Communications Elevated 2026
About this Event
Communications Elevated conference is designed to bring communicators together for learning, connection, and practical insight that elevates our work.
Why attend?
Communicators are navigating constant change, new tools, evolving expectations, and increasing demands for clarity and impact.
Communications Elevated is being built to help you:
- Strengthen your skills and confidence
- Learn from experienced practitioners
- Connect with peers across communications disciplines
- Walk away with insights you can immediately apply
Whether you work in internal communications, PR, marketing, or a related field, this conference is designed to meet you where you are and elevate your skills.
Proudly presented by:
Communications Elevated 2026 and are grateful for our sponsors!
Colorado Networking Reception Sponsor
Front Range Sponsors
Headshot Sponsors
Agenda at a Glance
🕑: 08:00 AM - 06:00 PM
Communications Elevated 2026
Info: Full agenda: https://iabc-colorado.com/Events/Communications-Elevated#agenda
🕑: 08:00 AM - 08:45 AM
Registration/Breakfast
🕑: 08:45 AM - 09:45 AM
Keynote - Elevating Satisfaction
Host: Dr. Erika Michalski
Info: Learn what Mick Jagger and Keith Richards didn’t realize about satisfaction. Turns out you CAN get it…if you know how. In this keynote, Dr. Erika marries research from the fields of neuroscience, positive psychology, and emotional intelligence as it invites you to consider how you are cultivating your own sense of satisfaction in both your personal and professional life.
🕑: 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
Nobody Wants to Read This: How to combine journalism, research, and change...
Host: Amanda Swennes
Info: Nobody wakes up excited to read about payroll changes, pay transparency, compliance, benefits and compensation policy, or an ERP implementation. Yet communicators are routinely asked to help employees understand — and act on — these complex, business-critical topics, often with very little background.
So we do what communicators often do: rewrite, simplify, shorten, add graphics, make it more engaging. But what if the real problem isn’t the writing? What if it starts much earlier?
Drawing on more than 20 years spanning journalism, research, change management, and internal communications, this session introduces a practical framework for solving these communication problems before you write a single word. You’ll learn to Think Like a Researcher to uncover audience needs, Think Like a Journalist to find the story employees actually need to hear, and Think Like a Change Communicator to help people understand what the change means and what they need to do.
🕑: 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
How to Build an AI-Ready Social Strategy That Shows Up, Stands Out and Scales
Host: Brent Bowen
Info: AI now powers many of the feeds your audiences engage with — but too often, social leaders are stuck with inherited, legacy, or half-baked strategies that don’t scale or stand up to scrutiny. The result: fragmented workflows, content that feels generic, and a constant fight to prove real business value.
Most GEO and AI search responsibilities default to digital marketing and SEO teams — leaving content marketers, social media managers, and marketing communicators out of the conversation entirely. This session changes that.
Brent Bowen, founder of Sparkcade Marketing and host of the CultivatED Marketer podcast, will show communications and social leaders how to integrate Generative Engine Optimization, social search, and AI workflows into a cohesive, scalable social strategy — one that allows content and social leaders to guide how brands show up in AI-driven search and discovery.
🕑: 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
Nobody Here Knows You. Good. Getting the most out of your next conference.
Host: Greg Roche
Info: You've done this before. You attend the sessions, collect a few business cards you'll never use, and drive home wondering whether the day was worth the registration fee and the time out of the office.
And you work in communications, so the room assumes you're good at this. Walking in cold, knowing nobody, feels less like discomfort and more like a professional failure. It isn't one. A room where nobody knows you is the easiest room you'll ever walk into, and the first ten minutes of this session cover why.
From there we work in the order that's useful to you today.
Start with the hours you have left in this building, and what to do with them. Then the two weeks after you leave, which is where a conference either turns into something or doesn't. Almost nobody does that part. Then the piece you'll use six months from now: the prep that happens before you ever arrive at your next conference.
🕑: 10:45 AM - 11:30 AM
Networking Bingo + Headshots
🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM
Lunch Break + Headshots
🕑: 12:15 PM - 01:15 PM
Keynote - From Unknown to In-Demand
Host: Michael Ambrozewicz
Info: From Unknown to In-Demand: How strategic communication can build an employer brand, earn trust and drive business results.
What happens when a company needs to hire hundreds of experienced technology professionals in one of the world’s most competitive talent markets—but almost no one there knows who you are?
Rather than treating employer branding as a recruiting campaign, the team approached it as a strategic communications and reputation challenge—one that could not only attract talent, but also help define the culture and employee experience of a new organization. The result was an integrated program built on audience insight, distinctive positioning, visible leadership, authentic storytelling and measurable business outcomes—ultimately earning an IABC Gold Quill Award.
🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:30 PM
The New Physics of Influence: Communicating in an AI-Mediated Reality
Host: Elizabeth Edwards
Info: An intelligence layer now sits between your organization and every audience you serve, continuously shaping what the world believes about you. Most communication teams are still managing reputation in the media layer while losing ground in the layer that increasingly shapes first impressions, due diligence, and decisions.
Elizabeth Edwards has spent 25 years studying the science of how people actually form judgments and has been advising AI companies since the 1990s. In this session, she brings both together: why audiences accept or reject what we say based on emotion and instinct rather than facts alone, why AI is the first technology to read and reproduce those human patterns at scale, and why that combination rewrites what communication leadership means.
Attendees will leave knowing what questions to ask about their own organization’s presence in the AI layer — and why communicators, not technologists, are the ones equipped to lead this work.
🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:30 PM
Invisible Labor, Visible Proof: Elevating the Work of Internal Communicators
Host: Alyssa Towns
Info: Internal communicators do work that’s rarely easy to quantify: reading a room and changing course, knowing when not to send something, helping leaders confront misalignment among themselves, and managing relationships that keep an organization’s trust intact. It’s some of the most important and often overlooked work of successful internal communicators.
In this session, participants will name and categorize their own invisible labor using a practical framework, then work in small groups to recognize this work in one another — a moment that too many solo internal communicators and small IC teams never get.
The session closes with a tool to track this labor over time and language for discussing it with managers and senior leaders, so the work stops being invisible by default.
🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:30 PM
From Panic to Plan: Why Crisis Communications is Critical
Host: Patricia Billinger
Info: Every communicator will face a crisis. While emergencies can’t always be predicted or prevented, preparation can help communicators reduce risk, communicate effectively, and bring order to chaos faster.
Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in crisis, executive, internal, and strategic communications, Patricia Billinger will share practical tips and best practices for communicating through crises ranging from reputational risks to physical threats. Her experience includes serving as a national disaster spokesperson for the American Red Cross and leading the State of Colorado’s joint information center during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participants will leave with practical ideas for preparing before a crisis hits and communicating with greater clarity and confidence when it does.
🕑: 02:30 PM - 03:00 PM
Networking Break/Afternoon Snack
🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:45 PM
The Human Advantage: Communication When Everyone Has AI
Host: Susan Abbott
Info: Artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of the communications profession. As AI becomes commonplace, the real competitive advantage will no longer be producing more content faster, it will be building trust, exercising sound judgment, communicating with empathy, and helping organizations navigate complexity.
This interactive session explores what it means to be an effective communicator when everyone has access to AI. Drawing on real-world examples, participants will examine how AI is reshaping expectations of communicators & why the profession’s most valuable skills are becoming increasingly human.
Rather than focusing on AI tools or prompt engineering, the session introduces a practical framework for balancing efficiency with authenticity, automation with accountability, & innovation with trust. Attendees will explore how to elevate their role from content producers to strategic advisors & use AI more intentionally while strengthening credibility and stakeholder trust.
🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:45 PM
The Athletic Presenter: Train Your Body, Voice, & Presence to Command Any Room
Host: Pete Mathews
Info: Public speaking is more than sharing information — it's about how you move people and making your message unforgettable. Research shows 50 percent of communication impact comes from body language and energy, 40 percent from voice, and just 10 percent from content, yet most training focuses only on that last 10 percent.
In this session, discover The Athletic Presenter's performance-based method for public speaking: an approach built like athletic training, using deliberate practice and expert coaching to build the muscle memory that makes powerful speaking feel effortless. You'll learn to harness presence, movement, and vocal energy to lead, motivate, and leave a lasting impression, whether you're addressing one person or a thousand.
Through hands-on practice, real-time feedback, and personalized coaching, you'll leave with concrete tools to own any stage and captivate any audience. Great speakers aren't born, they're trained. Come find out what your training could look like.
🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:45 PM
How to Get Better at Hard Conversations: Turning Tension into Trust
Host: Gabriel DeRita
Info: The quality of our relationships determines our outcomes in business and in life. The core skills that can make or break those relationships are about how we show up, how we communicate, and how we respond to others.
Whether it’s delivering a tough performance review or navigating interpersonal conflict on your team, hard conversations are part of nearly every job. But just because they’re common doesn’t make them easy. Many of us avoid them, delay them, or handle them in ways that erode trust — often without realizing it.
In this interactive session, you’ll learn a practical framework for navigating high-stakes conversations with clarity, confidence, and care. Rooted in simple practices backed by decades of research, this session gives you tools to strengthen psychological safety and build deeper trust — even in moments of discomfort.
🕑: 03:45 PM - 04:15 PM
Closing Session
🕑: 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
Networking Happy Hour
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 75.00 to USD 245.00
