DALLAS — The Exhibition Services and Contractors Association (ESCA) held its inaugural Rising Leaders Summit — designed to engage up-and-coming leaders with relevant education and opportunities to connect with peers across different companies.
The education at the event was highly tailored to the group of rising stars, with the ESCA team intentionally structuring the program to bring value to everyone.
“Balancing programming for a diverse audience starts with understanding both the common challenges and the unique needs of attendees. We tackled this by structuring the event with two approaches: day one focused on topics that apply to everyone — things like leadership, decision-making, and customer service — so no matter your role, you walked away with something valuable. Day two introduced a two-track format, giving attendees the flexibility to choose what was most relevant to them,” said Rachel Rodean, Director of Education and Events at ESCA. “Our goal was to make sure everyone felt like they had something to take away, rather than catering to just one specific group.”
An Energizing Keynote
The first day of the event featured more broad general sessions that the entire audience could find takeaways from like Michelle Cederberg’s opening keynote “The Energy-Success Equation,” which described how success can be reached with the right mix of goals, belief, discipline and energy. Cederberg gave actionable insights on how to set goals and identify roadblocks, and shared the importance of fueling the mind through moving, sleeping, connections and expressing appreciation. She also shared that your goals should be a bit challenging, otherwise there is no growth happening.
“Put that goal, even if it’s in your mind’s eye, preferably written down. Put it where you can see it, because you will have those days where you’re thinking, wow this is hard,” Cederberg said. “And when we get into the mindset of there’s not enough time or not enough energy… or not enough whatever, it all piles up… and we end up looking down at what we don’t have instead of up toward where we’re going.” 
Cederberg also laid out the three questions people should ask themselves when they find they’re not making the time for their goals.
- What do you want that you’re not getting?
- What must you do that you’re not doing?
- What is getting in the way?
Related. Key Takeaways from Day Two of the ESCA Rising Leaders Summit
Decision-Making
In the session “You Aren’t Hamlet: Deciding in an Age of Information Surplus,” Dr. Sam Potolicchio, President of Preparing Global Leaders Summit who also teaches in Executive Education EMBA programs at Georgetown, the Mannheim Business School in Germany and undergraduate classes, encouraged the group to focus more on the process of making decisions, rather than the outcomes.
Potolicchio shared that to improve decision-making, people should think of the questions and variables, expand what they see (known as the solution horizon) and think in probabilities more than binaries. He also advised the attendees to keep their values in mind when making decisions.
“To me, decisions are predictions about the future, and we oftentimes get paralyzed because we’re thinking about these binary outcomes, and it raises the stakes,” Potolicchio said. “But, if you can start to think more about the process … [and] more in probabilities, it liberates you more. So, you concern yourself with the process and then you think about this as a probability instead of just yes or no.”
Potolicchio also advises people to become aware of the confirmation biases they may have, because that can impact decision-making too.
In another session titled “When the Signal is Lost to the Noise: The High Cost of a Failure of Imagination,” Potolicchio sat down with Edward Bogan, Former CIA Operations Officer, to discuss how important thorough decision-making is.
As a CIA Operations Officer, Bogan was heavily involved with the operations following the terrorist attacks of 9/11in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the regions where al-Qaeda was operating from. Bogan recounted a deeply complex series of decisions that eventually led to one of the deadliest events in the CIA’s history — the Camp Chapman attack in the Khost Province of Afghanistan. From that experience, Bogan had some key pieces of advice on decision-making: 
- Hope can cloud your judgement; you need to put it somewhere else
- Too many “cooks in the kitchen” can be detrimental
- You need to go through all the “what-ifs”
- Time matters
- Don’t self-limit
- Consequences can be more grave than what you imagine
Building a Culture of Customer Success
Tom Himmer, Vice President – Exhibitor Success at GES shared insights in “Building a Culture of Customer Success.” This session drilled down on what creates culture and how everyone can actively drive changes and results. Himmer shared that exposure, interactions, stories, social media, history and personal values all shape culture, and sustainable change starts with culture.
“Any transformation is not about changing what people do; it’s not about changing the actions they take. It starts with changing how they see themselves. When we do that, we deliver and build a culture of customer success,” Himmer said.
He also talked about the difference between customer success being a proactive approach and customer service being more reactive. The three elements needed for a culture of customer success is:
- Clarity: Define the destinations, cast your vision and identify the key results
- Alignment: Alignment and awareness are different, and assumptions can lead to a poor roll-out of decisions
- Movement: Identify mindsets and beliefs that are holding the company back and define shifts needed to overcome them
Related. Inaugural ESCA Rising Leaders Summit Hits the Mark in Dallas 
Advocacy Is for Everyone
Tommy Goodwin, Vice President of the Exhibitions and Conferences Alliance, was joined by Jeff Quade, President of GES Exhibitions and Chris Schimek, Chief Operating Officer of Freeman, for a session titled “From Washington, DC to the Show Floor: Advocacy Engagement and Your Leadership Journey.”
The three spoke about their advocacy priorities for 2025, which included workforce recruitment and development, especially for the trades.
“In our industry, it is very common, as we all know, that folks that are working for one organization may be working for another weeks down the road,” Quade said. “So, working collectively to provide the training, provide the resources — in partnership with the trades — is another area that we can be more successful together than we can separately. … We’re working collectively with our teams on how we solve the workforce challenges that we have, and we’re only going to be able to do that by working together.”
The speakers encouraged the audience of rising leaders to get involved where they can make the most impact, like in their own communities, to engage the labor partners locally and overall draw more people to the trades and trade show industry.
“From a vocal standpoint or words of wisdom, get engaged and get involved, but not only within your own company, within the community and within your competitors because you never know when you’re going to need that outward favor,” Schimek said.
Grabbing Attention
In the session “Mastering Smart Brevity: Clear, Concise and Impactful Communication for Leaders,” Potolicchio spoke with Nicholas Johnston, Publisher of Axios, about the way his media company has earned a share of the market by being to the point and bringing the human-value to the news.
Johnston shared that we live in a time where it’s not a competition for attention — it’s a war — because people have so many options now and can leave your website with just a swipe. To keep people relying on Axios for news, he insists that they stay up to date with the times, keep stories around 500 words and include a key element — what the human-impact of the story is. 
From a trade show marketing perspective, this can be taken to mean keeping copy short and to the point, and including the elements that will have the biggest impact and benefit participants on an individual level, is the most effective approach.
Johnston also advised the crowd to verify the sources they use for news to ensure they’re consuming the highest quality content.
For more information about the ESCA Rising Leaders Summit, click here.
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