Ascend: Shaping the Next Generation of Association Leaders

About Your Facilitator

Zane Clark, CAE, MBA, Founder & Business Development Lead, Sticky Notes, LLC

For nearly 20 years, Zane Clark has worked in and led associations, professional societies, and mission-driven organizations as a CEO, senior executive, workforce advocate, facilitator, strategist, and community builder.

Across every role, Zane has seen the same thing: organizations are rarely short on ideas. He's watched strong strategies gain momentum because people believed in them -- and has also seen good ideas stall, trust erode, and cultures weaken because the people responsible for carrying the work forward did not feel informed, connected, heard, or invested.

That shaped what what Zane believes today, that organizations work better when people have Clarity, Connection, and Contribution:

• Clarity helps people understand where they’re going and what matters most.
• Connection helps people connect the work to purpose, to one another, and to something bigger than a task.
• Contribution gives people a meaningful role in what happens next and the sense that what they bring matters.

You cannot command commitment. People choose whether to participate, trust, contribute, and care. Sticky Notes exists to help create the conditions that make that choice more likely. Because when the sticky notes come off the wall, what happens next has always been about people.