Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Mike Klein:
For many years, communication industry events in the US followed a familiar format: keynotes from name speakers, panel discussions assembled months in advance, and a steady undercurrent of commercial pitching.
On October 16, Strategic and IABC are breaking that mold – and bringing something different to Washington, DC.
The Communication Leadership Summit USA (CLS USA) is an “unconference.”
No keynotes.
No curated panels.
No speakers paying to play.
Instead, communication leaders from across the US and beyond will arrive at Smithbucklin’s Washington, DC headquarters and build the agenda themselves – on the morning of the event.
That’s not a gimmick. It’s the entire design principle.
CLS has now run twice in Brussels – in September 2025 and April 2026 – and both events delivered something I’ve rarely seen in twenty-plus years of working in and around this profession.
The first edition drew 75+ senior communication professionals. What they chose to discuss told us something important about where the profession actually is – not where conference programs say it stands, but where practitioners feel it in their daily work.
Say-do-gaps.
AI governance as a leadership question, not a technology question.
The failure of cascade communication to reach frontline workers.
Communicators’ collective struggle to communicate their own value.
These aren’t comfortable topics. And they generated honest conversations.
A long-time professional captured it well in the closing session of the first event: while the themes were familiar – credibility, strategic access, demonstrating impact – the character of the conversation had shifted. Less pain. More self-esteem. More concrete answers. “It feels like a definitely different time for this discussion.”
The second edition, in April 2026, drew 100 participants from 20 countries and ran as a fully open-space event.
Four distinct professional groups – senior corporate communication leaders, independent consultants, Brussels-based public affairs professionals, and global industry thought leaders – sat in the same room on equal footing and co-created the agenda.
That mix matters. These groups don’t normally build a programme together. When they did, four themes dominated.
Credibility persistently remains the profession’s central challenge – and for the first time, participants weren’t asking someone else to fix it. They were working out what they personally needed to do differently. Know the business. Know the numbers. Be unafraid of accountability.
The shift from outputs to outcomes is where practical progress lives. The language of campaign volume and message reach is not the language of business leadership. What’s the reputational exposure? What’s the operational risk of misalignment? When communication professionals speak in the language of business risk, the credibility conversation shifts.
And trust and relationship infrastructure are foundational – not optional. Trust is an outcome, not a starting condition. You build it deliberately, over time, or you find yourself trying to counter falsehoods with facts and wondering why it isn’t working.
Read the full Brussels recap here: https://strategic.global/What-happens-when-communication-leaders-set-our-own-agenda-Heres-where-we-got-to-in-Brussels/
Hosted by IABC at Smithbucklin’s Washington, DC headquarters, the event aims to cross disciplinary, geographic, and generational lines – to get the right mix of people into the room.
In-house leaders and independent consultants.
Corporate and nonprofit.
Public Affairs, PR and Internal Communication.
Seasoned practitioners and professionals who are preparing for leadership rather than waiting for it to be offered.
The format is the same one that worked in Brussels: participants propose sessions on the morning of the event. Any topic you’re wrestling with, any challenge you’re facing, anything you want to think through with a room full of peers. If a conversation isn’t delivering value, you move to one that is. The format puts you in charge of your own experience.
CLS USA is for communication professionals who are ready to own the future of the profession – not just attend a discussion about it.
That means CCOs and Directors of Communication who are navigating the AI transition and need to hear how their peers are handling it. Heads of Internal Communication dealing with workforce fragmentation and measurement pressure. Senior consultants who work across multiple organizations and carry cross-sector perspective. Agency leaders who see patterns their clients don’t. And practitioners earlier in their careers who want to shape where this profession goes – not just absorb where it has been.
The conversations that emerge will be shaped by whoever shows up. That’s the point. The summit isn’t a program delivered to an audience. It’s a profession deciding what it wants to talk about.
Tickets are now on sale.
Capacity is limited by design – the best conversations happen when everyone has room to contribute.
Tickets are $299, with $249 tickets available for IABC members, Strategic members, and Strategic columnists.
Full event details and ticketing here
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Mike Klein is Editor-in-Chief of Strategic, a Co-Founder of the Communication Leadership Summit, and a consultant, author, and speaker focused on internal communication and engagement.
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