This agenda is built around the issues CEOs are navigating right now: leading through disruption, applying AI in practical ways, strengthening teams, protecting performance, and executing strategy with discipline. Each session focuses on ideas leaders can apply immediately—combined with peer discussions that surface what’s actually working inside other companies.
These events run concurrently and only one may be selected during registration. Click on each box to learn more about the activity.
Courtesy of Lubbock Economic Development Alliance
Courtesy of The Virtual Hub
Courtesy of Lubbock Economic Development Alliance
Courtesy of Capturely
Join Adam Witty, a 6-time author with two decades of experience in shaping industry leaders, for an exclusive session on harnessing authority to drive meaningful business growth.
In this engaging and actionable workshop, Adam will unveil 4 proven strategies for leaders to cultivate genuine authority and leverage it for substantial business success, including insights on:
Don’t miss this opportunity to unlock the full potential of your leadership and personal brand authority. As a special value-add, attendees have the opportunity to sign up for a complimentary executive Book and Authority Blueprint to help jump start their goals.
Founder and CEO of Advantage Media and Forbes Books
We open with the question every leader in the room is wrestling with: how do you build an organization that can adapt continuously — not just survive one disruption, but thrive through the next five? Ferrazzi’s research institute has studied thousands of executives and teams to identify what the highest-performing organizations do differently. His answer is provocative: the era of the command-and-control leader is ending, and the companies pulling ahead are the ones that have fundamentally restructured how their teams collaborate, make decisions, and hold each other accountable. He’ll share the specific frameworks that separate organizations that are merely coping from those that are actually gaining ground.
Founder, Ferrazzi Greenlight; #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
Too many organizations build around whoever’s best in the room and lose ground the moment that person leaves. Buford has spent more than two decades proving there’s a better way: five championships since 1999, built on a team-first culture that never depends on one star to carry it. As CEO of the San Antonio Spurs and Spurs Sports & Entertainment, he’s turned that culture into one of the most studied examples of sustained organizational excellence in sports, the kind of case study that shows up in business school classrooms, not just highlight reels. In this exclusive onstage conversation, Buford breaks down how the Spurs actually create and sustain it, year after year, and how other CEOs can do the same.
CEO, San Antonio Spurs / Spurs Sports & Entertainment
This is your chance to learn from fellow CEOs who are working through the same challenges you are. Select the topic most pressing for your business right now:
Companies rarely fail from a lack of opportunity. More often, growth slows because leaders face constraints in leadership capacity, talent, organizational alignment or execution.
Drawing on recent research of C-suite executives and business leaders, this peer discussion will explore the factors that most often limit growth and the strategies leaders are using to overcome them.
Participants will exchange insights on scaling effectively, developing leadership pipelines, aligning people with business priorities and creating the organizational capacity needed for sustainable growth.
Business Performance Consultant, Insperity
If you’re thinking about your exit any time in the next few years, be sure to join this roundtable to discuss and learn how a strategic sales process will maximize your value and get you the other outcomes you require/desire. The roundtable will explore:
President, North America Strategies, STS Capital Partners
The average employer wastes $4,000 per employee every year on healthcare — not because leaders don’t see the problem, but because most stall between diagnosis and execution. Governance stays unclear, broker incentives stay misaligned, and no one on the leadership team owns the fix. This discussion will give CEOs and senior executives a practical playbook for closing that gap:
Participants will leave the roundtable with a CEO’s Accountability Toolkit: a governance charter to assign clear ownership, a calibration tool to align the leadership team before acting, and a 90-day execution protocol that holds vendor compensation accountable to actual plan performance.
Founder & CEO, Health Compass Consulting;
Author, Fixing Healthcare: How Executives Can Save Their People, Their Business, and the Economy
In a world where AI can commoditize content, automate expertise, and dilute the value of information, personal authority is the one asset no algorithm can replicate. In this workshop. attendees will identify the leadership traits AI cannot simulate — empathy, intuition, lived experience — and center their brand around them. From there, the session gets tactical: you’ll learn how to build visibility and influence on the LLMs now mediating who gets found, cited, and trusted, before individual experts risk becoming invisible to the engines their clients are increasingly asking instead of Googling. It will also reframe generative AI as an authority accelerator rather than a threat — a research assistant that can scale thought leadership output without sacrificing the judgment and originality that make it worth reading in the first place. The session will close with examples of how assets like a published book or signature stage presentation now function as proof of authenticity in a flooded market, as well as offer strategies to move beyond being a “vendor” and become a “Trusted Advisor” whom clients seek out specifically for your unique, un-AI-able insights.
Executive Publisher, The Authority Company
CEOs know AI matters. Whoever owns technology in their organization — a CIO, a VP of IT, a CFO — knows AI is being watched. But the conversation happening between them is rarely the right one: focused on tools, budgets, and pilots instead of outcomes, alignment, and strategic leverage.
In this workshop, Chris Happ (CEO, VirtuousAI) and Todd Dooling (CIO, Crow Holdings) will share the real use cases, strategies, and results from inside a company that has already made the shift. You’ll see how they created a several-hundred-thousand-dollar impact before the start of year 2.
Then, go inside a corporate brain and experience organizational intelligence as your operating environment. Attendees leave with three things:
CEO, VirtuousAI
CIO, Crow Holdings
When a transaction is on the horizon, management’s compensation and employment arrangements can materially affect both personal economics and deal value. Yet even sophisticated executives may find themselves navigating complex employment agreements, equity plans, incentives, restrictive covenants, and tax considerations—often when deal pressures are highest.
This interactive discussion will provide CEOs and senior executives with a practical, management-focused perspective on the issues that matter most before, during, and after a transaction, including:
· What matters to management—and buyers? Where interests align, where they diverge, and how to position management for a successful outcome.
· Where are the hidden traps? Employment agreements, restrictive covenants, change-in-control provisions, and other terms that can materially affect economics and post-transaction opportunities.
· Do incentives actually align with value creation? Performance vesting, MOIC and other return metrics, and whether the headline value can become realized value.
· What should you do before signing? Practical steps to understand your agreements, protect your interests, and maximize alignment with the company’s value-creation strategy.
The goal is not simply to understand what your agreements say, but whether they actually reward the value you create—and deliver the economics you expect.
Partner, Morgan Lewis
Partner, Morgan Lewis
Partner, Morgan Lewis
An open, facilitator-led roundtable where CEOs & executives can bring their most pressing business challenges to the table, compare approaches, and learn from the experiences of fellow leaders.
Partner, Morgan Lewis
Partner, Morgan Lewis
Additional topics will be including:
You know AI matters. You probably don’t yet know what to do about it — and you’re not alone. Woods built his credibility on this topic not as a technologist but as a business leader: as Chief Growth Officer of Jindal Steel & Power, he helped drive market cap growth from $750 million to over $12 billion in four years, in part by integrating AI into strategic decision-making. His argument is that AI’s real value for leaders isn’t automation — it’s better thinking. He’ll show you how to use AI as a strategic thought partner to make faster, higher-quality decisions on the issues that actually move the needle, without needing to become a technologist yourself.
Founder, AI Leadership; Author, The AI-Driven Leader
Here’s the leadership risk no one puts on the agenda: your own health. Dr. Hurt chairs Mayo Clinic’s Executive Health Program, where he and his team of more than 100 physicians work with C-suite leaders to optimize performance and longevity. Drawing from research conducted in partnership with Chief Executive magazine and Mayo Clinic, he’ll share evidence-based strategies specific to the demands executives face — the physiological costs of sustained high-stress leadership, the interventions that actually work, and the markers most leaders overlook until it’s too late. If you’re going to lead through disruption, you need to be around — and at your best — to do it.
Chair, Division of General Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic
A can’t-miss session for any CEO trying to navigate into 2027. One of the most influential lawmakers of our time, Gramm spent more than two decades in Congress and left more fingerprints on American fiscal policy than almost anyone of his generation. In an exclusive onstage interview, he’ll help you decipher the impact of the election, its potential for the global economy, and—perhaps most important–where he thinks the world is heading in the age of AI.
Former U.S. Senator, Texas (R); Vice Chairman, UBS Investment Bank; Professor of Economics, Texas A&M University
We close the day by honoring companies that set the standard for supporting those who serve. The Patriots in Business Award recognizes businesses leading our nation in hiring, training, and championing active-duty military members, veterans, and their families. Join us as we celebrate this year’s honorees.
Business Advisor; Best-selling Author, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up
courtesy of The Virtual Hub
Courtesy of Lubbock Economic Development Alliance
Select the topic most pressing for your business right now:
What drives value in today’s market? Join your peers for a practical discussion on raising capital, attracting investors, and preparing for future strategic transactions. You’ll gain insights into how capital providers evaluate businesses, key drivers of enterprise value, and steps CEOs can take to increase optionality, support growth, and position their companies for long-term success.
Managing Director and Head of Capital Advisory, Intrepid Investment Bankers
As a company grows, the CEO role should change with it. Decisions that once belonged squarely with the CEO need to move deeper into the organization, priorities shift, and the CEO’s time increasingly needs to move toward the work only they can do. But letting go is difficult. Many CEOs continue to own responsibilities that made sense at an earlier stage of the business — and can unintentionally become a constraint on the next stage of growth.
In this peer roundtable, participants will examine how their role, priorities and time allocation need to evolve as the business scales. Drawing on findings from Chief Executive’s CEO Time Study, participants will have the opportunity to assess how they are spending their own time and compare notes with peers on what they have successfully delegated, what they still struggle to let go of, and where their involvement creates the most — or least — value today.
Managing Director and Head of Capital Advisory, Intrepid Investment Bankers
CEO and Co-Founder, Ciridae
Courtesy of Lubbock Economic Development Alliance
Courtesy of Capturely
The hardest part of leading through uncertainty isn’t reacting to what’s already happened — it’s seeing what’s coming before your competitors do. Rodney has built a cultural intelligence framework at The Harris Poll that has identified major shifts — from the rise of “fear of being obsolete” among workers to fundamental changes in consumer expectations — months before they hit the mainstream. She advises Fortune 100 leadership teams on translating behavioral and cultural data into strategic decisions. In this session, she’ll walk you through the trends most likely to reshape your competitive landscape in the next 18 months and give you practical scenario-planning tools to prepare for multiple futures rather than betting on one.
Senior Director, Strategy, The Harris Poll
We open the final day by honoring companies that set the standard for supporting those who serve. The Patriots in Business Award recognizes businesses leading our nation in hiring, training, and championing active-duty military members, veterans, and their families. Join us as we celebrate this year’s honorees.
AI is changing how work gets done, expectations keep rising, and change never slows down. Yet amid all the disruption, one thing still determines success: great leaders and high-performing teams. Many leaders feel caught between delivering results and supporting their people, a false tradeoff that exhausts organizations and limits performance.
Leddin is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, former Vanderbilt University professor, and senior advisor at FranklinCovey. Colosimo is a senior executive and bestselling author who brings 35 years of building and leading high-performing teams at Accenture, DaVita, and FranklinCovey. Together they’ll share a research-backed leadership framework, developed over decades of global work with leaders, that shows how to lead for both people and performance—expecting a lot and caring a lot—to create clarity, develop people, strengthen accountability, and sustain high-performing teams in the most demanding environments.
Senior Executive and Bestselling Author, Strikingly Different Selling and Expect a Lot, Care a Lot
Bestselling Author, Disrupt Everything and Win (with James Patterson); FranklinCovey Senior Advisor for Leadership and Culture
We close with execution — because strategy without execution is just conversation. Nardelli ran three of the largest enterprises in America and for the past decade has been working in the trenches with midmarket companies as a private equity investor and operating partner. He knows the difference between a strategy that looks good in a boardroom and one that actually gets implemented across an organization. His Operator’s Playbook distills 50 years of operating experience into a disciplined framework for clarifying strategic direction, aligning your team around it, and building the accountability systems that ensure follow-through. This is how you take everything you’ve heard over two days and make it real on Monday morning.
Former CEO, The Home Depot and Chrysler; Former Vice Chairman, General Electric
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11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Join fellow attendees on one of San Antonio’s finest courses, the Hyatt Hill Country Golf Club, for a shotgun-start scramble. Golfers of all abilities welcome. The $295 fee covers greens/cart fees, practice facilities, boxed lunch, and a cocktail reception.
Tee times start at 12 PM.
Managing Partner, Bluewater Advisory
Lindsey is the Managing Partner of Bluewater. In addition to serving as Principal on many client engagements, Lindsey’s passion for people and organizational development is shown in her development and delivery of leadership programs, workshops, group training, and one-to-one coaching. Lindsey draws from her professional experience, as well as her degree from Central Michigan University in Interpersonal Communication and Public Communication, with a minor in Marketing.
Joining the Bluewater team in the fall of 2014, Lindsey was immediately embraced by Bluewater’s clients as a truly caring advisor and coach who can bring out the best in people, often helping professionals develop their interpersonal skills and confidence to the same high level as their technical competence. Lindsey’s adaptability is hard to match and is admired by many. From training a group of 80+ United States Army Colonels in emotional intelligence to delivering a Dynamic Communications keynote to 300 hospitality conference attendees on the big stage, down to one-to-one coaching, Lindsey engages people, bringing folks naturally to a state of trust and eagerness to engage, to learn and to develop.
Coaching Your Team & Mastering Difficult Conversations
2:00 - 5:00 PM
As women leaders, we bring strong EQ to our roles and take real ownership of our responsibilities. For many of us, the biggest challenge is creating more leaders like us: people who think critically, make good decisions, and own their work the way we do.
So how do we grow those skills in our teams when we’re busier than we’ve ever been? How many times have you just done a task yourself simply because it was faster than teaching someone how to do it? This workshop will help you implement Real Time Coaching: a simple yet exceptionally effective approach to helping team members build their own critical thinking, rather than defaulting to giving them the answer. You’ll learn how to delegate a problem and then support someone through solving it — growing their confidence and, in turn, your trust in their judgment — instead of just handing them the solution and calling it done.
Then, for the second half of the workshop, we’ll turn to the elephant in the room: how to handle difficult conversations with conviction and grace. Whether it’s a hard conversation with someone who reports to you or a differing opinion with a peer or your boss, we’ll tackle why addressing conflict directly leads to better decisions and less resentment down the line. Together, we’ll work through tools to navigate difficult conversations at every level — up, down, and across your organization — so you leave ready to share your point of view constructively and with confidence.
This is a hands-on, interactive workshop — expect real-time coaching practice, scenario-based exercises, and small-group work throughout.
Managing Partner, Bluewater Advisory
Building a Sales Engine That Performs Through Uncertainty
1:00 - 5:00 PM
When markets shift, the companies that grow are the ones whose sales organizations adapt without losing discipline. Led by Alex Goldfayn — bestselling author of Outgrow, 5-Minute Selling, and Selling Boldly, and a revenue growth consultant who has analyzed millions of sales behaviors across 400+ B2B companies — this workshop gives CEOs, CROs, and senior sales executives a proven, statistically-backed system for driving 20-30% organic growth.
CEO, The Revenue Growth Consultancy; Author, Pick Up The Phone & Sell
1:00 - 5:00 pm
Over 70% of Executives Surveyed Agree: Many Strategic Planning Efforts Lack Systematic Approach Tips for Enhancing Your Strategic Planning Process
Executives expressed frustration with their current strategic planning process. Issues include:
Steve Rutan and Denise Harrison have put together an afternoon workshop that will provide the tools you need to address these concerns. They have worked with hundreds of executives to develop a systematic approach that will enable your team to make better decisions during strategic planning. Steve and Denise will walk you through exercises for prioritizing your lists and steps that will reset and reinvigorate your process. This will be a hands-on workshop that will enable you to think about your business as you use the tools that are being presented. If you are ready for a Strategic Planning tune-up, select this workshop in your registration form. The additional fee of $695 will be added to your total.
2:00 - 5:00 pm
Female leaders face the same issues all leaders do, but they often face additional challenges too. In this peer session, we will facilitate a discussion of best practices and how to overcome common barriers to help women leaders be more effective within and outside their organizations.
Limited space available.
10:30 - 5:00 pm
General’s Retreat at Hermitage Golf Course
Sponsored by UBS
General’s Retreat, built in 1986 with architect Gary Roger Baird, has been voted the “Best Golf Course in Nashville” and is a “must play” when visiting the Nashville, Tennessee area. With the beautiful setting along the Cumberland River, golfers of all capabilities will thoroughly enjoy the golf, scenery and hospitality.
The golf outing fee includes transportation to and from the hotel, greens/cart fees, use of practice facilities, and boxed lunch. The bus will leave the hotel at 10:30 am for a noon shotgun start and return to the hotel after the cocktail reception following the completion of the round.
