How have some organizations been able to sustain unparalleled success while others are sporadic and inconsistent? Simple… it’s their leadership. A team will never outperform its leadership. A leader’s primary job is to create an environment where people feel safe, included, appreciated, valued, respected, inspired, empowered, and challenged. Employees need to know they have the resources and support to star in their specific role and make a meaningful contribution to the team. 

The key to raising your leadership performance and amplifying your impact and influence is a direct result of how well you master these five fundamentals:

• Belief
• Unselfishness
• Role Clarity
• Communication
• Cohesion

About Alan Stein, Jr.

Alan Stein, Jr. teaches proven strategies to improve organizational performance, create effective leadership, increase team cohesion and collaboration and develop winning mindset rituals and routines. 

He has a passion for helping organizations create high-performance cultures, and his clients include American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, Orangetheory Fitness and numerous college athletic programs such as Penn State Football and UConn Men’s Basketball.

An acclaimed basketball performance coach, Stein spent 15 years working with the highest-performing athletes on the planet (including NBA superstars Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant). He transfers that knowledge to reveal how leaders and teams can utilize the same approaches in business that elite athletes use to perform at a world-class level. 

The strategies from Stein’s book, Raise Your Game: High Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best, are implemented by corporate teams and sports teams around the country. His inspirational words are featured on a 12-foot mural outside the Penn State Football Training Center, so that players run past it on the way to practice every day.

As we wind down 2022, we are also preparing for the challenges and ongoing uncertainties of 2023. The decelerating rate of rise that characterized many industries and businesses in 2022 will linger into the first half of 2023 for many. During this session, popular Economist Alan Beaulieu will present business strategies and tactics that address the projected changes in the economic landscape. 

He will:

• Assess business demand for 2023 and into 2024.
• Analyze the labor market and present expectations for availability and labor costs.
• Present a clear picture of inflation and interest rates.
• Discuss lingering supply chain issues and ongoing pricing concerns.
• Look at ITR’s key leading indicators and what they foretell for your markets.
• Present relevant market outlooks and discuss issues that impact your profitability via resource allocation, budgets, expectations and strategic planning.
• Determine the potential impact of a shift in government from the midterm elections as well as the potential consequences of massive government programs.
• Assess the health of financial market trends and their impact, if any, on the forecasts.

About Alan Beaulieu

Belonging, a basic human need, has now emerged as a vital step towards creating an inclusive workplace. However, celebrating the holiday season without excluding anyone can feel tricky! 

This session will give attendees an understanding of:

• Workplace belonging
• The sense of inclusion vs exclusion
• How exclusion affects performance and cognitive function
• Feasible ways to cultivate a belonging environment, including best practices for leaders to address the holiday season

About Mona Eshaiker

Mona Eshaiker, LMFT (she, her) is a licensed therapist and mental health consultant. She specializes in burnout recovery and prevention on the individual and systemic level. She is passionate about work-life balance and psychological safety for historically underrepresented employees.

The results of the 2022 midterm election will have a huge impact on the next two years of this administration. After governing with a razor-thin margin in both the House and Senate, will Democrats add to their numbers, or will history repeat itself and the Republicans gain control of one or both? History shows that the party that is not the president’s often gains ground during midterm elections, but Independents are becoming more of a wild card. Will the Dobbs decision motivate voters? Will voter turnout be strong? Will Trump announce his candidacy before the midterms? 
 
During this session, you’ll hear from IAPD’s “man on the ground” in Washington, Ari Storch, about what the pundits are saying and how the next two years might look for the performance plastics industry if Republicans were to take back the House and/or Senate. You’ll also gain insight into the Democrats’ point of view from Tiffany A. Shackelford, Esq. Hear their take on performance plastics and get a better understanding of the challenges the industry faces in Washington, D.C.

About Ari Storch
Ari Storch has more than 25 years of experience in domestic and international politics, grassroots campaigns, public affairs and marketing. Prior to joining The Madison Group, he spent 12 years as the co-founder and co-chairman of Artemis Strategies, a multi-faceted government affairs firm that managed clients before the United States Congress, multiple Presidential administrations, state governments and before foreign governments as well. In 2001, Storch was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Member of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and also served as the Next Generation Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

About Tiffany A. Shackelford, Esq.
Tiffany A. Shackelford, Esq., is director of government relations for the Madison Group, IAPD’s team in Washington. As a former litigator, government attorney advisor and most recently, staffer in the Unites States Senate, Shackelford is responsible for managing a multi-issue policy portfolio in support of the Madison Group’s diverse roster of clients. Her oversight and analyzation of federal and state legislative and regulatory activity, while maintaining robust relationships with Congressional and Administration staff and other non-governmental stakeholders, will ensure the client’s voice is heard in the legislative process. Prior to joining the Madison Group, Shackelford served as a judiciary legislative staffer for office of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Her legislative portfolio included African American, immigration and civil rights legislation and policy. As a Senate staffer, Shackelford also served as a member of the Congressional Black Associates’ (CBA) Joint Congressional Staff Task Force on Racial Justice and Reform.  Shackelford is a licensed attorney in New York and Washington, D.C. She earned her law degree from University of Tennessee in Knoxville.