2026 Summit Speakers

We are pleased to welcome to following speakers to our 2026 Building Virginia summit!

Keynote: Tim Asimos
Beyond Business as Usual: Building a Culture of Innovation in AEC Marketing
The AEC industry has never been more innovative. Firms are solving increasingly complex challenges, adopting new technologies, and redefining what is possible in the built environment. Yet when it comes to marketing and business development, many firms remain constrained by legacy thinking and a culture that rewards the status quo over bold new ideas.

More than ever, AEC marketers have an opportunity to shape how their firms grow, compete, and differentiate themselves. This session is for marketers at every level who are ready to move beyond business as usual, lead change, and become catalysts for innovation within their firms. You will discover practical strategies to foster creativity, create an environment where innovation can thrive, and transform new ideas into lasting impact. We will explore why innovation stalls and practical ways to overcome skeptics, build momentum, inspire others, gain leadership buy-in, and turn bold ideas into action.

Whether you are looking to spark change within your team or transform how your firm approaches marketing, you will leave with practical frameworks, actionable ideas, and renewed confidence to elevate your marketing, strengthen your influence, and help shape the future of marketing in AEC.

Cristen English
Collaboration Advantage: Building Relationships that Drive Business Performance
The strongest client experiences often begin long before a proposal is submitted, or a project is won they begin with collaboration. As AEC firms continue to grow through acquisitions, geographic expansion, and increasingly specialized services, organizational silos can hinder communication, limit innovation, and create missed business opportunities.

This interactive workshop explores how marketers and business developers can leverage internal relationships as a strategic business asset. Through hands-on exercises, relationship mapping, peer discussion, and real-world AEC scenarios, participants will learn practical strategies to strengthen collaboration, improve organizational alignment, and drive business performance.

Attendees will leave with actionable tools they can immediately apply to build stronger teams, better client experiences, and more successful firms.

 
Laura Ewan & Kayla McCause
From Lurkers to Leaders: Helping AEC Experts Show Up on LinkedIn
AI has made corporate content faster to produce and easier to ignore. For AEC firms, that changes the role of LinkedIn and the role of marketing teams managing it.

This session will explore why company-page-centered social strategies are giving way to people-first visibility, and how marketers can support that pivot without creating an unrealistic burden on already busy teams and technical experts. Attendees will learn how to make the case for individual visibility, secure leadership buy-in, identify the right participants, support authentic content creation, and track performance when activity moves outside marketing’s direct control.

Through case studies, discussion, and working time, participants will leave with two practical tools: a leadership pitch to make the case for this strategy, and a 90-day beta program they can use to test, measure, and refine their approach.

Andrew Keener
The Pursuit Room: Win the Work before You Write
Proposal problems start before the writing begins. This interactive presentation places AEC marketers and business developers inside a guided “Pursuit Room” to examine where pursuit chaos starts and how to fix it before the first draft. Using a fictional AEC pursuit scenario, prepared demo snippets, and a practical Pursuit Case File, attendees will learn how to clarify client signals, pressure-test go/no-go decisions, map proof, improve SME questions, set AI boundaries, and assign review ownership.

This is not an AI writing or prompt session. It is a pursuit operations session for teams that need clearer decisions, stronger inputs, safer AI use, and less proposal rework. Attendees leave with a one-page tool, a 20-minute reset agenda, and fictional demo materials they can use before applying the process to real pursuit data.

Tami Berry & Susan Quinn
The Foundation of Growth: Winning the Talent War
The A/E/C industry is in a talent crisis. Skilled professionals are aging out, younger candidates have new expectations, and firms competing on job boards and referral bonuses alone are losing ground. This session gives marketers and leaders a practical playbook for winning the war for talent, using employer branding as a competitive advantage rather than treating recruiting as HR's job alone.

Drawing on real client research, you'll learn what today's workforce actually values: career clarity, honest feedback, modern tools, and a culture that delivers on its
promises. See how firms have turned employee experience research into action, from new learning programs to stronger performance platforms, and walk away with a framework for building an employer value proposition that resonates across generations.

If your firm's growth depends on people, this session will show you how to attract and keep the right ones.

Christie Thompson
Building the Foundation Behind the Brand
Every brand decision, from copy writing to proposals to construction signage, is easier to make (and defend) when authentic strategy guides it. This session breaks down what makes a great brand strategy and how AEC marketers can use it to guide smarter, more consistent decisions. Using real AEC examples, we'll look at how positioning and differentiation shape everything from visuals to storytelling.