Highlights from the ECPA C-Suite Symposium

The ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) C-Suite Symposium took place in Tucson, AZ from September 7-9, 2025. We are an industry affiliate of the ECPA and this year, we were a proud sponsor of the event, with Dan Heffernan (Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Planning) and Scott Ghormley (Director of Client Services) attending. 

The theme of the conference was “Non-Anxious Leadership for Anxious Times” which resonated with the attendees: C-level executives from ECPA member publishers and industry affiliates. Several speakers described their approach to anxiety and leading their teams in today’s unpredictable environment.  

The two-day conference included informative sessions as well as inspirational ones, and the schedule allowed for plenty of networking time to share stories, successes, and struggles. One of the sessions, led by Shelley Husband, the EVP of Government Affairs at the Association of American Publishers, discussed copyright laws and the situation with AI companies using copyrighted material to teach their large language models — sometimes illegally. This took place just days after the Anthropic settlement agreement, the largest payout in the history of U.S. copyright cases. Another session was about disaster preparedness, business continuity, and risk management. The speaker noted how often companies have a few safeguards in place but are deeply exposed to major risks they hadn’t envisioned.  

ECPA hosts excellent events and this is one of the best, with a small group of about 75 participants who all want to engage and learn from one another. This creates a collaborative environment and cultivates open conversations, all in the spirit of shared success.