The association sector is at a genuine inflection point because so much is changing at once. AI is reshaping entire professions. Federal funding is in flux. University pipelines are shrinking. And, in the middle of all of it, associations have an extraordinary opportunity to play a critical role in workforce development—if they’re willing to move fast enough.
In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Artesha Moore, CEO of Association Forum, about what that opportunity looks like and what it will take to seize it. Artesha shares why mission-led thinking matters more than member surveys at this moment, how associations can close the visibility gap with employers, and why the leaders most likely to succeed will be the ones willing to imagine broadly and fail productively.
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Celisa Steele: [00:00:03] If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you’re in the right place. I’m Celisa Steele.
Jeff Cobb: [00:00:10] I’m Jeff Cobb, and this is the Leading Learning Podcast.
Jeff Cobb: [00:00:17] Associations are among the most powerful forces in workforce development and professional advancement in the U.S. But almost no one outside the association world grasps the scope of that impact—and sometimes not even those in the association world.
Celisa Steele: [00:00:31] Our guest for this episode, number 484, is Artesha Moore, CEO of Association Forum. Artesha has spent nearly three decades in association management and the nonprofit space.
Jeff Cobb: [00:00:43] Artesha makes the case that we’re at an inflection point that’s different from the disruptions associations have faced before because it’s not one force at a time. AI, workforce displacement, shifting federal funding, and declining university pipelines are all hitting simultaneously.
Celisa Steele: [00:01:00] You and Artesha also discussed the gap between what associations do and how they’re perceived—why a university president gets quoted in mainstream media on workforce development but association CEOs rarely do and what it would take to change that.
Jeff Cobb: [00:01:15] And Artesha offers direct, practical advice for association leaders: how to use imagination and a willingness to fail as strategic tools.
Celisa Steele: [00:01:24] The conversation kicks off with Artesha introducing herself.
Beautiful Hip-Hop Buddhist Jedi
Artesha Moore: [00:01:33] I’m Artesha Moore. I am the CEO of Association Forum. But, if I could introduce myself in any words, it would be I am a beautiful hip-hop Buddhist Jedi. And what does that mean? I look at the world from a beautiful rhythmic realness. I’ve been in the association management and nonprofit space for about three decades at this point; and, as I age, I get more centered and present in the Buddhist sense. The Jedi part is because I’m a sci‑fi girlie—a technologist—and thinking about how technology, sci-fi, and science fiction have become the reality of what we’re living right now. So, for a person who has helped, in my career, move people forward through learning, I’m excited to be here today and to hash it out with you, Jeff, because, when we met, it was electric.
Jeff Cobb: [00:02:30] Indeed it was. You’re definitely the first hip-hop Buddhist Jedi that we have had on the podcast. So I’m looking forward to that conversation. You and I have spoken before. We’ve been in a very engaging discussion before, which I’ll give props to Mark Jones at LearnUpon for pulling us together on. We were talking about where associations are in general, but also where they are with education since that tends to be such an important part of what associations do. And one of your comments was that we’re really at an inflection point right now, that we’ve seen a fundamental shift, and that this moment is maybe a little bit different from the changes that we’ve experienced before. Associations obviously have experienced changes before, but what’s different now from your standpoint?
Why We’re at an Inflection Point
Artesha Moore: [00:03:20] There are a lot of things that are coming in that are different. It isn’t just new advanced technology; it’s a new way of looking at industry, I think. When you look back at matriculation rates from 2017 and 2018, the new folks going into university, lower numbers. The new folks coming out of university aren’t prepared for the workforce in the same way, traditionally, that they were about 10 years ago. We look at that and then the changes of funding mechanisms. I’ve spent most of my career in STEM. The number one funder of STEM in the United States is the government. As the government is trying to settle its dust-up, what does that look like for the impact of all of these industries? When I say an inflection point that we haven’t seen before, I think it’s just the acceleration of all of these factors at one time. We’ve seen them all happen, but all of them coming at one time under this umbrella of collective uncertainty. You’re hearing a lot of headlines: “Careers Are Going to Go Away,” “30-Percent Workforce Replaced in 18…” That uncertainty also adds a new element, I think, that makes it really hard to navigate strategy.
Jeff Cobb: [00:04:50] From your viewpoint, so many things are converging right now. Associations do have a role to play in this, obviously. There’s an incredible opportunity for them to play a role in this right now. But, in my experience, associations are very focused on the individual member. What members are asking for, that individual member engagement—that’s a holy grail for everybody. But, when we’re seeing such wide change and shift happen, do associations have a broader responsibility than that? What’s the responsibility to the profession, to the industry, or to society in what we’re seeing right now?
Membership Value Versus Mission
Artesha Moore: [00:05:31] I sit on a little bit of a different side of this. The member value is important, and, as a membership organization, I definitely would lean into that. But I’m a mission‑based person. What is the mission, and what was that intent of the mission to do? Many associations, not just the ones I’ve worked for, their mission does not say “Maintain member value.” Their mission is big. My mission at Association Forum, our mission is to advance the practice of association management, where the practice goes. Also, the opportunity and the need for associations around their mission is future-forward—it’s about the future. You do need to assess the members, but I think about it in that kind of old Henry Ford quote—are we getting a faster horse? They’re going to tell you about their pain today: “I need the Web site to work,” or “I need…,” whatever those issues are. But associations traditionally represent the top tier of a profession. There’s a whole middle tier that isn’t represented there, the profession. So, when you start to have these futuristic or, dare I say, present conversations, it’s important for us to read the tea leaves of the future and push the profession towards advancing, like you said, societal things, being able to be an incubator for non-traditional thought that will change the world. That’s the opportunity that associations have.
Jeff Cobb: [00:07:26] Does that practically connect in your mind? Does that mean more connection to employers? You mentioned workforce and workforce development earlier. What role should associations be playing there from your perspective?
Artesha Moore: [00:07:43] It’s important to connect with employers because, if we’re a professional society advancing the practice, most association dues are paid by the employer or the funder. Again, when I mentioned the federal government, the funder is paying for the dues, the scientific review of the publications, all of those things. I mentioned before about the pain points of members. Some of the pain points of members—let’s be frankly honest—is the employer. However, I recently heard a podcast interview with Scott Galloway, and one of the things that he said that was very interesting was the amount of GDP in the United States that’s spent on reinvestment in skill development. We spend less than half a percent, whereas other Western nations spend one to two percent. When you think about that number and what’s needed around that in this continuous reimagining of work, associations fit right in there. But, if you’re not understanding what the employer is actually looking for.… For instance, we talk about professional development, networking because it’s a people-connection thing. “Come in and get professional development. Come in and network.” To what end?
Artesha Moore: [00:09:13] There was an article in Harvard Business Review in 2018, and the headline was about employees. And it said employees care about three things: community, career, and cause. I stole that and said, well, members care about that too—community. But, for what end? Career and cause. So your mission is the cause. I was with a healthcare group in the 2010s for 13 years, and it was about infection prevention, and our underlying mission was a world without infections—big cause. Get down with that. Yes, I’m a technologist, and I’m doing that, but…big cause. The community that we created, we’re able to do things, like help stamp out the Ebola outbreak that came in 2008. As we look at this career element, how do we translate what we do in advancement of careers? Some parts are there, the leadership. Yes, you can speak and present and those things. But, as we are in this inflection point, our opportunity is to partner with employers to ramp up the skills development so that the next generation of workforce can solve the next generation of problems.
How Associations Are Doing in Supporting Professions Versus the Perception of Their Work
Jeff Cobb: [00:10:42] I’m interested in how well you feel associations are doing what you just described right now, and, just as importantly, how well they’re perceived to be doing or how their role is perceived in this shift that we’re talking about: helping to support professions, helping to support workforce, helping to take us into the future. Part of why I raise this—and I’ve raised this with a number of association CEOs—is you hear a lot about lifelong learning now. You hear a lot about workforce development, the need to be flexible and agile, and what’s going to take us into the future. And when I read The New York Times, The Economist,and who they’re going people out there in the world to talk about this. They’ll quote a university president. They’ll go to somebody in the corporate world. I don’t see association CEOs quoted much in that context. And I’m not really sure that the role that associations can play and, to a large extent, do play in helping, leading us forward is actually recognized. Do you perceive that gap at all?
Artesha Moore: [00:11:46] Absolutely. It’s like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding—you win. That’s it. And you said it beautifully because it’s two different questions. How well are associations doing? Wonderful. We are an industry that’s almost two centuries old. We’re doing it beautifully, even today. We’re leaning in and able to lean into communities that industry and university can’t tap into because of our nonprofit umbrella of support, workforce development, and all those things. There are so many groups out there that are doing groundbreaking levels of engagement: ways to roll up, new ways of connection and learning that are changing skills, and being able to have that impact. Does anybody know about it? Nope. We are the most unknown powerful group of individuals in the workforce right now. We have a collective knowledge of strategic learning, engagement, and advancement in workforce, as well as the thing that we do very well as an industry is advocacy. Insert any industry. Umbrella, all industries. But my mom still doesn’t know. I just told you my whole hip-hop Buddhist Jedi thing. My mom’s like, “So what do you do again?” “I change the world, Mom.” But we could use some of the advertising art to say the value, not just what the association does but how it has and continues to empower the workforce—if they know about us.
Jeff Cobb: [00:13:36] It does seem like part of this is just a baseline communications issue. The word needs to be gotten out more. We were talking about employers in connection to the employment market before. I feel like a lot of times the employers in a profession or industry don’t necessarily see the role that the association is playing or could play in a practical/tactical example of that. I won’t say puts the blame on, but it points to the associations themselves. Organizations will put out all these credentials, certificates, and all sorts of things that they’re awarding to the people who take their education, but the employers maybe don’t even know about it and maybe don’t care about it if they do know about it. There is not that tight connection that needs to be there between “We’re creating this value” and “Here’s how it translates into what you are doing as a business in this field, industry, or sector that you’re in.” What’s your take on that?
Artesha Moore: [00:14:33] It’s a blurred line because, even within our industry, there are fractures. There are the individual professional societies, and then there’s the trades, and the trades are where the corporations are. But, when you go and look, they don’t participate in the same circles as the professional society CEOs—very little overlap. That direct translation is happening at the trade. The corporations understand the value of a trade association, period. Point blank. They understand it. They lean into it. They see value. They get things like Chatham House Rule conversations to get ahead of various trends. They get to use their collective voice to say, “This is the certificate that we’re going to honor at the employer level and push forward with that.” What happens is that the professional society tends to be the purist, the scientist, the research. And I’m not saying scientific. Any. SHRM is more of a corporation. But there’s a healthcare association that’s very focusedly inward. They’re doing the society representation of the people, empowering the people. There’s not always a direct connection when you leave that to say, “Give this to your boss,” to tell them what you learned. I’ve been in rooms where they’ve talked about the need for a credential. It is almost insular. “We think that this is important, so we will do it.” Without bringing in the boots on the ground. Without bringing in the people who are doing it.
Artesha Moore: [00:16:17] I started my career as a secretary. I was not even a secretary; I receptionist, thank you very much, and I was an administrative assistant. As you look at those people, I was the one who knew probably more about what was going on in our nonprofit, but nobody courted me to be in the membership because my title was receptionist. And leadership development means that you have to have this, this, this, and this. We’re missing out on that opportunity. And then my employer didn’t know about it because we were in this other ilk that wasn’t the purist. There’s an opportunity, and we need to get it together right now, fast, because universities are also in an inflection point, employers. When I was with the American Geophysical Union, I sat on a group of workforce development that was talking about this bridge between academia, university, industry. What industry was saying was these folks come out great scientists, but they don’t have the professional skills—how to do a budget, how to manage a team, how to do such and such. Well, hey, that’s where we are. Associations help with that kind of skill development. Universities are like, “Hey, we could do that too. We can have professional development right from the university where you graduated from and cut out the middleman.” Us. So I think that there’s an opportunity here, but it’s been a division for decades. And there are new players. The tech bros. We haven’t even talked about them, how they’re rolling out learning—free, good, usable, recognized by employers because of their name. Not university, not association.
How Can Associations Evolve Rapidly
Jeff Cobb: [00:18:13] Things are shifting fast. Associations have done, are doing great things. But we’ve got to evolve. There needs to be some innovation, particularly when you think about how people are learning now, what that looks like. But there is a lot in associations that can slow things down, be a barrier to innovation. You think about how boards and committees and subject matter experts have traditionally worked. We’re still very much embedded in the “Let’s have an annual conference; let’s have breakout sessions” type of model. What’s it going to take to change that for associations to be able to evolve rapidly into this future that we’re talking about?
Artesha Moore: [00:18:55] That’s a lot of big unpacking there.
Jeff Cobb: [00:19:00] And, if you can answer the question, you’ll be able to make a million dollars.
Artesha Moore: [00:19:02] I’m trying to tell you. As I think about that, let me attack it from some different angles. Number one, governance is something that we absolutely need to modernize. Volunteer management, governance at the big, broad level are still at the root of it, not the skills in order to lead and drive change. I put my hand up. “I know everything about the association because I’ve served at all these levels; let me go to the board.” As many associations are getting more sophisticated about leadership competencies to lead. Not just “I know Jeff. Jeff’s my boy. Let me go ahead and get him on the committee so we can do such and such.” Competency development. And people lean too much on the pandemic around some of the pieces, not around innovation, but we needed a desperate energy to survive. Meetings were grounded. Various things. But what we did see was an innovative spirit that came forward. What is hard is the monetization of it. Professional societies are not rich. There are some rich ones. Shout out to y’all. I see y’all. There are some rich ones that have war chests, endowments, investments, property, land.
Artesha Moore: [00:20:29] The majority of us are small—less than $5 million, less than 10 staff. When you start to look at the need to innovate, you have to have a board that will say, “Let’s move, let’s have a direction, let’s be willing to fail, and let’s put a little bit of our money into the future.” That’s almost a luxury when you have to pay the rent, upskill your own staff, and when you’re competing with a startup that could go to market in eight months as a membership that is also competing with you because they don’t have overhead; they don’t have a board. Right now, there’s a lot of opportunity because of, frankly, the dollars. The money is different. So, as the economy goes up and down and up and down, the reality for us that do live events is it costs big bank. Coffee. Whoo! I love coffee. I live on coffee. One of my first jobs was at Starbucks. It costs—and convention centers understand that. Getting your materials there costs. Getting your people there costs.
Artesha Moore: [00:21:52] Are there opportunities to have a different way to do it? Yes. But here’s what I know (Buddhist part): You and I shared an energy together on a stage in real life with people. Felt different. I love this. This is fantastic because we can share our ideas. But I said more yes because I just wanted to keep our energy going. I love technology, and everybody get at me in the comments to talk about the sci-fi stuff because this summer is going to be fantastic. It’s for us. We’re going to the movies. But it doesn’t have the same cachet. I’m still learning in this. But now I get to feel that you’re a real person too and share that energy. It’s a luxury. Not everybody has the opportunity to do that, especially when you’re trying to find something new. So we have to. We have to. But how we go about doing that, what we go about doing with it, what that looks like—it’s going to be a lot of failure first. And we’re not as good as an industry with that because our boards are not comfortable with that.
The Role of Partnerships
Jeff Cobb: [00:23:05] I want to come back to academia, universities, corporates. What role do you feel partnerships could potentially play in this? You said this is an inflection point for universities, but they’ve also got a lot of issues too, and the dollar factors in there. They have the same in-person, online scenarios. They’re wrestling with AI. And even the tech bros that are putting stuff out there, they’re wrestling with these issues too. What role could partnerships play in your mind?
Artesha Moore:[00:23:41] Huge role. I don’t see it as othered. They’re just coming at it from a different angle but the same passion around the community, pressure around their product, passion around the future. So don’t other them. Come on in. Let’s get all together. Let’s create an opportunity that really redefines mission. Are we clear about what we’re trying to do? Who can help us do that? In 2016, I was on a panel, and I said, “What is it going to be the first association that allows an autonomously-run company to be a member?” Again, sci-fi. That was in 2016. Here we are. We have, absolutely, an agentic workforce coming forward, but they can’t be in the room because there are still associations that are worried about, and rightly so, intellectual property and how to hold on to that for today instead of saying, “Maybe I will unleash this all.” Project Hail Mary. “Maybe I’ll release all the knowledge that we have to do our mission in a different way and bring partners in, bring inventors in, bring legislators in, everybody in who cares about the mission of whatever that is and then build something for the future in an incubator that may implode.” Great, we learned some things, but we now have connection.
Artesha Moore: [00:25:17] I’ve seen, in my history and experience, associations partnering directly with university to create curriculum. Boom. Works. We could look at the arc of this and have a future where there’s a Harvard and Association Forum—yes, Harvard, come forward—partnership that does spaceships for the future. Who knows? But now we’re in this partnership, and I see it. We partner with the Center for Creative Leadership on an emerging leaders program. They are an outstanding global leadership development. I could have went at it alone. We had a program that was our members doing it. But why wouldn’t I go after a global brand and give my people access to tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of global leadership development training for a quarter of the price as a nonprofit? Can we bring in a university? We had partnerships with universities. So it isn’t just how do we bring them into the profession? How do we do this? It’s how do we solve real problems? How do we solve real things? And how do we learn from each other, not just from corporate? As I look at university systems—I like history—in the United States, they’ve also been places where alternative thought led to global change. I think about the civil rights movement, the students, and the universities that empowered them, that funded them, and changed the world. So every insert we could do that. And I think that there’s an opportunity.
Artesha Moore: [00:27:01] I just read an article in MIT Technology Review, and I was arguing with the article on the plane, like, “What in the world? Why?” It was about mirror sequencing of microbes. “Y’all are about to create The Terminator. I don’t know what y’all are doing.” But what I wrote in the margin that inspired me was the article said that part of the reason why they were going down this doomsday path is because they didn’t have interdisciplinary conversations. Boom. Insert an association. That’s what we need so that we don’t kill ourselves because we’re smart, and we can use technology to do something. I’m sorry, if you don’t get me and Jeff and somebody else in this room to help y’all, don’t do that. But I see that those are the defined new futures. We can work together. We’re all trying to—I hope—do good. How do we do good today and set us up for tomorrow? It isn’t a member survey and committee-driven thing that makes it perfect, and we’re going to take over the world. It’s not that. It just isn’t.
The Role of Associations Amidst AI Disruption
Jeff Cobb: [00:28:23] It seems, to me, this is the big nut to crack or the elephant in the room, however you want to phrase it. All of these different constituents or potential partners—universities, corporate world—have an issue to solve. This traces back through employers, and it goes back to where we started around the role of associations with professions and industries and their role in society. There is about to be—and it’s already starting—a huge disruption to work, to career out there because of what AI is doing and will continue to do. You talked earlier about an autonomous company. That means there are a lot of people not employed as a result of that in a field or industry. It means something is disrupting that field or industry. People are being displaced. People are having to evolve. How do you see the role of associations in that disruption that AI is bringing and will bring? How should they be helping their people get ahead of that? How should they be helping employers navigate that? That’s another big, hairy question, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Artesha Moore: [00:29:30] No, I love it. In 2024, we did a skills study for Association Forum, and it was to start to attack what you just brought up. There was this wave, and that was just when OpenAI was rolling into the mainstream in 2023, this kind of conversation. What do our profession folks need in order to do their work today and in the near future? Here are these skills. Upskilling and reskilling are imperative. It’s not now a theoretical “Should we do it?” My parents are a beautiful product of the ’70s vocational system. My dad’s a nurse. My mom was a stenographer but office manager. They got skills. But that kind of work led my dad into the military and overseas in Europe, where I went to high school in Germany. Vocational is still today an arm of where people can displace from work, go into a vocational trade, get reskilled, go into work. That’s where I think associations can play. So I’ve been using AI. I have one model that’s running about nine months or so in the future, 100 years from now, but then I start to think about, “Okay, well, if I need to get a new job today, I’ve been doing this for 30 years; I have some kind of skill set. If there are no associations, where do I work?” That helped me understand what my gaps are in skills. And then, of course, I’m a techie, so I built a course for myself and taught myself some new skills.
Artesha Moore: [00:31:10] I’ve been telling young people in association management what we’re not saying out loud is our industry is constricting. In the ’90s and early 2000s, there was this explosion in healthcare-type associations. I have on purple lipstick today, so I’m going to be the Nurse Society of Purple Lipstick. We only get in purple lipstick, and that’s it. We got an annual meeting. We’re giving out partnerships of this. We did this. Great. Then the economic recession in 2008: Okay, well, we’ll let in blue and red because it makes purple; we’re still going to be going. Insert pandemic. Don’t nobody even wear lipstick no more, girl. We need to close. We’re going to be a part of the American Nursing Association now, and we’ll be a chapter. Great. Boom. As we start to look at this constriction, that funding thing that I mentioned in the beginning with STEM is having an impact right now. There’s a constriction. All of those jobs aren’t going to come back, but that’s a ripe workforce to reimagine what they can do—your skills. That’s that separation for me as I started to study my Eastern religion philosophies—the separation of identity from my title and my person. That’s important because right now, in this inflection point, it isn’t just one industry; it’s all of them.
Artesha Moore: [00:32:43] Hollywood is about to ramp this way up because they just released a movie—I think it was Pete Davidson. All the extras, all the scenes, all of the things, AI. I didn’t understand. I was like, “Oh, that’s great advancement.” I didn’t understand the impact on the bodegas, where they’re shot in New York. I didn’t understand all the grips. I didn’t understand the production people, the catering, and the such and such. What do they do now? The Screen Actors Guild is an association. They have an association to help them get new jobs using skills in different ways. That’s where I think associations can help today. But you have to then say, “Okay, we’re going to have sessions in our annual meeting that say ’Reimagine Your Career and Leave the Profession.’” Nobody wants to talk about that. Don’t talk about leaving the profession. Their employers won’t send it. Instead, we’re talking about saving human intellect. You’re not your job. Your job gave you skills. If I were my job, I would still be looking for receptionist jobs instead of being senior staff at 27. You’re not your title. And, associations, get out of your own way—help your people learn what they need to advance the world.
Articulating Your Value to the People Who Will Benefit from It
Jeff Cobb: [00:34:13] That might be a great place to bring it all together and start wrapping up.
Artesha Moore: [00:34:19] I’m staying forever, Jeff.
Jeff Cobb: [00:34:20] I would love to keep talking forever. We’re going to have to figure out some ways to keep continuing this conversation. But, for right now, if you’re an association leader—you’re trying to get out of your own way because you can see there’s plenty of noise, confusion, and competition out there, but there’s also plenty of opportunity—how do you articulate your unique value to the people who are going to most benefit from that value? It goes back a little bit to what I was saying earlier, that associations aren’t necessarily recognized or perceived for this very important role that they do play and can play. How do you seize that in your particular world?
Artesha Moore: [00:35:07] This is where fun play comes in with your board. I did an exercise and led a facilitation with our board a couple of years ago, and it was all around Marvel’s cartoon show What If…? What if we were in an alternate universe? I used ChatGPT to come up with…. I said, “Here’s the plot: We are this. We’re a $3 million organization. We focus on this. We do this. What if…? Open it up.” It gave, “You could be this kind of business. You could be this.” And then—I love Shark Tank—I gave the prompts to the board and put them on teams: “Now take this and do it. Y’all pitch it to us like Shark Tank.” Here’s what it did: It stopped the conversation about membership growth, acquisition, and bringing back the community, and so what could we do? We went to market these ideas. Skills became really big for us. We did a skill study. We did this. We did this what-if—playing games. They pitched it. There was some of it that was fun, but it unleashed their brain of what could be possible. Right now, whoever’s listening, open up an AI—whatever your favorite one is—and start to say, “If I had nothing, what could I be?” Don’t give it a whole bunch of “We’re this and that and this” because that just defeats the mission. Use a wide view. You don’t have to build that today. Stop being so literal. Have an imagination. Then go for a walk. You know what it’ll do? It’ll get you thinking about something different. I love all of my alphabets: ASAE [American Society of Association Executives], Association Forum, and PCMA [Professional Convention Management Association].
Artesha Moore: [00:37:02] We are doing hard work as associations because we compete with LinkedIn. We’re a leadership development, and so LinkedIn is always like, “How did I get out here?” Reimagine. Imagination is key. But it’s got to be with the board. It can’t just be with your staff because then you create this us against them. We do see things differently as staff, but, if you start to imagine what you could be, that would be the thing I would say: Just imagine. Don’t put a lot of constraints on it. And then the other part is do something that you’re going to fail at every year. Every year, do something that you are going to fail at—and that doesn’t have to be big at work. It could be at home. I’m a painter now. I’m terrible. But you know what, Bob Ross, thank you for inspiring me because I’m almost 50, and I started painting maybe in the last three years. It has unlocked what I never imagined, which was creativity in my technical work. Use that AI to challenge what you think. I probably have, at least every three weeks, a session where I just argue with the AI. But try some new stuff. And then, Jeff, you’re doing great work in this space. You have people on that have interesting ways of looking at things. It doesn’t matter what your industry is. Especially for those at the top, top, innovation is what we’re hired to do, but navigation is also needed. You need a direction that you’re going that inspires—and then I think we’ll make it on the other side of this thing.
Recap and Wrap-Up
Jeff Cobb: [00:38:53] That concludes my conversation with Artesha Moore of Association Forum. But stick around for the recap.
Celisa Steele: [00:38:59] If this episode was useful to you, we’d love it if you’d share it—whether on social media, in an e-mail, or in a conversation.
Jeff Cobb: [00:39:18] Artesha argues that, because AI, workforce disruption, federal funding shifts, and shrinking university pipelines are all converging at once, this moment is genuinely different from disruptions associations have faced before—and that changes both what they need to do and how urgently they need to do it.
Celisa Steele: [00:39:37] Artesha is direct in saying that associations are, in her words, “the most unknown powerful group” in workforce development right now. Closing that visibility gap isn’t just a communications problem. It’s a strategic one that requires associations to connect their work more explicitly to employer needs.
Jeff Cobb: [00:39:56] Her practical advice for leaders is to build imagination into their work and to commit to failing at something every year. The capacity to experiment is a muscle associations need for this moment.
Celisa Steele: [00:40:08] Thanks again for listening—and see you next time on the Leading Learning Podcast.
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