ABOUT THE SUMMIT

Cut through the tsunami of AI products and move out of pilot purgatory. The Innova Executive Search AI Mastermind Summit offers two days of hands-on work on real search workflows.

Building on sold-out Philadelphia, Chicago combines workshops, working dinners, and peer insights across business development, research, coaching, operations, and firm performance. Leave with tested workflows, clearer priorities, and lasting connections.

Summit Agenda

Day 1 | Tuesday, November 3

11:00 AM-12:30 PM

Welcome & Summit Kickoff

Ken Vancini | Founder & CEO, Innova International
Founder, ZRG Partners

Review summit objectives and updates since Philadelphia. Meet the facilitators and fellow participants.

12:30 PM-1:15 PM

Group Lunch

1:15 PM-4:15 PM

Beyond “Using AI”: Turning Ideas into Results

Joe Ewing | Chief Technology Officer, Clarion AI Partners
He is a world-renowned AI speaker and coach.

Turn a firm frustration into an AI experiment. Explore tools beyond the chatbot, test assumptions, and measure value through hands-on exercises. Bring your laptop.

4:15 PM-4:30 PM

Quick Break

4:30 PM-5:00 PM

Dinner Cohort Case Study Setup

Breck Armstrong | Managing Partner, North America, 17 Oranges

Review the case study, meet your group, and prepare to work with your cohort’s AI tool.

5:00 PM-6:00 PM

Break & Phone Calls

6:00 PM-8:00 PM

Group Dinners & Cohort Case Studies

Join peers using your firm’s primary LLM to compare workflows, agents, adoption, governance, and automation. Apply those lessons to a CEO succession case with a one-week deadline and fragmented firm knowledge. Use AI to develop distinctive client insight while protecting judgment, confidentiality, and trust. Groups share their key lessons the next morning.

Day 2 | Wednesday, November 4

7:30 AM-8:30 AM

Group Breakfast

8:30 AM-9:30 AM

Participant Case Study Readouts

Each cohort shares its approach, results, and lessons. Compare what worked, where the AI tools struggled, and what could be useful inside your firm.

Hands-On Workshops

Workshop sequence and room assignments to be confirmed.

Connecting AI to Your Tools & Firm Data

Led by Canay Deniz

CEO & Co-Founder
Ren

Connect AI to purpose-built tools through MCPs. Bring relationship data, research, CRM records, and documents together, and leave with a practical workflow to test inside your firm.

Building Artifacts and Vibe-Coded Apps the Right Way

Led by Manan Shah

Co-Founder
RecruiterFlow

Led by Matt Wright

Founder
Woven Research

In teams, define requirements, write tests, create a mockup, and build with Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI tool. Use your own idea or a recruiting example. Leave with a prototype and reusable prompts.

Opt-in. No coding experience required. Bring a laptop and complete the advance setup instructions.

After the Summary: Making More of Your AI Note Taker Data

Led by Josh Kirkham

VP of Operations
CoRecruit

Led by Andy Shapiro

Principal
The Cluen Corporation

Turn recorded conversations into better delivery, coaching, and business development. Compare tools, discuss adoption and disclosure, and identify practical uses for your firm’s existing call data.

Day 2 | Hands-On Workshops Continued

The Analyst You Never Hired: Running Your Own Numbers, Live

Led by Weldon W. Whitener

Founder and CEO
AfterGen

Led by Sanket Chauhan

Co-Founder
Stardex

Use AI to build an actionable one-page view of a pipeline, consultant performance and client economics from realistic search-firm data, then test the numbers and leave with reusable prompts.

Less Chasing. More Placing.

Led by Gobhanu Korisepati

CEO & Co-Founder
Vela

Use AI to take an interview from introduction to follow-up, tackling calendar chaos, last-minute changes, and back-and-forth. Bring a coordination headache and leave with a practical way to move searches forward.

Your 90-Day AI Plan

Led by Sean Mallapurkar

Founder & CEO
Recruit CRM

Create a practical 90-day plan for two or three meaningful AI improvements. Choose your priority workflows, identify next steps and owners, and define how you will measure progress.

4:00 p.m.

Key Takeaways & Summit Wrap-Up

Share the most useful lessons from the two days and identify the workflows and next steps you will take back to your firm.

November 3–4, 2026 · Chicago

Two Days to Turn AI Into Action

The Chicago AI in Executive Search Mastermind Summit is built around learning, building and applying. Less talking about AI. More working with it.

DAY ONE

Learn

Deep hands-on AI session

DAY TWO

Apply

Tools, products & workflows

THE GOAL

Use It

Leave with practical takeaways

Day One · Tuesday, November 3

Learn. Experiment. Build.

We start together, go deep on AI, then move into smaller mastermind cohorts to apply what we learned to real executive search challenges.

11:00 AM

Welcome, Introductions & Summit Objectives

We’ll open by getting everyone connected, understanding where firms are today with AI, and identifying the specific challenges and opportunities participants want to tackle over the next two days.

Four-Hour Intensive

AI Masterclass with Joe Ewing

A four-hour, hands-on working session designed to move well beyond basic prompting. Joe will take participants deeper into how today’s AI platforms can be used to think, research, analyze, create and build repeatable workflows.

Advanced prompting & reusable instructions

Projects, agents & repeatable workflows

Research, analysis & content creation

Real executive search use cases

Evening

Mastermind Cohort Case Studies

Participants break into smaller cohorts and work on specific, real-world executive search case studies. Each group will identify a challenge, test approaches and develop something practical to bring back to the larger group on Day Two.

Day Two · Wednesday, November 4

Tools, Workflows & Real-World Implementation

Day Two shifts from learning about AI to figuring out exactly where it belongs inside an executive search firm — and what participants can actually put to work when they return home.

AI Platforms

Know What to Use

Practical exploration of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot — where each shines, where each falls short, and how firms are using them today.

Search Technology

Connect the Stack

CRM and ATS platforms, sourcing tools, note takers, research tools and emerging technologies — viewed through the lens of actual search workflows rather than product demonstrations.

Workflows

Make It Practical

Translate tools into repeatable workflows for business development, sourcing, research, candidate assessment, client communication, knowledge management and firm operations.

The question we’ll keep asking: What can this actually do, where does it fit in executive search, and how can I use it when I get back to my firm?

Workflow Labs

Apply AI Across the Search Lifecycle

We’ll break the executive search process into real workflows and explore where AI can create meaningful leverage.

Business Development

Client Research

Pitch Preparation

Market Mapping

Candidate Sourcing

Assessment

Client Updates

Firm Operations

Cohort Readouts

What We Built

Cohorts will share the challenge they tackled, the tools they tested, what worked, what didn’t, and the workflow or solution they developed. The emphasis is on practical ideas other firms can borrow, adapt and improve.

01 The problem we tackled

02 The tools and approach we used

03 What worked — and what didn’t

04 How other firms can apply it

What You’ll Leave With

Not More AI Theory. A Plan.

✓ Specific AI workflows to implement

✓ Reusable prompts and approaches

✓ A clearer view of the major AI platforms

✓ Ideas tested by other search firms

✓ Practical technology recommendations

✓ A short list of immediate experiments

You shouldn’t leave Chicago simply knowing more about AI. You should leave knowing what you’re going to do differently on Monday morning.