Upcoming Events

Alliance Roundtable: CEO Signals for 2026 from the Q4 Business Barometer
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM PST
Location: ZOOM

As we begin 2026, leaders are taking stock of the past year and reassessing how to navigate what comes next. The Q4 2025 Business Barometer suggests CEO confidence is improving and priorities are becoming more focused. Across survey responses, we see a broader move from reactive decision-making toward execution, with leaders emphasizing speed, adaptability, and competitive advantage rather than waiting for perfect clarity.

Join us for this 90-minute Alliance Roundtable as Jim Cook, BenchBoard Executive Coaching and Advisory Founder, and Paul Witkay, Alliance Founder & CEO, share what the data signals. Drawing directly from the Q4 2025 Business Barometer results, they will explore how CEOs are assessing risk, responding to economic factors and acting on AI as it moves from experimentation to execution in 2026. The discussion will include:

• What’s driving the rebound in CEO confidence, how sentiment shifted from Q2 to Q4 2025, and what it signals for 2026
• Perspectives on economic unpredictability and the durability of the emerging “new normal”
• How leaders are responding to supply chain shifts, capital constraints, and M&A opportunities
• Where AI adoption is creating real advantage, and where expectations may be outpacing results

Participants will have the opportunity to interact and compare notes with fellow CEOs, pressure-test interpretations of the data, and share what’s working inside their organizations. We will also gather participant input on the issues and questions that matter most as we prepare to launch the Q12026 Business Barometer in early March.

Roundtable:  Alliance Software Companies
Date: Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM PDT
Location: ZOOM

The Alliance brings leaders of software companies together in our Alliance Software Roundtable. Members in this sector are invited to discuss their challenges in high-level, direct, candid discussions.

Roundtable: How CEOs Are Creating Their Digital Twins to Manage Teams
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM PDT
Location: ZOOM

The Alliance hosts a series of CEO Roundtables intended to dive deep into the use of AI by real-world CEOs to drive business performance. This will be our eighteenth session. In this series, we feature CEOs who are using AI and data to boost revenue, profits, and performance across marketing, sales, customer support, and operations. You’ll gain practical ideas you can apply immediately, while engaging in candid, small-group discussions with fellow leaders from the Alliance of CEOs. Our speakers will also join for an informal Q&A to share insights and answer your questions at the end of this session.  

AI can now do many things, including mimicking people with uncanny similarity. During this Alliance Roundtable, Craig Hunter, Founder & CEO of Covalent, will share how he has created a digital clone of himself that he now uses as a first line of interaction for his direct reports. 

Join this session to learn:

•  How non-tech CEOs can create digital clones of themselves
• Use cases for managing and delegating a workforce with AI
• 2026 predictions of AI advancements

Our guest speaker, Craig Hunter, is the Founder and CEO of Covalent. His background spans corporate development, finance, and strategy, including experience as an M&A banker on Wall Street and CFO of a consumer products company. He has held senior leadership roles at Applied Materials, where he founded and led the SunFab solar PV business, and at Intermolecular, where he established the clean energy technology group. Craig was also an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sequoia Capital.

Our moderator, Matthew Swanson, is the CEO of StaffAI, a platform that places "AI employees" in sales and marketing roles at field service businesses. Matthew previously founded Google Ventures backed SpeakerText (acquired by CloudFactory 2012) and AugmentCXM (acquired by Sutherland Global 2022), which was one of the first companies to deploy LLM based transformers into enterprise contact centers. Matthew also serves as Managing Partner of Silicon Valley Software Group, which provides fractional CTOs to PE and VC backed companies.

Roundtable:  Alliance Life Sciences
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Time: 8:00 AM - 10:30 AM PDT
Location: ZOOM

Alliance members in the life sciences sector come together in our quarterly Alliance Life Sciences Roundtable. Members in this sector are invited to discuss their challenges in high-level, direct, candid discussions.