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Speaker: Daniel Pink, Bestselling Author and Expert on Innovation, Competitition, and the Changing World of Work

As organizations face a rapidly evolving landscape, they are reexamining their operations and rethinking their priorities. What do they stand for? How should they navigate what comes next? And how might they build cultures where people can do their best work and be their best selves?

In this provocative and practical presentation, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Pink offers a fresh set of strategies. Pink will draw on an unprecedented two-year study of our most misunderstood emotion: regret. He will show that ignoring or rejecting regrets is a colossal mistake. Instead, confronting regrets systematically can deliver an array of organizational benefits. It can sharpen leaders’ decisions, speed learning and development, and boost individual and team performance.

In particular, he will show how the four core regrets shared by people around the world contain the seeds of a reimagined and more powerful corporate culture. By understanding what people regret the most, we can learn what they value the most — and that can help organizations of every kind attract top talent, deepen employee engagement, and strengthen loyalty and commitment.

With Pink’s trademark blend of big ideas and smart takeaways, compelling stories, and sharp humor, this presentation provides an urgent and inspiring map for flourishing in unpredictable times.

Learning Objectives: 

• How to anticipate — and avoid — the most significant organizational regrets.
• How to transform existing regrets into a positive force and a coherent culture.
• Why regrets of inaction outnumber regrets of action — and how to use that insight to spark innovation.
• Why doing the right thing is more important to employees than most C-suite executives understand — and why, in this fraught moment, being a good organization can pave the way to becoming a great one.

Speaker: David York, Esq., CPA, Managing Partner, York Howell

This presentation explores the evolving landscape of philanthropy, highlighting how shifting demographics, new giving vehicles, and changing donor priorities are reshaping charitable engagement. It emphasizes that advisors have a critical role in helping clients navigate this environment by aligning philanthropic goals with tax-efficient strategies, legacy planning, and impact-focused approaches. The discussion underscores the importance of understanding both traditional structures and emerging tools to guide clients effectively. Ultimately, it positions advisors as key partners in helping families translate their values into enduring charitable impact.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the modern shift from traditional charity to blended-purpose planning. Participants will be able to explain the evolution from the old bifurcated model of “business over here, philanthropy over there” to a unified framework in which purpose, mission, and enterprise operate together, grounded in concepts such as Carnegie’s "The Gospel of Wealth" and today’s purpose-driven business structures.
• Evaluate and apply emerging legal structures and advanced planning tools to achieve integrated social and financial objectives. Participants will learn the practical uses, advantages, and limitations of B-corporations, purpose trusts, 501(c)(4) entities, beneficiary well-being trusts, and program- or mission-related investments, and will be able to apply these tools to client scenarios to align governance, tax strategy, and long-term impact.
• Use charitable-planning strategies to broaden advisory offerings and meet clients’ evolving philanthropic goals. Participants will understand how to leverage modern charitable vehicles and hybrid structures to address shifting donor priorities (such as impact-driven giving, social-enterprise support, succession-aligned philanthropy, and multigenerational purpose) thereby expanding the advisor’s toolkit and enhancing client outcomes.
  

Speaker: Annalee Kruger, President of Care Right, Inc. and Author of "The Invisible Patient: The Emotional, Financial, and Physical Toll on Family Caregivers", Care Right, Inc.

This course helps financial professionals recognize hidden risks that traditional planning often overlooks and introduces practical ways to add value through better questions, collaboration, and informed referrals. Participants will gain awareness of the real human factors that influence portfolios, client decisions, and long-term relationships — positioning advisors as trusted, holistic partners in an increasingly complex planning landscape.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how aging, caregiving, and dementia create financial and planning vulnerabilities.
• Recognize the emotional, physical, and financial toll on family caregivers.
• Understand common misconceptions about aging-at-home and senior care costs.
• How to ask more effective questions to uncover hidden client challenges.

Speaker: Laura Martin, CFA®, CMT®, Senior Analyst, Needham

Hyperscalers are expected to spend more than $500 billion in capital expenditures to build out their artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in 2026, and a total of $2 trillion over five years, according to our estimates. This session will address key investor concerns, including: Are hyperscalers spending too much? If so, do all of them lose, or do some lose more than others? If the $2 trillion in generative AI spending is justified, which sectors of S&P revenue are displaced by hyperscalers to generate a 10% annual return, or roughly $200 billion per year, on their generative AI investments?

Learning Objectives:

• The role of research analysts on Wall Street.

• Whether we are in a generative AI investment bubble, i.e., all hyperscalers lose.

• If generative AI is the next tech disruption, which S&P 500 sectors are most vulnerable?

• How to handle the uncertainty created by generative AI, where valuation shifts may be defined by winner-take-most economics.

Speaker: Tim Steffen, CPA/PFS, CFP®, CPWA®, Director of Advanced Planning, Private Wealth Management, Baird

This session will cover how Social Security benefits are calculated, available claiming options, and strategies to consider for both single individuals and married couples. The discussion will also address the future of the Social Security Trust Fund and what may be required to ensure its long-term stability.

Speaker: Sarah Mouser, CFP®, CDFA®, CES™, CTS™, CCFS®, ELA™, Managing Director of Financial Planning, Verdance Capital Advisors

Looking to build capacity and streamline processes to scale your business? Join Sarah Mouser of Verdence Capital Advisors to learn how she has developed and implemented platform processes, centralized support to increase advisor capacity, enhanced service offerings to add value to client relationships, and expanded advisory teams to support growth and succession needs. This session also highlights strategies for increasing capacity to focus on high-value expertise, empowering support staff as subject matter experts, implementing efficiencies through data-driven process development, and recruiting and hiring next-generation talent with defined career paths.

Learning Objectives:

• Strategies to implement at multiple stages of growth to scale.

• How to build a career track to attract and retain talent for depth of subject matter expertise and potential internal succession planning.

• Recruiting, hiring, and training tips.

Speaker: Ross Riskin, DBA, CPA/PFS™, CCFC, MS Tax, Chief Creative Officer, visiWealth

The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) has reshaped the tax and financial planning landscape, creating both new opportunities and new challenges for advisors and their clients. This session will focus on using visuals to conceptualize and simplify various planning strategies that will apply to diverse client groups, such as young families, young professionals, business owners, and high-income/high-net-worth individuals who are focused on "planning with purpose" by using philanthropic and multigenerational tax planning strategies to reach their immediate and long-term goals.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key provisions of the OBBBA that significantly alter individual, business, and multigenerational tax planning strategies.

• Understand how visuals can be used to simplify and communicate complex planning concepts for diverse clients—ranging from young families and professionals to business owners and high-net-worth individuals.

• Evaluate tax-efficient approaches to "planning with purpose," including philanthropic giving, legacy design, and multigenerational wealth transfer strategies under the new rules.

Speaker: Steve Parrish, JD, RICP®, ChFC®, CLU®, RHU®, AEP®, Co-Director Center for Retirement Income, Adjunct Professor, Advanced Planning, The American College of Financial Services

This session examines the unique challenges business owners face when planning for retirement and offers potential solutions. It includes an overview of the current environment for small businesses, including taxation and business valuation, and addresses strategies for converting business capital into retirement income.

Learning Objectives:

• Highlight timely financial issues in today's economic environment that concern small business owners contemplating retirement.

• Consider exit planning and succession solutions, including legal, tax, and product strategies.

• Discuss a process for advisors to help their business Owner clients deal with exit and retirement planning.

Speaker: Todd Buchholz, Former White House Director of Economic Policy and Managing Director of Tiger hedge fund

The economy never sleeps, and neither can your business. As the United States navigates new policies under the Trump White House, and the European Union and United Kingdom wrangle over Brexit, energy, and immigration, Todd Buchholz explains the forces that will determine whether the economy climbs higher — and what that means for you.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how White House policies on trade, regulation, and Federal Reserve Board policy are impacting the economy.
• See how the latest gyrations in the stock market and interest rates are altering long-term growth prospects and the financing of businesses.
• Discover how demographics, technology, and globalization are reshaping the future for the United States and countries throughout the world.
• Pinpoint the signs of stock market rallies, and the warning signs of slumps.
• Identify the political pressures from trade, debt, and interest rates on the United States, European Union, and China. 

Moderator: Mike Kurz, CIMA®, CPWA®, RMA®, CFP®, CAIA, Director of Programs, Investments & Wealth Institute

Speakers: John Nersesian, CIMA®, CPWA®, CIS, CFP®, Founder, Nersesian Wealth Education LLC
Steve Siegel, JD, LLM, President, The Siegel Group

Designed for Certified Private Wealth Advisor® (CPWA®) certificants seeking to deepen their expertise and elevate client outcomes, this CPWA® Masterclass translates advanced wealth management concepts into practical, client-ready strategies. Participants will explore real-world scenarios involving tax planning, estate considerations, concentrated wealth, and behavioral dynamics to refresh their skills and deliver more confident, comprehensive guidance to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply advanced CPWA® frameworks to identify and address key planning opportunities for high-net-worth clients.

• Evaluate tax-aware wealth strategies and explain trade-offs in clear, actionable terms to clients.

• Assess complex client balance sheets, including concentrated positions and liquidity events, to improve decision-making and outcomes.

• Incorporate estate and legacy planning considerations into holistic client conversations and recommendations.

• Use behavioral coaching techniques to strengthen client engagement and improve implementation.

Speaker: Ross Riskin, DBA, CPA/PFS™, CCFC. MS Tax, Chief Creative Officer, visiWealth

This dynamic, roundtable-based workshop flips the script on traditional case study formats. Instead of being handed a fully baked client profile, each table will focus on a specific dimension of a client scenario—such as family structure, income source, or lifestyle—and collaborate to select a representative client situation based on real-world experiences. Participants will first share insights and anecdotes from their own practices related to the assigned category. Then, using a quick digital poll accessed via QR code, each table will vote on the client profile that best reflects common or complex planning dynamics. The winning profile from each table will appear live on the screen—building, piece by piece, a fully crowdsourced case study for everyone in the room to analyze together. By the session’s end, you’ll help build the client and explore how these variables intersect to influence holistic planning decisions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and articulate key client dimensions — such as family structure, income source, and lifestyle—and assess how they impact financial planning strategies.
• Collaborate with peers to synthesize real-world experiences into representative client profiles through structured discussion and digital polling.
• Analyze a fully crowdsourced client case study to evaluate how intersecting client variables influence comprehensive, holistic planning decisions.

Speaker: Carl Richards, Creator of the "Sketch Guy" Column, The New York Times

This isn't about performance or products — it’s about the emotional side of money and the real work of advice. Through a carefully curated selection of sketches, Carl Richards helps advisors move beyond rigid financial plans toward a more adaptable, values-based approach. By exploring the critical tensions that define the advisor-client relationship, this session equips attendees with the language, metaphors, and frameworks to help clients make better decisions and have the conversations that truly matter.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key behavioral biases that impact financial decision-making and learn strategies to help clients navigate uncertainty with confidence.
• Develop specific language and frameworks to improve client communication, fostering trust and long-term engagement.
• Differentiate between rigid financial planning and an iterative, client-centered process that embraces uncertainty and course correction.
• Utilize sketches and simple visual frameworks to clarify complex financial concepts and facilitate deeper client understanding.
• Learn how to balance facts and emotions in financial discussions, using empathy and behavioral insights to guide clients toward better financial outcomes.

Moderator: Bob Powell, RMA®, CFP®, Editor-in-Chief, Retirement Management Journal

Panelists: Moe Allain, RMA®, CPWA®, AAMS®, Vice President, Financial Advisor, Baird; 
David Blanchett, PhD, CFA®, CFP®, Managing Director, Portfolio Manager and Head of Retirement Research, PGIM DC Solutions

Join retirement researcher David Blanchett and financial advisor Moe Allain for a timely fireside chat exploring why inflation-adjusted spending typically declines over the course of retirement, and what that reality means for how individuals save, invest, and draw income. The conversation will unpack the data behind changing retiree spending patterns, the ongoing impact of inflation and healthcare costs, and how these trends should shape asset allocation decisions before and during retirement. Attendees will come away with practical insights to help better align retirement strategies with how people actually spend later in life.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the pattern of inflation-adjusted spending in retirement and findings on why retirees outlays tend to decline over time.
• Describe the interaction between inflation risk and retirement spending needs, especially the role of healthcare costs that often rise faster than broad inflation.
• Assess how declining real spending patterns should influence pre-retirement savings rates and portfolio asset allocation decisions.
• Evaluate strategies for sequencing retirement income and spending, including the roles of guaranteed income sources verses market-dependent withdrawals.
• Identify planning implications of the "retirement spending smile" and how spending needs shift across retirement stages.

Speaker: Dorie Clark, Executive Education Professor, Columbia Business School and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

Now more than ever, we have to be ready to adapt to rapid change – and, even better, predict it. Columbia University executive education professor Dorie Clark – named three times as one of the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the World - will share strategies to help you nimbly adjust when the situation changes, learn from the past, and get smarter about planning for the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Create 'smart networks' that enable you to predict changes ahead of others

• Analyze bad outcomes - before they happen, so you can prevent them

• Seize opportunity by leveraging your unique advantages

• Harness the forces that create serendipity

Speaker: Melissa Kemp, CFP®, AEP®, CAP®, CNAP®, Chief Executive Officer, FPA Arizona

This program fulfills the requirement for CFP Board-approved Ethics CE. It has been designed to educate CFP® professionals on CFP Board's new Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct effective July 1, 2024.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply the CFP Board’s fiduciary duty.

• Recognize when a CFP® professional is providing financial advice.

• Understand when financial advice requires financial planning.

• Meet the duties when using our referring to other service providers and technologies.

• Become familiar with the process to uphold the code and standards.