Chad Faison
Executive Director, American Council of Engineering Companies of Maryland (ACEC/MD)
I’ve been a part of associations and worked around state, national, and worldwide conferences my entire life. While growing up, my family owned and operated a worldwide trade publication, National Drillers Buyers Guide. I helped with mail-outs, designed layouts, worked with QuarkXpress, took photos, ran the booth during conferences, and anything else I could help with! Summers were spent traveling for weeks at a time to a show in Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Hershey, New York, Little Rock, Anchorage, Sydney, Australia, Chile, Argentina, etc. We would stop at towns in-between to see advertisers, manufacturers, and drillers to give personal customer service. These unique circumstances have led me to be very well versed with interacting with current and potential members, executive boards, vendors, sponsors, and everyone in between. After obtaining my Bachelor of Science in Communications from Florida State University, I found a career position as the Director of Marketing and Communications for a Tallahassee association management company. Working for Membership Services Inc. allowed me to gain marketing and communication experience in a wide variety of industries. I soon realized that I had found my home working with associations, but that I wanted to focus on a single industry. In November 2015, I found my single industry and was hired by the Florida Engineering Society (FES) and the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida (ACEC-FL). FES/ACEC-FL has afforded me with outstanding additional learning experiences, especially in the scope of branding, event/educational session planning, budgeting/accounting, human resources, and building an integrated organizational culture. Also, I’ve gained invaluable interpersonal skills and coaching techniques through supervising a team with greatly differing generational backgrounds and personalities. During my time with FES/ACEC-FL, I have led multiple complex projects. Before 2018, ACEC-FL was known as the Florida Institute of Consulting Engineers (FICE). After Board approval, I was responsible for developing, planning, and implementing all of the branding, marketing, and communications of the name change. The prior year, I spearheaded the transition of both organizations from a custom-built ColdFusion database and extremely outdated website to YourMembership, an association management system (AMS) that included a new, more reliable database and mobile-friendly website. The transition to an AMS had failed twice before I arrived, but was successful under my technical expertise and leadership.
