms on countless proposals and interviews, Wendy is excited to share her experience coaching “wildcard” personalities to curb their bad habits and re-focus that energy on the win! Fun fact, the Wildcards was recognized at SMPS Amplify with the Best in Show award in 2024.

In the fast-paced A/E/C industry, we often accept "fake it 'till you make it" as standard practice. It's time to REIMAGINE leadership by ditching our masks, silencing our internal "chatterbox," and leading with candor.

While high trust deepens bonds and improves results, many leaders get stuck in the empathy trap—feeling their team's stress but lacking the courage to hold them accountable. This session explores how a "Leader in Progress" can REVIVE teams with radical positivity and true compassion.

We will unpack the four parts of compassion and use the "Compassion Audit" to REINVENT how you handle difficult conversations. You will learn to shift from telling to asking by mastering strategic questions, ultimately allowing you to maintain professional boundaries and lead with authentic confidence.

Megan Young, CPSM Megan Young, CPSM, Director of Marketing at Guidon and 2025–2026 SMPS Indiana Chapter President, brings over a decade of marketing, communications, and leadership experience. Deeply invested in how people experience their work, her style is rooted in trust, curiosity, and transparency. Known for a thoughtful approach to collaboration, Megan focuses on creating clarity and reducing friction to support strong, sustainable performance so teams can do their best work consistently.

Marketing drives growth, but when impact is reported as activity instead of business outcomes, influence is limited. This session teaches a practical method for identifying what changed as a result of marketing efforts and reframing leadership updates in business terms. Through real examples and guided exercises, attendees leave prepared to shift one conversation from activity to impact immediately.

AEC marketing and BD professionals often begin in execution-focused roles, yet firms increasingly need strategic leaders. This dynamic panel shares how experienced professionals moved from supporting pursuits to influencing firm growth and strategy. Through candid discussion and real examples, attendees will gain practical insights to elevate their influence, align marketing with business goals, and position marketing and BD as drivers of firm success.

	Megan Scott, FSMPS, CPSM Megan Scott, FSMPS, CPSM, journey in the AEC industry began at Butler University interning for an engineering firm. As Etica Group's Director of Strategy, she began as a one-person department and has grown into being a partner at her firm. One of her key strengths is her ability to use data to develop strategy plans to increase efficiencies and effectiveness in her work.
	Janet Lively McCauley, CPSM As client liaison, Janet Lively McCauley, CPSM, brings a cohesive thread to the client experience and will foster a strong relationship throughout this collaborative relationship. She leads ERDMAN's healthcare market sector, developing and implementing the strategy for how we meet client needs. In partnership with the President and CEO and her fellow senior leaders, she shapes our view of where healthcare is going, defines our healthcare business development strategy, and collaborates with healthcare leaders across the country. Through her authentic approach, she builds highly trusted relationships and engages teams in developing focused, forward-thinking solutions for clients.
	Melissa Lutz, FSMPS, CPSM As the leader of all marketing, communications, and public relations in the firm, Melissa Lutz, FSMPS, CPSM, is responsible for the brand and image of Champlin Studios . Melissa manages and develops targeted business development and marketing strategies with each market team to create unique opportunities for the firm. Using her skills as a Community Liaison, she also serves as a team member on various public projects

Most A/E/C firms know they need stronger proposal talent. Fewer have a clear plan for building it. New coordinators are often expected to learn by doing, senior staff are asked to mentor without a shared roadmap and promising professionals can move into leadership before the expectations are clearly defined. This session shares a practical, three-phase framework refined over 15 years in a 30-office firm. The model identifies key skill milestones, mentorship touchpoints and measurable ways to track growth from onboarding to leadership. Whether you are early in your A/E/C career and trying to understand what growth can look like, or a marketing leader responsible for developing your team, you will leave with a structure you can adapt to reduce ramp-up time, improve proposal quality, align expectations and create a more intentional path for developing proposal leaders.

Rachel Headings, CPSM Rachel Headings, CPSM, is Director of Marketing Communications at Burgess & Niple, where she brings 26 years of A/E/C experience to marketing strategy, pursuit strategy, brand leadership, team development and the integration of AI into marketing workflows across 30 offices in 13 states. Over 15 years at B&N, she has grown her team from two to 25 people and is known as an energetic speaker and mentor who makes marketing leadership practical and approachable.

While most A/E/C firms continue to compete on expertise, experience, and relationships, the real differentiator is brand. This real-world case study goes behind the scenes of how Treanor’s rebrand elevated its position, aligned internal culture with external promise, and drove measurable business outcomes. This is a must-attend session for A/E/C marketers to position their firms for growth and lead brand-driven transformation with confidence and clarity.

	Rebecca Lavezzary, FSMPS, CPSM As Treanor’s Chief Marketing Officer, Rebecca Lavezzary partners with firm leadership and shareholders to align marketing with the firm’s vision, values, and strategic direction. With more than 23 years in the AEC industry, she leads brand management, marketing planning, PR, lead generation, global communications, and more. Known for her ability to build strong relationships and translate complex ideas into clear communications, she is an ¬¬invaluable resource to Treanor’s marketing and design teams.
	Ida Cheinman Ida Cheinman uses her 30 years of experience as a brand strategist, designer, marketer, and educator to help business leaders and marketing professionals make sense of trends, tools, and best practices in order to position their firms to win in the 21st century’s fast-changing and extremely competitive marketplace. She is a sought-after national-level speaker who is knowledgeable, energetic and excels at making complex information accessible and immediately applicable.
	Megan Cooper Megan Cooper is a marketing and communications professional with 10 years of experience turning strategy into compelling stories and measurable results. At Treanor, she partners with firm leaders to align business goals, brand strategy, and communications through integrated initiatives. She helped lead Treanor’s award-winning rebrand and specializes in strategic planning, content development, campaigns, and performance measurement that create cohesive, impactful brand experiences.

The AEC industry has embraced AI with the promise of greater efficiency – automating tasks and accelerating workflows. But in some cases, these tools are simply being layered onto outdated processes, amplifying their flaws rather than solving them. This session invites you to take a step back: before incorporating AI to enhance your marketing workflows, it’s time to rethink those workflows altogether.

For example, one of the most persistent challenges in AEC marketing is collaborating with subject matter experts (SMEs) during proposal development. Many SMEs resist participating in traditional marketing processes, so introducing AI into those same broken processes doesn’t solve the problem. Instead, we need to first reimagine how we work with SMEs and then explore how AI can enhance those newly designed, more effective approaches.

Rachelle Ray Rachelle Ray is an AEC marketing leader focused on and empowering marketers to do their best work. As Head of AEC Marketing Innovation at OpenAsset and co-founder of Proposal Industry Experts, she helps firms improve strategy, team collaboration, and proposal efficiency. Rachelle is a passionate advocate for burnout prevention, professional development, and community building. Her work bridges the gap between marketing and leadership, equipping professionals to thrive in a rapidly evolving industry.

Reimagine your proposal content in this interactive discussion. Through case studies and visual examples, we’ll highlight how proposal elements can be reimagined and applied to four marketing channels/tactics. Deconstruct your case studies for testimonial development. Maximize web industry pages with proposal approach summaries. Re-use proposal narratives for conference networking and presentations. Feature projects as mood boards, videos or tip carousels on social media. We'll show you how to do it while preserving confidentiality and marketing effectiveness. This presentation is applicable to pursuit specialists as well as strategic industry leads. 

Dawn Wagenaar Dawn Wagenaar has more than 25 years of experience in professional services marketing, both as an in-house director of marketing for two firms and as owner of Ingenuity Marketing Group, LLC since 2005. She has consulted on brand and marketing strategy for A/E/C firms for more than 10 years, working with A/E/C firms across the U.S. Dawn was recently published in SMPS The Marketer magazine about futuristic marketing assessments.

Christine Nelson Christine Nelson is a strategic communications consultant who reimagines and repurposes great content to showcase your firm’s brand and culture. Through research and messaging, Christine loves to dive into approach language to ensure clear differentiation...and then cross-pollinate that messaging across marketing channels.

In this session, we’ll explore the craft of storylistening, a strategic approach to working with subject matter experts (SMEs) that goes beyond surface-level Q&A. This technique helps SMEs open up and share the type of meaningful details we need as writers -- the kind of detail that helps us write compelling proposals, case studies, and other marketing collateral. 

Samantha Enslen Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial, a creative agency known for explaining complex topics clearly. She is the former editorial manager at CSC and former contributing editor to The Editorial Eye. She spent 8 years on the board of ACES: The Society for Editing, and served as managing editor of Tracking Changes, the society’s quarterly journal. Sam has received multiple awards for her writing and in 2020 was named an APMP fellow. She is also a writer for the Grammar Girl podcast.

Technical expertise is the price of entry in A/E/C not a differentiator. So why do some firms consistently win repeat work, protect margins, and earn fierce client loyalty while others race to the bottom on price? The answer isn't better resumes or flashier graphics. It's strategy.

This session challenges you to REIMAGINE what differentiation really means, REINVENT your pursuit approach from proposals to interviews, and REVIVE the connection between your brand promise and the client experience you actually deliver. Packed with research-backed insights, real A/E/C case examples, and interactive exercises, you'll walk away with a practical framework and a concrete action plan to break free from the sea of sameness.

Whether you're an emerging marketer or a seasoned BD leader, it's time to stop submitting and start strategically winning.

Susan Quinn Susan Quinn is the Founder and CEO of circle S studio, a strategic branding and digital firm helping companies in the AEC industry stand out in competitive markets. For over 30 years, she has worked closely with company leaders to align brand, employee, and client experiences that drive measurable results and fuel growth. A sought-after speaker, Susan equips leaders to build purpose-driven cultures and winning strategies. She also hosts the monthly podcast Better Experiences by Design.

As AI has become ubiquitous in marketing, human connection has never been as valuable. The next phase in marketing balances AI's speed, power and automation to meet today's business customers expectations of immediate, always-on, highly personalized experiences with the value of human touch. The session will show how by harnessing the power of AI and combining it with human-only strategies that build trust in today's digital-first business environment, you can propel your firm forward. 

Ida Cheinman Ida Cheinman uses her 30 years of experience as a brand strategist, designer, marketer, and educator to help business leaders and marketing professionals make sense of trends, tools, and best practices in order to position their firms to win in the 21st century’s fast-changing and extremely competitive marketplace. She is a sought-after national-level speaker who is knowledgeable, energetic and excels at making complex information accessible and immediately applicable.

Many A/E/C firms say they listen to clients, but few turn that insight into a clear advantage. This interactive workshop helps professionals translate firm purpose, principles, and project experience into authentic, client-centered value propositions. Through guided exercises and role-play, participants practice articulating differentiators, developing mission-driven UVPs, and learning how to coach seller/doers to reinforce value through everyday client conversations. This interactive session helps marketing, business development, and seller/doer professionals turn client insight into clear, compelling value propositions that resonate in real conversations. Through guided exercises, discussion, and role-play, participants practice authentic, mission-driven differentiators. Attendees leave with practical tools to confidently express value, coach technical staff, and demonstrate what truly sets their firm apart. Facilitators will lead attendees through structured, interactive exercises that encourage reflection, discussion, and application to their own roles and firms. Participants will leave with actionable ideas they can successfully apply and facilitate.

Carla Hill, EDAC Carla Hill, EDAC is Director of Business Development at Guidon, where she drives firmwide growth through strategic leadership, team mentorship, and high-impact client engagement. A confident, relationship-driven leader, Carla’s influence spans local, regional, and national markets. She brings more than 25 years of sales and business development experience, including work with national firms such as Steelcase and SmithGroup. Carla is actively engaged in AMFP, ACHE, SMPS, CREW, and the life sciences community.

Megan Young, CPSM Megan Young, CPSM brings over a decade of marketing and communications expertise to her role, leading Guidon’s brand strategy, content development, and community engagement initiatives. Her creative approach to storytelling and chapter collaboration has helped transform SMPS Indiana events into high-value learning experiences that inspire connection and momentum. Megan is the 2025-2026 President of the SMPS Indiana Chapter

AI is changing how prospects discover and evaluate AEC firms. Long before a human reads your website or thought leadership, search engines and large language models are interpreting your brand, deciding what to cite, surface, and recommend.
That means marketing content has to perform two jobs at once. It must communicate credibility to human audiences and signal relevance, sentiment, and authority to the algorithms that increasingly stand between your firm and its next client.
In this session, Jerry Gennaria and Corey Morris unpack the interconnected forces of brand strength and search marketing shaping how professional services firms get found, read, and remembered. You'll learn how your unique point of view, brand experience, and a working grasp of today's AI and search landscape can shape both human and machine interpretation, and how to write content that wins with both.

Jerry Gennaria Author of the upcoming book, Branding from Within, and host of The Intangible Brand podcast, Jerry leverages 30 years of experience in strategy and communications to help professional service firms more effectively tell their story, build a stronger business, and reach their full potential. Jerry leads TOKY, a branding and creative strategy firm, where his pragmatic approach delivers actionable insights and frameworks to help marketers and business leaders build a stronger brand experience.

Corey Morris Corey Morris is a best-selling author, speaker, and President/CEO of VOLTAGE, a specialist digital agency focused on digital strategy, search/AI marketing, and websites. He is the creator of the START Planning Process and founder of Digital Marketing Success Plan®. With 20+ years of experience, Corey helps leadership teams align marketing execution with measurable business outcomes. He is a monthly contributor to Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land and speaks across North America.

In a market where technical excellence is expected, meaningful differentiation happens at the human level. This dynamic session challenges participants to reimagine how clients make decisions, reinvent the way value is communicated, and revive authentic relationships that fuel trust, loyalty, and long term growth.

Through interactive discussions, and hands on exercises, attendees will learn how to recognize the emotional drivers behind client decision making, communicate value in ways that truly resonate, and thoughtfully leverage technology to deepen—not replace—authentic connection.

Special emphasis is placed on improving overall client well being, retention, and partnership health—not just by winning the next project but becoming the trusted partner of choice over time.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with practical, immediately usable tools they can apply the very next day to strengthen relationships, increase client advocacy, and win more work by connecting where it matters most: emotionally.

Allen Witt Allen Witt is a licensed professional engineer and dynamic speaker who has championed client success for nearly four decades. He serves as client success director for the midwest at Terracon, where he focuses on building trusted, long term client partnerships across the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Based in Milwaukee, WI, he works closely with clients and internal teams to align technical services with meaningful business outcomes.

AEC firms create enormous amounts of valuable content through proposals, project sheets, safety campaigns, blogs, and marketing collateral, but most of it is treated as one-off material instead of a strategic asset. As search engines and AI tools increasingly shape how owners and partners discover and evaluate firms, the way content is structured matters more than ever. This session explores how AEC marketers and business developers can repurpose and organize existing content to improve search visibility, strengthen credibility, and support business development. Using real examples from active AEC marketing engagements, attendees will learn practical ways to structure project stories, service pages, and marketing materials so they perform better in both search and AI-driven discovery without creating more content for the sake of content.

Amanda Roehl Amanda Roehl brings 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing strategy to AEC clients nationwide. She founded Pixels and Ink in 2017 after years of working in and alongside the built industry, and that insider perspective shapes everything the agency does. With degrees in Construction and Architecture, Amanda understands both the details and the bigger picture of complex projects. She combines strategy, design, and industry insight to help clients communicate more clearly and effectively.

Amy Hollon Amy Hollon is the digital engine behind Pixels and Ink. With a background in journalism and a sharp instinct for what makes people click, read, and convert, she leads website development, digital advertising, and content strategy for our clients. She asks the right questions, finds the right words, and makes sure everything we build online actually works. Amy serves as our lead developer, writer, and project manager.

With AI entering every corner of AEC, leaders and teams are asking: Will AI replace CRM or reimagine it? This session explores how artificial intelligence is influencing the way firms manage client relationships, use data, and support pursuit strategy. You'll gain a grounded understanding of AI's current and future role in CRM and learn how to prepare your systems (and your people) for what's next. 

Courtney Kearney, FSMPS, CPSM As owner of CKearney Consulting, Courtney Kearney, FSMPS, CPSM leads a team of approachable data nerds dedicated to helping AEC firms get the most out of their CRM and data. Courtney is a respected thought leader, author, and public speaker. She has served in leadership roles within SMPS at the local, regional, and national levels, including chapter president and co-chair of the Southern Regional Conference.

In this interactive, high-energy session, Mary McConnell shares the Living Roadmap she used to help a 134-year-old firm enter a new market and be welcomed. Not as a stranger. Not as a sales pitch. As a partner. 

Skip the cold calls, wasted pursuits, and ‘spray and pray’ BD.  You will: 
* Map influence (not org charts) and learn who moves the work
* Build 90-day momentum plans that don’t require ego, luck, or heroics
* Create your own one-page Living Roadmap in real-time - practical, personal, and ready to use Monday morning

Walk away with a system to grow visibility, strengthen meaningful relationships, and create lasting momentum. If you are ready build from within and create traction that endures - this is your session. 

Mary McConnell Mary McConnell is a civil engineering leader with 30 years in transportation and site development across Ohio and the US. She has called Cincinnati home for 20 years and is the proud parent of 2 college students. Known for strategic growth and team leadership, Mary is passionate about youth STEM outreach and women in engineering, and mentoring emerging professionals, while fostering collaborative, high-performing teams that turn complex projects into well-executed solutions.

CRM tools promise growth but often stall out as "extra work." In this session, Kelsey Ashburn (ISG) and Catie Wheeler (BKBM) share a practical roadmap for turning CRM from a software installation into a culture shift. Attendees will see two real-world AEC CRM journeys — HubSpot at a 50-person firm and Unanet CRM at a 600+ person firm — and distill what truly drives firmwide adoption. The session explores goal setting, platform selection, data shaping, rollout, and workflow integration, with a particular focus on designing workflow "gates" that make CRM mandatory rather than optional, turning messy data into meaningful relationship and pursuit insights, and building feedback loops that keep adoption alive. Attendees leave with templates, implementation checklists, and workflow gates they can apply immediately — whether justifying a new CRM, rescuing a struggling one, or scaling an existing system at any level.

Catie Wheeler Catie Wheeler is a marketing and business development strategist at BKBM, a 50-person firm running HubSpot, where she drives CRM strategy and adoption. She regularly presents to technical and business development teams on CRM adoption, pursuit processes, and seller-doer enablement, and has served as a speaker for SMPS Twin Cities internal trainings and firmwide workshops.

Kelsey Ashburn Kelsey Ashburn is the Marketing Project Manager and CRM Firm Administrator at ISG, a multi-disciplinary architecture, engineering, environmental, and planning firm with over 600 employee owners. She played a critical role in the firm's CRM implementation, starting research and development in 2021 and launching in 2023. Kelsey led the system's configuration and customization, firmwide implementation strategy, forms and workflow management, and data entry; also creating internal resources, user trainings, and more. She is responsible for ensuring that CRM functions align with ISG's operations, while driving adoption through clear and consistent communication on system updates, process adjustments, and best practices.

Capture planning does not have to mean complex systems, lengthy documents, or added overhead. As AEC firms navigate shifting markets, leaner teams, and growing pressure to compete strategically, many are rethinking how they approach pursuits before an RFP is released. This session introduces a practical, right-sized approach to capture planning built for real-world constraints. Through real examples and interactive discussion, participants will explore the pre-RFP actions that have the greatest impact, learn simple frameworks for Go/No-Go and positioning decisions, and identify ways to focus effort where it delivers the highest return. Attendees will leave with practical tools they can apply immediately to support smarter pursuit decisions, strengthen positioning, and bring more strategic thinking into business development and marketing efforts without adding unnecessary process or complexity.

Katie Stern Katie Stern is a Business Development Specialist at Dragonfly AEC Consulting with more than 20 years of experience in the AEC industry. She helps firms strengthen positioning, align marketing and business development strategy, and pursue growth with clarity and intention. Known for bridging brand awareness, pursuit strategy, and real-world execution, Katie brings a practical, inside-the-industry perspective to helping firms compete more strategically and sustainably.

This session will help your firm's shortlist teams increase their win rate.

This HIGHLY INTERACTIVE workshop, designed for all experience levels, will help your firm nail the 4 fundamentals essential to winning your next shortlist presentation.

1. Talking about what is relevant to the audience’s needs, concerns and goals.
2. Simplicity in messaging.
3. Presenting as a LIKEABLE team that connects with the audience.
4. Effectively preparing for and answering questions.

Learning Outcomes
1. Learn how to develop an engaging team story that directly addresses the audience's project needs and concerns.
2. Understand how to effectively leverage past projects and experience to drive credibility.
3. Develop an approach to team rehearsals that balances workload while maximizing team effectiveness.
4. Learn to properly prep for Q&A and develop a simple framework for answering questions.

JD Clockadale JD Clockadale coaches AEC firms across the U.S. to help their teams win shortlist presentations. He’s worked with companies such as DLR Group, Batson-Cook, Turner Construction, New South Construction and Gresham Smith. Projects range from $25 million to $1 billion in size and span all sectors. JD is married with three daughters, is one of the founders of the City of Brookhaven, GA, and is a two-time graduate of Georgia Tech and past Adjunct Professor.