2027 Speaker Submissions
Red Rock Resort | Las Vegas, Nevada
Red Rock Resort
Las Vegas, Nevada
Before you tell us what you want to speak about, take a minute to read this.
It’s the theme we’re building the entire 2027 conference around, and the lens we want every session to come through.
Welcome
Every conference we run is built around one idea.
Not a color palette. Not a tagline stitched onto the agenda after the fact. A real idea that shapes every keynote, every speaker, and every moment on the main stage.
For 2027, that idea is The Conductor, and we could not be more excited about it. We're sharing it with you here first because the speakers who connect best with our audience are the ones who lean into the theme, not just check a box next to it. Read through it, and if it lights you up the way it's lit us up, we'd love to hear from you.
What The Conductor Means
Today's assistant does so much more than manage a calendar.
They coordinate people, priorities, information, and technology across an entire organization, often without anyone in the room realizing how much they're holding together. A conductor doesn't play every instrument. But they understand what each part contributes, they anticipate what's coming next, and they bring every part together into one performance.
They don't just support the performance.
They help conduct it.
This isn't an AI conference theme, and it isn't a music conference either. The musical language gives us a way to talk about coordination, judgment, influence, and leadership, and we love how much energy it brings to the room. We use words like rhythm and tempo when they earn their place, and we keep the metaphor in service of the message.
The tone we're building toward is sophisticated, confident, and elevated. Powerful, not sentimental. Inspiring, not theatrical.
One Stage, One Story
Here's what makes this stage different.
There are no breakout tracks. Every single attendee experiences the same keynote sessions together, in one ballroom. Your session isn't competing for attention in a side room down the hall. It's part of one shared story the whole audience lives through together, and that's a pretty exciting room to stand in front of.
It's also why we're intentional about how the agenda comes together. We're not just gathering great topics. We're building one performance, and we want every session, including yours, to be a piece the audience remembers.
What We're Looking For
We already know the story. We're looking for the voices to help tell it.
Below, you'll find the sessions we're excited to build the 2027 agenda around, organized into five areas of The Conductor. If one of them lights up something you're already great at speaking on, we want to hear from you.
Here's what we're hoping to find in you:
01
A speaker who owns the main stage. We don't run breakout workshops, so every session is a full keynote moment in front of the whole room. If that's your element, you'll feel right at home here.
02
A speaker who runs with the theme. We love when speakers take The Conductor and make it their own. Bring your expertise, and let's build something around this year's story together.
03
Real expertise our audience will trust. That might be years spent working directly with executive and administrative professionals, or deep expertise in an area like communication, leadership, or resilience that speaks to this audience.
04
A session made for this room. We want your topic to feel like it was built for this stage and this audience, this year, the kind of session that couldn't have happened anywhere else.
Ready to see what we're building for 2027?
Below is this year's lineup of topics, organized by category. Pick the one (or more) you'd love to bring to this stage, and let us know on the submission form.
2027 Session Topics
Choose the topic or topics you could bring to this stage
These are organized into five areas of The Conductor. You’ll be able to select and elaborate on your specific topic(s) and angle in the form below.
Conduct Yourself
Conducting Professional Growth
Taking Ownership of Your Career Performance
This session helps attendees stop waiting for someone else to define their next step. It focuses on career ownership, skill mapping, professional development plans, and the habits that move assistants from task execution to visible leadership. A strong speaker could help attendees identify what they want to be known for and what capabilities they need to build next.
Conducting Executive Presence
Showing Up Like a Strategic Leader Before You Have the Title
Assistants often sit near power but may not always feel powerful in the room. This session teaches presence, confidence, body language, verbal clarity, and the way strategic professionals show up during meetings, briefings, and high-stakes interactions.
Conducting Energy
Managing Your Capacity in a High-Demand Role
Administrative professionals are often the shock absorbers for everyone else’s urgency. This session focuses on energy management, boundaries, recovery, and protecting capacity so attendees can perform well without burning out.
Conducting the Unexpected
How Great Professionals Thrive When Plans Fall Apart
This session speaks to the reality of the assistant role. Plans change, meetings move, flights cancel, leaders pivot, and attendees need practical tools for adapting without spiraling. The focus is agility, judgment, and calm recovery.
Conducting Under Pressure
Making Smart Decisions When the Stakes Are High
This session speaks to the reality of the assistant role. Plans change, meetings move, flights cancel, leaders pivot, and attendees need practical tools for adapting without spiraling. The focus is agility, judgment, and calm recovery.
Conduct Your Executive
Conducting Executive Communication
How Great Assistants Shape Messages That Move Organizations Forward
Assistants are often close to the communication that shapes decisions, expectations, and culture. This session can teach attendees how to clarify messages, prepare leaders, anticipate reactions, and help communication land with the right people in the right way.
Conducting Strategic Partnerships
Becoming an Extension of Executive Leadership
This session is directly aligned with Joan’s long-standing teaching on strategic partnership. It explores how assistants move beyond helpful support into shared planning, stronger communication rhythms, mutual trust, and business-aligned decision-making.
Conducting Influence Upward
Partnering With Leaders More Strategically
This topic helps attendees communicate with leaders as trusted partners, not passive receivers of requests. It could include framing recommendations, asking better questions, giving timely insight, and building the confidence to influence upward.
Conducting Expectations
Creating Alignment Before Problems Occur
This session helps attendees get ahead of frustration by clarifying expectations early. It can include expectation setting with executives, stakeholders, vendors, and teams, plus language for confirming priorities, timelines, ownership, and definitions of success.
Conduct Your Team
Conducting Conflict
Turning Workplace Tension Into Productive Outcomes
This session could be led by a conflict expert or mediator. It teaches attendees how to navigate tension, reduce emotional escalation, clarify issues, and help people move toward productive next steps.
Conducting Difficult Conversations
Navigating Challenging Discussions With Confidence and Professionalism
Assistants often need to deliver sensitive messages, ask hard questions, or address misalignment. This session provides language, frameworks, and confidence for conversations that need care and clarity.
Conducting Human Connection
Why Relationships Still Matter in an AI-Driven World
As technology accelerates, human connection becomes even more important. This session ties directly to the human advantage and helps attendees strengthen empathy, listening, relationship building, and emotional intelligence.
Conducting Alignment
Getting Everyone Moving in the Same Direction
Alignment is one of the most important outcomes assistants help create. This session can teach frameworks for shared goals, ownership clarity, communication rhythm, and follow-through across teams.
Conduct Your Organization
Conducting Projects
Keeping Every Moving Piece in Sync
Many assistants manage projects without a project manager title. This session can teach practical project planning, scope clarity, timelines, ownership, risk tracking, and how to keep people moving when authority is informal.
Conducting Productivity
Designing Workflows That Keep Everyone Performing at Their Best
This session focuses on workflow design, systems thinking, time protection, process improvement, and reducing friction. It helps attendees become the people who make work easier, cleaner, and more repeatable.
Conducting Outcomes
Stop Managing Activity and Start Driving Results
This session helps attendees move from checking off tasks to measuring impact. It can cover outcome thinking, success measures, business value, and how assistants can connect daily actions to stronger organizational results.
Conduct the Future
Conducting AI
Directing Technology Instead of Being Directed by It
This session builds on the AI Conductor concept. Attendees learn how to guide AI with human judgment, use prompts with intention, review AI output critically, and apply AI to real administrative workflows without giving up discernment.
Conducting Digital Workplaces
Managing the Modern Symphony of Tools and Technology
Assistants are often expected to manage platforms, calendars, documents, chat tools, project systems, and automation. This session can teach digital organization, tool selection, workflow standards, and how to reduce tech chaos.
Conducting Innovation
Helping Organizations Think Bigger and Move Faster
This session helps attendees become catalysts for improvement. It can focus on spotting outdated processes, bringing forward ideas, experimenting safely, and supporting leaders who want to create new ways of working.
Conducting Influence Without Authority
The Superpower Every Assistant Must Master
This session fits the future workplace because influence is replacing old hierarchy in many organizations. Attendees learn how to lead through credibility, relationships, clarity, and results even when they do not hold formal authority.
Closing Keynote
Own the Podium: Conducting Your Next Chapter
Step into the leadership, influence, and ownership your role already requires.
After days of exploring influence, communication, AI, projects, relationships, and leadership, this closing keynote brings the message back to personal ownership. Administrative professionals are not waiting for permission to lead. They are already positioned to influence the rhythm of their executive, team, and organization. This session challenges attendees to return to work with a stronger sense of presence, confidence, and responsibility for the impact they can create.
The Final Note: Leaving With Clarity, Courage, and Momentum
Turn the conference experience into a clear plan for what comes next.
This closing keynote helps attendees pause, reflect, and decide how they will carry the conductor mindset back into daily work. Rather than leaving with scattered inspiration, attendees are guided to identify the ideas, behaviors, and commitments that matter most. The message is centered on clarity, courage, and momentum so they can return to their executives, teams, and organizations ready to lead with intention.
Conducting What Comes Next
Lead with adaptability, confidence, and human judgment in a changing workplace.
The world of work will continue to change. Technology will evolve, expectations will rise, and organizations will need people who can create alignment through uncertainty. This closing keynote focuses on the skills administrative professionals need to stay valuable and relevant: adaptability, learning agility, communication, influence, judgment, and the ability to guide others through change. It positions the assistant as a future ready conductor who does not wait for change to settle before taking action.
The Rhythm of Results: Turning Inspiration Into Action
Move from conference motivation to real workplace follow through.
Many people leave conferences inspired, but not everyone turns that inspiration into action. This closing keynote gives attendees a practical way to protect the momentum they gained throughout the event. It focuses on habits, commitments, execution, and follow through so administrative professionals can translate big ideas into meaningful workplace results. The message reinforces that conductors do not just understand the music. They guide the performance from start to finish.
Found your fit? Let's get your submission started.
You've seen the topics we're building the 2027 stage around. If one or more of them is calling your name, the next step is telling us about yourself and how your session comes to life.
