Emerging Professionals Summit

Unlocking the Leader Within: Own Your Voice, Drive the Mission

Priya Sodha, CEO, Innergem

Leadership doesn’t begin with a promotion—it begins the moment you choose to show up differently. In this session, you’ll be challenged to stop waiting for permission to lead and start embracing the influence you already have. Through practical communication strategies, mindset shifts, and real-world application, you’ll learn how to lead through your work, your voice, and your presence—regardless of title or tenure.
Together, we’ll explore how courageous communication can transform the way you contribute in meetings, strengthen relationships with managers and colleagues, and elevate collaboration across teams. You’ll leave with a practical framework you can apply immediately, along with a clearer sense of your own leadership identity—one grounded in mission, character, and impact rather than position alone.

The Intentional Association Career: How to Design a Career with Care and Purpose

Christina Lewellen, MBA, FASAE, CAE, Executive Director and CEO, National Society of Professional Engineers

Association careers are rarely linear, and few professionals begin their careers with a clear plan to work in the association sector. Many build meaningful and successful careers in this field, but often without a clear strategy for how they want to grow or where they want to go next. It is common for association professionals to advance by taking on more responsibility, responding to opportunities as they appear, and building momentum without much time to think intentionally about the bigger picture.

Take a more deliberate approach to your career growth by learning how to define what you want from your professional path and align your decisions with those goals. In this session, you’ll evaluate whether your current trajectory supports the future you want to build and identify the steps needed to move forward with greater intention and confidence.

Explore practical strategies for identifying the skills, experiences, and leadership competencies needed at every stage of your career. By the end of the session, you’ll have the tools to build a career portfolio that reflects not only your capabilities, but also your purpose, direction, and long-term leadership goals.

Yes, And: An Improv Toolkit for Association Professionals

Dave Collins, Founder + CEO, Oak and Reeds

The most common response in a meeting is "yes, but." The most powerful one is "yes, and." This session draws on the foundational principles of improvisational theater to help emerging association professionals build the habits of affirmation, flexibility, and creative collaboration that make work feel less like a negotiation and more like a shared project.

You will learn more than just improv concepts — you will practice them through fast-paced exercises that surface how quickly we block ideas without realizing it, and how a small shift in language and posture can change the entire energy of a conversation. Explore techniques such as recognizing the difference between accepting and blocking ideas — in language, body language, and tone — and make intentional choices about which to use. Every tool introduced maps directly to a real situation — a difficult meeting, a brainstorm that stalled, a volunteer who checked out. This highly interactive session will equip you with concrete Monday-morning moves, not a list of frameworks.

Wrap-up and Speed Solutions

Dave Collins, Founder + CEO, Oak and Reeds

Close out the day with a fast-paced, interactive session designed to reflect on key takeaways, share insights, and crowdsource practical solutions to common professional challenges. Leave energized, connected, and equipped with actionable ideas they can put into practice right away.

Priya Sodha, CEO, Innergem

Unlocking the Leader Within: Own Your Voice, Drive the Mission
Priya is a skilled leadership development professional, with over 17 years of experience working with professionals from entry level up to C-Suite executives.  She specializes in transformational leadership & collaborative trainings for high performing groups & teams. She is fun, she is energetic, and most of all she is authentic in her approach.   
With a Masters in Organizational Training from The New School, in NYC, she has designed and led impactful programs for a diverse range of industries, including city governments,  national nonprofits and major companies.  Her approach combines strategic insight with practical tools to foster growth and resilience.
Priya believes in the power of integrating ourselves into the workplace, helping teams learn how to stay resilient & mindful in high stress times. Her experience as a mindfulness & yoga instructor allows her to bring unique and dynamic techniques into all her sessions that will help your staff manage emotions whilst enhancing their workplace skills.

Christina Lewellen, MBA, FASAE, CAE, Executive Director and CEO, National Society of Professional Engineers

The Intentional Association Career: How to Design a Career with Care and Purpose

Christina Lewellen, MBA, FASAE, CAE, is Executive Director and CEO of the National Society of Professional Engineers. A seasoned association executive known for her data-driven approach to strategy and organizational leadership, she holds an MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential from the American Society of Association Executives.

 Lewellen speaks nationally on leadership, ethics, and the future of professional communities and associations. She also serves as a trustee for Harmony, Incorporated and is an active volunteer within the association management profession. In 2025, she was named an ASAE Fellow, an honor held by fewer than one percent of ASAE members.

Dave Collins, Founder and CEO, Oak and Reeds    

Yes And for Association Professionals

Dave Collins is the Founder and CEO of Oak and Reeds, a corporate training firm dedicated to using the tools of improvisational comedy to train clients on everyday communication skills they can use at work and in life. At Oak and Reeds, Dave works as a speaker, facilitator and executive coach. He has worked with clients like Nike, Airbus, Salesforce, TikTok and Google to train leaders how to communicate and lead more collaboratively.

Dave is also an award-winning improviser with seventeen years of experience performing and coaching in the art of improvisational comedy. Along with his teammates, Dave won the 2010 National Collegiate Improv Tournament and has headlined festival shows across the country.

Dave has a dual degree in communication and economics from Northwestern University and lives in Castro Valley, California.