Real Results. Strategic Impact.
A selection of initiatives where thoughtful strategy, stakeholder alignment, and execution excellence delivered measurable outcomes for associations and their communities. These projects range from targeted operational improvements and tactical interventions to multi-year, enterprise-scale transformations — reflecting the flexibility of how I work with different organizations.
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Case Study 1 – Enterprise Conference Management Transformation
Challenge:
IEEE’s $150M annual conference portfolio was managed by volunteers across dozens of societies, each using its own tools, workflows, and policies. This wasn’t a small or occasional activity — IEEE runs upward of 2,000 conferences every year, and with each event operating on a three-year lifecycle, the organization is simultaneously opening, running, and closing thousands of conference cycles at any given moment.
The fragmentation was well known, but it had never been documented holistically. Each society managed its part of the process in isolation, which meant data was being re-entered multiple times, visibility was inconsistent, and governance touchpoints were uneven. At this scale, even small gaps compounded quickly — creating systemic operational risk and inefficiency across one of the most exposed and financially significant functions of the enterprise.
Approach:
“Help me understand, end to end, how a conference actually works.”
That was the mandate from the Managing Director of Meetings & Conferences when I joined the Conference Technology Office at IEEE — coming from EMC Consulting. My role was to map every process, tool, policy, rule, and stakeholder involved — from planning and budgeting to publishing, IP acquisition, volunteer oversight, and post-event reporting.
The fragmentation was no secret, but this was the first enterprise-wide effort to chart the entire ecosystem holistically rather than one piece at a time. By drawing everything together, I connected the dots across dozens of disjointed workflows and policies, showing how fragmented hand-offs led to repeated data entry, gaps in visibility, and inconsistent governance touchpoints across the organization’s most exposed business function.
Result:
Created the foundation for a $10M business plan approved by the Board, establishing a scalable structure to support thousands of volunteer-run events worldwide.
Strengthened governance and oversight of one of the organization’s largest and most visible business functions.
Reduced duplication, improved transparency, and set a platform for future system modernization.
Career Impact:
This project gave me a panoramic, cross-silo view of how a $½ B association truly operates and marked the beginning of my journey into association advisory and thought leadership. It established me within IEEE as someone who could bridge silos, align stakeholders, and drive complex cross-entity initiatives — a role and capability that continue to shape how large-scale projects are structured today.
It also set me apart externally, giving me one of the few truly enterprise-wide perspectives on how associations function, combined with a deep understanding of strategy, governance, and growth dynamics. That blend of operational breadth and strategic depth became the foundation of my advisory work. As one colleague later put it: “Do you realize how rare it is to get exposure to that many parts of an organization? I’d give anything for that kind of experience.”
Case Study 2 — Unlocking Stuck Revenue
Challenge:
IEEE is powered by a remarkable global network of volunteers and members who take on leadership of financially significant programs and events. That strength, however, also creates inherent complexity. In an organization of this scale, with volunteers operating at every level, it’s natural for governance structures to lean toward caution and careful stewardship.
These volunteers are responsible for running upward of 2,000 conferences each year, and with each event on a three-year lifecycle, the organization is simultaneously opening, running, and closing thousands of conference cycles at any given time. To support this scale, IEEE has built a robust body of policy and governance that covers every stage of the lifecycle — from creation and contracting to delivery, reconciliation, and close-out.
Over time, however, the combination of scale, a naturally low risk tolerance, timing mismatches, and process dependencies introduced structural friction in financial flows. Tens of millions of dollars remained in the bank accounts of a large number of conferences during their final close-out stage, unable to be distributed to stakeholders across the organization. This wasn’t a flaw — it was a natural by-product of distributed ownership and responsible stewardship in an organization of this size.
Approach:
The internal governance function at IEEE establishes clear rules for when a conference can be formally closed and when funds in the conference bank account can be distributed to stakeholders within the organization. Over time, however, the interaction of these rules with operational realities had created a significant backlog of stuck capital. The question from leadership was direct: “What do we do now?”
I was asked to assist because of my background in financial compliance and risk management at EMC Consulting, which gave me the tools to approach the situation systematically. I began by tracing when revenue moved through the lifecycle — from budgeting to close-out — and mapping the specific choke points where funds were being held. This was not about isolated errors; it was a system designed for caution colliding with operational complexity at scale.
Result:
The work began with clarifying exactly where and why conference close-outs were stalling. I focused not just on process mapping but on the governance rules behind each choke point — identifying what was preventing a “yes” and leaving the system stuck on “no.”
I catalogued where these rules were being triggered and prioritized the areas with the most capital held up. Working closely with finance, governance, legal, and conference operations, I examined why the rules existed as they did and how much flexibility could be introduced without compromising control or trust. In effect, I carefully increased the operational risk tolerance within comfortable limits, lowering barriers just enough to allow the gate to open.
Within the first week of the project, approximately $10 million in conference funds were released and distributed — a figure that represents the entire annual revenue of many associations. From there, we worked iteratively, tackling a mix of easy-to-resolve sticking points and high-capital bottlenecks, steadily increasing the flow of trapped funds.
At its core, the problem wasn’t the presence of these binary rules; it was the absence of an actively managed risk portfolio. Without a structured way to assess and accept manageable levels of risk, the system defaulted to rigid pass/fail gates that locked up significant capital. By introducing calibrated flexibility within existing governance boundaries, we shifted the organization’s posture from risk-averse to risk-managed — transforming a binary process into a measured, risk-informed decision framework that respected governance while enabling more agile financial decision-making across the enterprise.
Career Impact:
This project became a defining moment in how I approach complex, risk-sensitive environments. It demonstrated that even in a highly governed, risk-averse structure, it’s possible to create meaningful change — not by breaking the rules, but by understanding them deeply and managing them intelligently.
Within IEEE, it positioned me as someone who could work at the intersection of finance, governance, and operations — trusted to navigate sensitive issues involving large sums of money and organizational risk. It reinforced my reputation as a pragmatic strategist who can shift systems from rigid control to risk-managed agility without undermining trust or compliance.
Externally, it gave me a distinctive lens on association economics — few people have had the opportunity to work with tens of millions of dollars in trapped funds within a volunteer-driven governance structure. This combination of financial acuity, policy fluency, and strategic pragmatism became a core part of my advisory work with associations navigating similar structural constraints.
Case Study 3 — Unifying Education Across IEEE
Challenge:
IEEE is a global powerhouse. When you think of IEEE, you think conferences, publications, standards, and members — because of its 2,000 conferences each year, its 200 journals publishing over 90,000 articles annually, its globally influential technical standards, and its nearly half a million members and an unprecedented network of volunteers. These are the defining strengths that make IEEE one of the most respected professional associations in the world.
But you probably don’t think of education — at least, not yet.
While conferences, publications, standards, and membership have long defined IEEE’s global identity, education has not historically held the same level of strategic visibility or investment. The current landscape reflects the strengths of IEEE’s federated structure — dozens of societies and business units building programs independently — but also its constraints: fragmented infrastructure, uneven access to services, and limited enterprise-level coordination.
The organization’s President made clear her desire to address this fragmentation and raise education to the same level of visibility and investment as conferences, publications, standards, and membership, establishing an ad hoc committee on education to explore unification across IEEE. This led to the formation of three subcommittees, including one charged with creating a strategy for a unified education vision.
Developing strategy in a volunteer-driven association comes with its own inherent dynamics. Volunteer leadership is an executive role — but a very different kind of executive role than paid leadership in the for-profit world. It is unpaid, time-limited, and typically held by people with demanding professional lives, which naturally shapes how they engage. Volunteers tend to focus on areas where they can contribute most meaningfully — often tactical or operational efforts that produce visible impact during their tenure. Combined with the short, one-year leadership cycles, this makes it inherently challenging to sustain long-term strategic momentum. This isn’t a weakness — it’s simply the nature of how associations work, and any successful strategy must work with, not against, that reality.
Approach:
The first step was to establish shared strategic clarity in an environment that naturally defaults to tactical action. Working with the Presidential ad hoc committee, we recognized the education unification initiative as a multi-year strategic endeavor, ensuring it carried the weight and visibility needed to outlast individual leadership cycles.
To shift the early focus from tools to strategy, I guided the committee to surface and organize stakeholder pain points, identifying more than 40 issues that were then coalesced into a seven-pillar strategy anchored in stakeholder needs and enterprise investment priorities.
Initially, finance, headcount, and technology were positioned as three separate pillars to make the scale unmistakable. Once volunteers, board, and staff recognized the strategic weight of the initiative, these elements were consolidated into a single Strategic Investment pillar — a pivotal move that elevated the effort from a $200K problem to a multi-million-dollar transformation.
Because top-down mandates are neither culturally nor structurally viable at IEEE, I built a bottom-up engagement framework to align societies, councils, and business units around a shared strategic investment. Thirty interviews confirmed the pillars and sharpened the plan.
My role was to provide strategic direction and coherence — guiding, drafting, aligning governance messaging, and ensuring the initiative moved from tactical conversation to enterprise-scale transformation. The final strategy was embraced by leadership as bold, credible, and actionable, positioning education to stand alongside IEEE’s other defining strengths.
Result:
The initiative advanced from a fragmented discussion about tools to a cohesive, seven-pillar enterprise strategy with broad support across volunteer and staff leadership. It was recognized as a multi-million-dollar transformation, designed to elevate education to the same level of visibility and investment as IEEE’s other defining strengths.
As we speak, the initiative is entering a critical stage: preparing to present a major strategic investment proposal to the board. In shaping this ask, I worked to ensure that the transformative vision of the strategy remained intact, particularly its emphasis on building strong business intelligence capacity and a sustainable foundation for execution. This first phase is designed to secure the strategic resources needed to build out the tactical plan and establish the infrastructure, with full initiative funding to be sought in a subsequent stage once the groundwork has been laid. By positioning the plan for strategic, not incremental, investment, we’re ensuring the initiative retains the scale and ambition that captured leadership’s support from the outset.
This refined path will allow the initiative to move forward with strong strategic footing and position it as a flagship investment opportunity for IEEE.
Career Impact:
This initiative is a clear demonstration of my ability to provide executive-level strategic leadership in a complex, volunteer-led environment. I haven’t just helped shape the strategy — I’ve guided and protected its ambition, ensuring that it remains transformative rather than incremental as it moves toward its first major investment stage.
By anticipating governance dynamics, funding pathways, and stakeholder reactions, I’ve been able to keep the initiative aligned to its original scale and strategic intent, even as it moves closer to board consideration. My role has been to translate vision into structure, align messaging with leadership expectations, and design a phased investment path that paves the way for full initiative funding at a later stage.
Throughout this process, senior volunteer and staff leadership have consistently acknowledged that the initiative would not have reached this level of strategic clarity and readiness without my leadership and guidance. It has reinforced my position as a trusted strategic advisor capable of steering large-scale transformation at critical inflection points — the kind of leadership typically found at the director and board level, where strategy, investment, and governance intersect.
And as the initiative heads to the board, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Case Study 4 — Representative Portfolio: Tactical to Strategic Engagements
Challenge:
Not every engagement requires a large, multi-year program. Many associations face very real challenges at a smaller scale: getting a specific project unstuck, improving workflows, or creating clarity around new initiatives. Over the years, I’ve supported dozens of these engagements — often fast-moving, focused pieces of work that address immediate pain points while laying the groundwork for future growth.
These efforts have taken place both within IEEE and with other associations, often working with lean staff teams or volunteer-driven operations. They’re typically lower in financial investment but high in organizational value, helping leadership achieve tangible outcomes quickly.
Approach:
I shape each engagement to the scale and need at hand, working across three layers:
Tactical — Delivering focused projects such as digital portal builds, training programs, research initiatives, product launches, and targeted competitive analyses.
Operational — Streamlining workflows, modernizing digital tools, improving training delivery, and aligning internal processes with organizational goals.
Strategic — Providing lightweight roadmaps, portfolio alignment, and early-stage investment framing that help leadership make confident decisions without committing to a full transformation program.
Many of these projects involve working side by side with small internal teams, volunteer committees, or single-program owners — which requires flexibility, clarity, and the ability to produce visible results quickly.
Result:
These engagements have:
Delivered working digital platforms and training programs in weeks rather than months.
Reduced operational friction and improved volunteer and staff experience.
Clarified direction for emerging initiatives, unlocking organizational momentum without heavy investment.
Created a structured foundation that often grows into larger strategic programs over time.
They show how targeted, well-designed tactical and operational work can have enterprise-level impact — even in lean or decentralized environments.
Career Impact:
This portfolio reflects the majority of my consulting work: short to mid-term, high-leverage engagements that make strategy practical. They’ve strengthened my ability to work flexibly across all levels of an organization — from a single program owner with no staff, to multi-stakeholder boards.
For clients, it’s a clear signal that impact doesn’t depend on size. Even smaller projects, when well designed and delivered, can shift an organization’s trajectory.
case studies | Association Strategy & Advisory | matty rubenstein | Aspaklaria
These case studies illustrate association strategy in action — from transforming conference portfolios and modernizing governance frameworks to advancing membership, publishing, standards, and education initiatives. Each example highlights strategic leadership in complex, volunteer-driven environments and the ability to translate ambitious goals into sustainable, measurable impact.
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