Presentation: Mastering Conversational Intelligence – Build a Team that is Stronger than the Structures you Design

Drawing on neuroscience and psychology, Amy shows that culture performs like a structure: it holds or fails one interaction at a time. Using a structural engineer’s mindset, she demonstrates how curiosity-driven dialogue identifies hidden stress fractures, reduces friction, strengthens connections, and builds a foundation of trust across teams.

Attendees gain a practical framework grounded in structural engineering thinking: when leaders listen to understand the system and communicate to support performance, small shifts in language compound—creating alignment, faster decisions, and more resilient execution.

Biography: Amy Eliza Wong is a certified executive coach who has devoted more than 20 years to helping others live and lead on purpose. Holding a B.A. in mathematics from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in transpersonal psychology from Sofia University, she brings together expertise in psychology, design thinking, interpersonal neurobiology, and Conversational Intelligence® to deliver leadership development and transformational communication strategies to executives and teams around the world. She works with some of the biggest names in tech and has built her practice on a single belief: that the quality of our conversations determines the quality of our culture.

Presentation: Work (and Lead) to a Different Beat — Own your mindset, meaning, and performance at work and home.

What happens when you bring a drummer, a storyteller, and a leadership expert into one room? You get Justin Jones-Fosu.

Justin’s signature keynote Work and Lead to a Different Beat uses the rhythm of a Djembe drum as a powerful metaphor for how structural engineers show up in their work every day. Just as a structure’s integrity depends on how each element works in concert with the others, great teams depend on how each person chooses to see their work, engage with their colleagues, and contribute to something bigger than themselves.

Through his 3 Rhythm Model, Justin gives engineers a practical, memorable framework for leading with greater purpose, communicating across differences, and building the kind of team culture where collaboration and innovation thrive. High energy, interactive, and grounded in real research, this is a keynote your attendees will still be talking about long after the conference ends.

Biography: Justin Jones-Fosu is a husband, proud dad of four, and a man who leads with energy, humor, and purpose. As CEO of Work. Meaningful., he delivers 50-60 keynotes annually to Fortune 500 companies and classrooms around the world. A former HR leader and author of Your WHY Matters NOW, The Inclusive Mindset, and I Respectfully Disagree, Justin has built his career on one conviction: real impact matters more than accolades. He’s been featured on NPR’s “The Takeaway,” holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation — earned by just 15% of speakers worldwide — and is deeply committed to expanding education access in underserved communities in Ghana and the U.S.

Presentation: Building the Impossible: AI and the Future of Structural Engineering

Structural engineering has always been the profession of building the impossible. Every landmark that defines a skyline was once dismissed as too tall, too thin, too complex, or too ambitious. Today, AI is expanding what we can design and build more than any tool in a generation. 

This closing keynote reframes the AI conversation for structural engineers around one question: What can each engineer and firm now create that they could not before? Dr. Mehdi Nourbakhsh begins by tracing the profession’s evolution from hand calculations and physical models to BIM, computational design, and AI. He then explores why AI represents the next major shift, not just as another productivity tool, but as a new capability that can augment engineering expertise, accelerate exploration, and expand the boundaries of what firms can deliver.

Attendees will see what this shift means for their own work, the future of structural engineering, and the leadership decisions firms must make to prepare their people and organizations for the age of AI. They will leave inspired to see AI not as a threat to the profession, but as a powerful new instrument for building the impossible.

Biography: Dr. Mehdi Nourbakhsh is an author, speaker, and CEO of YegaTech, a technology consulting company in the AEC industry specializing in AI strategy, governance, and implementation for AEC companies. As the author of two Amazon bestselling books, Augment It: How Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Leaders Leverage Data and Artificial Intelligence to Build a Sustainable Future and Disrupt It: How Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Executives can Transform their Organizations in the Age of AI Disruption, Dr. Mehdi co-created new frameworks for understanding and integrating AI technologies in AEC, establishing a solid foundation for innovation in the field.