In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Sharon Pare, director of partnerships at HighRoad Solutions and co-host of the Rethink Association Podcast, is joined by two dynamic leaders: Christina Lewellen, MBA, FASAE, CAE, CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools, and Preet Bassi, CAE, CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Together, they explore how associations can thrive in an era defined by disruption and opportunity. Drawing on new themes highlighted in the upcoming fifth edition of the Professional Practices in Association Management, the conversation dives into the rising importance of governance and trust, building human-centered workplaces, and the skills association leaders need for the future. Lewellen and Bassi also share insights on the role of AI, the next wave of professional development, and how associations can adapt to create resilient, attractive, and future-ready organizations.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/V_j94oIM_IM

This episode is sponsored by the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

Transcript

ASAE_ep14

Sharon Pare: [00:00:00 ] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. Before we begin, we would like to thank this episode's sponsor, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. I'm Sharon Pare, director of partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot Agency “associafying” the way associations go to market with, well, their marketing.

I'm also the co-host of our monthly podcast, Rethink Association, where we talk about how to reimagine the way you association, which is the perfect lead in to today's discussion. So enough about me. Today, we're excited to welcome Christina Lewellen, CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools, and Preet Bassi, CEO of the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

Welcome to the show, Christina and Preet. Hey, good afternoon. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks so much for having us. Absolutely. Welcome to the show. [00:01:00 ] Before we get to introductions, I'd like to level set before we get into it. On this podcast today, we'll be talking about the future of associations, evolution, innovation, and leading through change.

We're also gonna talk about some of the new themes in the fifth edition of the Professional Practices and Association Management book, but we'll talk about some of the insights that challenge business as usual. And also this podcast is for you if you're leading a small but mighty team like Christina is, or a schmedium association, like Preet likes to call it, a national organization.

Or if you're simply just curious, there are some pop tracks in this podcast that you don't wanna miss. Preet and Christina are two leaders bringing deep experience in the field and fresh thinking on where associations are headed next. Well, they certainly need no introduction. I'm excited to give them the floor for a quick hello.

So we'll start with you, Christina.

Christina Lewellen: Hello everyone. I'm Christina Luwellen and I am the president and CEO of ATLIS. As you mentioned, [00:02:00 ] ATLIS is technology leaders in independent schools, which basically means that we are CIOs and tech teams, tech directors that serve private K 12 schools primarily in the states.

And we are growing really fast. We're a relatively young organization, about 10 years old. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary, but we are growing between 30 and 35% year over year, so we're definitely adding. Lots of new schools to our community every year. 

Preet Bassi: Hi everyone. I'm Preet Bassi, the CEO for the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

Been in that role. It'll be 11 years this September, and our organization has gone through a fix it phase and also a grow it phase, and we're in our grow it phase right now. We work with fire departments all around the world, helping them and the professionals that work in those fire departments establish continuous improvement methods to make sure that they're serving their communities better.

Sharon Pare: That's amazing. I'm really excited for today's conversation. And just from what you said, [00:03:00 ] Christina, you're at a newer association being there for about 10 years, and then Preet, you've been at your organization for 11 years, so I think that's amazing. Today we'll be chatting on topics we're all grappling in the space, so without further ado, let's jump in.

So associations built around people, knowledge and exchange, creating a collective knowledge. I know you've both contributed to shaping where associations are headed. Christina, let's start with you. What do you think will be foundational in the next era? 

Christina Lewellen: As we think about that, I like to boil things down in terms of associations and what they are, and I love this very simplistic way of thinking about it that Peggy Hoffman offers us, which is that the formula's pretty simple.

Associations are simply a combination of content. Community, and I feel like that is likely to remain the foundation of associations, but how we build on that foundation is probably going to have to change. There's a couple ways that I envision this happening, one for sure is that I [00:04:00 ] think that how we redefine and evolve the.

Workplace of associations will likely become foundational to how associations succeed. We have great opportunities there, but I also think that a lot of associations have some governance cleanup to do, and that is something that will really amplify this idea of the foundation being content and community.

Because if organizations are struggling to either clean up their components or wrestle with some unhealthy governance practices that have gotten into the mix, it's tough to stay really true to the mission and to deliver on that value proposition of content and community. So there's some opportunities there for sure, and I think that we'll continue to unpack that as this conversation goes along.

Sharon Pare: Preet, is there anything you'd like to add or something shifting even more dramatically?

Preet Bassi: I completely agree with the content and community comment. I would add connection to that, how we bring it together. [00:05:00 ] But my perspective on associations and CPSE is 28 years old, and about eight years ago, right as we were becoming a true adult at 21, we had a conversation in our board meeting about needing to self disrupt. If we were Blockbuster, we needed to figure out how to be Netflix, not have some other Netflix come in and overtake our market. Historically, associations haven't needed to worry about competition, startups, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcy, right? Those are common terms that we think about in the private space, but not in associations.

But if you look around over the last five, 10 years, there have been associations that have started up because they did not feel. They had a home, they had a voice, they had a space. You've seen associations that unfortunately have dwindled, those that have been friendly, merged, or perhaps hostile takeover bought out.

And [00:06:00 ] in looking at that, some of the things that we've been trying to do at CPSE is. How do we diversify who we are, how we're formatted to make sure that we're very agile and we're adapting as those societal, technological, economic, environmental, political changes come in. We've launched a subsidiary, we've started a new program.

We are incubating an association. Those would be words that you typically would hear, once again, in the private sector, but you wouldn't hear for associations. I think that the time has come for associations to not take their membership market for granted and make sure that they're scanning the entire market and how they best conserve it.

Sharon Pare: Yeah, that's great. Preet, and being on the industry partner side of things, we've seen that, of course, in the association side and seeing some of these hostile takeovers, if you will, or some of these mergers. But I'm seeing it on the industry partner side too. Almost on the monthly, maybe on the weekly, you hear some new news of [00:07:00 ] some of these larger conglomerates in our for-profit side of our association business, the industry partners respectively, where they're doing these mergers and acquisitions and they're creating this monolithic corporation, if you will, within our own space.

So this brings me into my next question. What do you think will fade or transform in terms of roles and skills and the futurescape of associations? 

Preet Bassi: I believe that we'll have a few doer roles that consist and event coordination. We have an amazing staff member that makes sure that the sponsor booths are set up and all the way a few of those will stick, but those that have historically been in thinker roles.

If they can grow that particular skillset, I see that as a kind of a skillset that is going to shift, whether it's because you're gonna do some automation through AI or even some outsourcing of things that are related to your [00:08:00 ] mission, but not core to the mission and just really don't need to do it. And it's interesting.

InCPSE, we do outsource a lot of core back of house tasks: finance, IT, legal. And thank God for partners in the private space that work with associations specifically on it, on legal. We are also thinking about how we outsource some front of house operations, events, communications. But what we're not