Breakfast & Networking
Doors open. Curated seating to spark new executive connections.
Lincoln Howell
Welcome to the Summit
Ryan Avery
Go From A to THE®: Leading with Humanity in the Age of AI
AI is changing how we work faster than most organizations have ever experienced. But as it automates more tasks, we need leaders who bring intentionality, emotional intelligence, and real human connection to the workplace.
In this interactive keynote, organizational psychologist Ryan Avery challenges leaders to stop asking how AI can replace work and start asking how it can elevate what makes us human. Using his Go From A to THE® framework, he shows that thriving organizations won't be the ones with the most technology, but the ones that combine it with intentional leadership, meaningful relationships, and a culture people want to be part of.
When everyone has the same technology, your greatest competitive advantage isn't artificial intelligence. It's authentic leadership.
Speaker TBA
To build or buy? How companies build scale through M&A and how AI is changing Private Equity
Shawnna DelHierro
Beyond the Hype: The Strategic Upside and Downside of Being Early to AI
Early AI adoption is not a technology choice – it's a leadership choice. AI is advancing fast, and early adopters are racing to capture advantage – but the truth is, AI alone won't transform your business. At the Ampleo Growth Summit, Shawnna DelHierro will break down the real benefits early adopters gain, the risks they often underestimate, and why technology without leadership, culture, and operating-model readiness fails to deliver true transformation. This session gives CEOs a candid, strategic view of what early adoption can accelerate – and what it cannot fix. If you're deciding how aggressively to lean into AI, this conversation will give you the clarity to invest with intention, not illusion.
Networking Break – connect with sponsors & partners in the lobby.
Breakout Sessions – Block 1
Three concurrent 25-minute tracks – choose your room.
Culture Bloat is the gap that builds up from decades of trying to make people more productive through engagement. You tried to make people care more about work, but got more work about caring. This session names the gap, prices it in your own business, and gives you the first move to make Monday morning. You'll leave with a stop-doing list, not a to-do list.
Switch Rooms
Breakout Sessions – Block 2
Three concurrent 25-minute tracks – choose your room.
Marketing teams are shrinking – and the marketers thriving through the shift aren't the ones with the biggest headcount behind them. They're fractional, they're lean, and they've learned to use AI to amplify what one person can deliver. The future doesn't belong to bigger teams. It belongs to amplified ones.
Pete Larkin and Chad Jardine have been building that future up close. In this session, they'll share what they're seeing at the front edge of fractional marketing and AI adoption – and the model that's making small teams outperform big ones.
Lunch – meals provided with continued networking.
Fraser Bullock
Executive Chairman of Organizing Committee 2034 Olympics
What I've learned from four decades of building and scaling companies and organizations.
Fraser Bullock has spent four decades building companies, helping run a billion-dollar private equity firm, and steering one of the most successful Olympic Games in history. He distilled it all into four practical keys for leaders. This isn't a strategy lecture; it's a hands-on look at what strategy really means when the stakes are real: making hard calls, building the right team, and staying focused under pressure.
Cain Elliott
The True Cost of AI: Why Your Investment Isn't Paying Off (Yet)
Dr. Elliott will discuss concrete ways to follow AI releases and work with AI in your business, while staying focused on your company's objectives. In addition, will talk about smart ways to experiment with AI in your business and avoid uncontrollable spend. This will be done in a workshop style with an opportunity for direct Q&A.
Networking Break – connect with sponsors & partners in the lobby.
Kristin Harrer
Building Cult Brands in an Algorithmic World
In an era when AI has collapsed the cost of distribution and algorithmic optimization is quietly turning every brand “beige,” what actually separates the brands people love from the ones they merely tolerate? Drawing on over 20 years of experience building five iconic global brands (Nike, Samsung, Dollar Shave Club, Vans, and T-Mobile) across five algorithmic eras, Kristin Harrer argues that AI can amplify a brand, but it can’t instill creativity, judgment, taste, or conviction. She contends that the future of brand-building lives in the “identity layer” that consumers will never delegate to an AI agent. Through behind-the-scenes stories and case study examples, ranging from how Dollar Shave Club hacked the Facebook algorithm to how a boat shoe became the cult uniform of skate culture, she distills five constants that have held true through every algorithmic platform shift. It’s a practical, story-rich playbook for building brands that become cultural movements and institutions, not just optimized funnels.
Joe Grover
Closing Reception
Drinks, light bites, and continued conversations.