Registration opens for the Great Lakes Winter Roundtable, capped at 40 seats

Registration opened this week for the Great Lakes chapter's 2027 Winter Roundtable, set for February 11 in Chicago. The gathering is capped at 40 seats, and the room has filled before the January deadline in each of the past three years, so chapter staff who want a spot are being encouraged to register now rather than wait for a reminder closer to February.

Chapter Chair Priya Ranganathan, deputy executive director of the Great Lakes Orchard Growers Association, will open the day with the chapter's priorities for 2027, including closer coordination with the Detroit-Columbus finance officers' circle. From there the agenda moves into a peer budget-benchmarking exercise the chapter has run every year since 2024. Attendees are asked to bring a recent membership export or dues report so the comparison works from current numbers rather than memory.

Wendell Szymanski, executive director of the Great Lakes Maritime Shippers Association and the roundtable's longest-running attendee, returns for a session on recruiting and mentoring staff new to association management, a topic tied directly to the chapter's mentorship pairing program, which begins its next 12-month cohort in March. First-time attendees are informally paired with a returning member for the day, a practice Ranganathan credits for the roundtable's low no-show rate.

The day runs 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the chapter's 12th-floor conference room, with breakfast and an open working lunch included at no cost to chapter members. It closes the way it has every year since Ranganathan became chair: each attendee names one chapter priority to carry into the chapter's spring meeting.

Great Lakes chapter member organizations can register now through the event page. Given the roundtable's history of filling early, chapter staff weighing whether to attend should not wait until January to decide.