Following The PPAI Expo 2022 and Women’s Leadership Conference 2022, the Association’s return to in-person events continues next month with the North American Leadership Conference (NALC). NALC has been on hiatus since 2019 and comes back full-force on Aug. 14-16 at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

NALC 2022 will delve into the most relevant, top-of-mind business issues and ideas impacting the promotional products industry, offering participants networking events, leadership development, strategic foresight, emerging business issues, trends and best practices, and more. The conference’s agenda includes numerous breakouts on subjects ranging from digital transformation to global business opportunities to data-driven decision-making and beyond as well as numerous general session presentations. 

Speakers at this year’s NALC includes several thought-leaders from inside the promotional products industry. These include Mike Pfeiffer, vice president of technology at distributor American Solutions for Business; Claudia St. John, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, president at Affinity HR Group, Inc., PPAI’s affiliated human resources partner; Chris Anderson, CEO of supplier HPG; and Denise Taschereau, CEO and co-founder of distributor Fairware Promotional Products Ltd.

NALC also draws several expert speakers from outside the industry. Among those presenting at the conference this year are:

PPAI has invited Tamara Ghandour, president of LaunchStreet Consultancy, to present NALC’s first session. In “Moving at the Speed of Innovation: How to navigate change and drive innovation in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world,” Ghandour will speak on being a confident innovator and leader in a modern marketplace driven by fast-changing strategies and new pressures, challenges and urgency.

Also joining NALC is Vala Afshar, chief digital evangelist at Salesforce. His session, “Limitless Organizational Design Using Principles of Flow,” will examine how, in a limitless company—the logical evolution of the connected company for the digital-first, decentralized-everything world—success can be found by scaling capabilities and reach in multiple directions to both grow and stay relevant. 

James Pogue, PhD, President and CEO of James Pogue Enterprises, is kicking off NALC’s second day with “Diversity, Inclusion And Bias: Measuring Progress, Improving Performance And Increasing Productivity,” a session on measuring organizational success in diversity, inclusion and unconscious bias efforts. Along with providing the latest research on bias, the session will clarify the connection between diversity, inclusion, bias and organizational success. 

Author, speaker and leadership strategist Sara Canaday is presenting NALC’s final education session, “Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom For Breakthrough Performances.” A rapidly changing business environment demands that successful leaders interrogate and potentially disrupt the way they see, think and lead. Canaday’s session provides a roadmap to facilitating effective change through a dynamic combination of case studies, experience, and storytelling.

For more information and to register, visit www.ppai.org/events/north-american-leadership-conference. 

James Khattak is a news editor at PPAI.