Great Lakes Winter Roundtable 2027

The Winter Roundtable is capped at 40 seats every year, and the room has filled before the January deadline in each of the last three editions. Chapter Chair Priya Ranganathan, deputy executive director of the Great Lakes Orchard Growers Association, leads the day, and registration is open now to any Great Lakes chapter member organization.

Ranganathan will open with the chapter's priorities for 2027, including closer coordination with the Detroit-Columbus finance officers' circle, followed by a second round of peer budget benchmarking that has run every year since 2024. Wendell Szymanski, the roundtable's longest-running attendee, returns for a session on recruiting and mentoring staff new to association management, a topic tied to the chapter's mentorship pairing program that begins its next 12-month cohort in March.

The day includes an open working lunch and closes with each attendee naming one chapter priority to carry into the chapter's spring meeting — a practice Ranganathan started in her first year as chair and has kept every year since.

Attendees should bring a recent membership export or dues report to compare against the roundtable's peer benchmarking exercise; the session works best when everyone in the room has their own current numbers on hand rather than working from memory.

The roundtable runs 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the chapter's 12th-floor conference room, with breakfast and lunch included, free for chapter members. Seats are limited to 40 and typically go quickly, so members are encouraged to register early rather than wait for a reminder closer to February.

The room draws a mix of returning regulars and first-time attendees each year, and newcomers are informally paired with a returning member so no one spends the day without a familiar face, a practice Ranganathan credits for the roundtable's low no-show rate.