A change management panel discussion co-sponsored by IABC Philadelphia and PRSA Philadelphia

Change has become a constant for today’s communication and PR professionals. Reorganizations, mergers, workforce reductions, shifting business models, shrinking resources, and the rapid adoption of AI are reshaping not only how organizations operate but also what communicators and leaders are asked to do.

As AI becomes increasingly capable of generating, analyzing, and distributing communication, our greatest value shifts toward what technology cannot replicate: our ability to read the human system, build trust, create meaning, surface what is unspoken, and help people move through change together.

That is the Relational Advantage—the human capacity to create the conditions in which people can navigate uncertainty, make meaning, build trust, and move forward together.

Because communication is what we send; relationship is what people experience.

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In this session, we’ll explore how communication and PR professionals can use their Relational Advantage to better understand what is happening beneath the surface of change, help leaders anticipate how decisions will be experienced, and become more influential strategic advisors. We’ll also consider how AI can create greater capacity and efficiency while making distinctly human capabilities—judgment, critical thinking, discernment, trust, and relational intelligence—even more valuable.

Participants will leave with:

• A new lens for seeing change: Recognize the human and relational dynamics beneath the communication and better understand what resistance, trust, and unspoken concerns may be telling you.
• Practical ways to lead and influence: Strengthen your ability to advise executives, manage up, support teams, and help leaders anticipate how change will actually be experienced.
• A clearer perspective on AI and your evolving value: Use AI to create capacity while protecting and strengthening the judgment, critical thinking, discernment, and relational intelligence that make communicators uniquely valuable.

Participants will also receive practical handouts and tools to help apply the Relational Advantage in their own organizations.

About the panelists

Tracey Lukes is a professionally trained and certified executive leadership coach with advanced training in relationship systems coaching. As a facilitator and consultant, she helps leaders and teams navigate complexity and change by strengthening the human and relational dynamics that shape how people communicate, collaborate, make decisions, and move forward together.

Michele Roden has spent more than two decades helping leaders and teams become the best, most honest versions of themselves — together. As a Master Certified Coach (MCC), the International Coaching Federation’s highest credential, she brings the field’s highest standard of practice to every engagement, paired with a warmth and directness that makes hard conversations feel possible and productive. Michele co-founded BluOpal Consulting in 2003 and has since coached several hundred C-suite and senior executives across finance, technology, healthcare, and other complex, high- accountability institutions.

Get ready to level up your communication game and lead with confidence at this must-attend summit!

Today's public information officers and spokespersons are navigating two forces that are reshaping the profession in real time: artificial intelligence and the relentless spread of misinformation and disinformation. In this session, crisis communications expert Dan Stoneking draws on his experience leading a nonprofit built around emergency management communications and a firm dedicated to message strategy to unpack what these forces really mean for strategic communicators - and how to turn them from threats into tools.

On the AI side, Dan will address the concerns weighing on many communicators, including job security, professional ethos, and reputation, and reframe the conversation around knowledge management: we manage the technology; it doesn't manage us. He'll walk through AI's evolution and the shift from broad, general-purpose generative tools to sharper, more focused AI applications (think the leap from VHS to DVD to streaming), and make the case that communicators can't afford to be left behind and should use every tool available to them.

On the misinformation and disinformation side, Dan will define the difference between the two and share a practical playbook communicators can put to use immediately, anticipating problems before they spread, monitoring the information environment, building a rumor control dashboard, spotting trends and triaging priorities, collaborating across teams, confronting falsehoods with facts and evidence, leveraging trusted third parties, emphasizing core values, capturing lessons learned, and exercising the plan before a crisis hits.

The session will close with an open Q&A, giving attendees the chance to bring their own AI and misinformation challenges directly to Dan.

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What You'll Learn

• How to address AI-driven concerns around job security, ethos, and reputation head-on
• A framework for managing AI as a knowledge tool rather than being managed by it
• The difference between general generative AI and focused AI and how to choose the right tool for the job
• How to define and distinguish misinformation from disinformation
• A field-tested strategy for anticipating, monitoring, and responding to rumors and false narratives
• How to build and exercise a rumor control dashboard before a crisis hits

About the Speaker

Dan Stoneking is the founder and vice president of the Emergency Management External Affairs Association, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting public information professionals in the emergency management space, and the founder of Message Prism, a communications strategy firm. He spends his days at the intersection of crisis communications, public affairs, and emerging technology, helping organizations and spokespersons navigate the fast-moving challenges of artificial intelligence and information integrity. Dan is the author of Crisis Communications and Emergency Management: Why Alignment Matters and How to Earn It and co-author of Cultivate Your Garden: Crisis Communications from 30,000 Feet to Three Feet, and writes regularly on emergency management, AI, and misinformation for HSToday.

Further Reading

Crisis Communicators Are Irreplaceable — HSToday

Emergency Management and Generative AI — HSToday

Confronting Misinformation During Disasters: Strategies for Crisis Communicators — HSToday