Agenda
2-Day Format
Explore the sessions and speakers shaping this year’s AR Engage Live experience.
Day 1
Wednesday, November 11
Registration begins at 1:00pm, sessions will begin at 2:00 pm
Day 2
Thursday, November 12
Sessions will begin at 9:00 am
Day 1 Sessions
Welcome to AR Engage Live 2026
2:00 – 2:15 pm
Shannon Dupont
Senior Account Manager @ ARInsights
Fireside chat with Omdia
2:15 – 3:00 pm
Clint Wheelock @ Omdia
VP, GTM Insights and Advisory
Breakout Session 1A
From Firefighting to Forecasting: Running AR on Your Narrative, Not Their Calendar
Most AR teams spend the year reacting. An RFI lands, the clock starts, and the only real decision left is whether to participate. That model burns teams out and hands the narrative to someone else. Jen Borun makes the case for the opposite approach. Start with what the business is trying to achieve at the C-level, decide what story you want the market to hear, and work backward to the analysts, reports, and inquiries that will carry it. Drawing on experience running AR at enterprise, mid-size, and startup scale, she’ll walk through the practical mechanics of making that shift.
What you’ll learn
- How to identify which analysts and reports will support and carry your narrative.
- When to start seeding your message ahead of a launch, and how to pitch research that doesn’t exist yet.
- A planning approach that makes “no” a defensible business decision, sized to your own team and budget.
Jen Borun
Senior Director of Analyst Relations & Strategic Engagement @ Cornerstone OnDemand
Breakout Session 1B
Working with Insights: How does AR become part of the organization's decision-making process?
More details TBA!
Joyce Tompsett
Analyst & Founder @ Skymind Collective
Breakout Session: Working with Insights - How Does AR Become Part of the Organization's Decision-Making Process?
AR teams have never had more access to analyst insight, yet executives still say they lack the market perspective they need. How can both be true? In this interactive workshop, Joyce Tompsett starts from a simple premise: the challenge isn’t collecting better insights, it’s becoming a trusted interpreter of what matters. Working alongside peers at your table, you’ll unpack real moments when an executive changed their thinking based on external input. You’ll look at what made the insight credible, what AR did beyond forwarding it, and what would have been lost without AR involved.
What you’ll learn
- What makes executives trust one piece of external information enough to change their minds, and why other insights get ignored.
- The behaviors, drawn from your peers’ real-world wins, that separate AR as a decision-making partner from AR as an information conduit.
- A clearer articulation of the value you want your leadership team to associate with AR.
Breakout Session 2B
More details TBA!
Evening Reception
Mingle, network, and unwind while enjoying hearty appetizers and drinks, featuring a full bar with signature cocktails, wine and beer.
Day 2 Sessions
Get to know the our new CEO
Anthony Tuffile
Chief Executive Officer, ARInsights
Crystal Golightly
Co-Founder and Host, The Influence Gap Podcast
Building Trusted Voices for the Moments that Matter
Analysts are some of the most trusted voices in the market. When they’re working from outdated information or partial context, the market’s picture of your organization drifts with them. In this session, Sarah Robin shares how The Trade Desk treats analyst engagement as an ongoing discipline rather than a checkbox. She uses a real example of an analyst helping reshape a critical partner pitch. Her argument is that trust with analysts is built steadily and deliberately, well before you need it. When a launch, market shift, or competitive threat arrives, your analysts should already have the context and confidence to represent you accurately.
What you’ll learn
- How to connect individual briefings into a deliberate engagement strategy tied to each analyst’s research, so your story lands and sticks.
- Why being open about your challenges, and valuing analysts’ expertise rather than just their coverage, builds more credibility than a polished narrative.
- How listening builds trust too: reading research closely, investing in face time outside paid engagements, and giving key analysts a platform of their own.
Sarah Robin
Head of Analyst Relations @ The Trade Desk
Fireside Chat: Leading Means Getting In Front of "Not This Time"
Every successful AR leader eventually gets the ask that can’t be met. In this fireside chat, Cathy Mullaney of Verizon shares how she turns those moments into relationship-building conversations by making “no” the last step in a deliberate process rather than a first response. Drawing on current examples of company needs outpacing AR’s capacity, Cathy explains how a clear North Star, a foundation of trust, and viable alternatives help her earn appreciative disappointment instead of frustration. The conversation also explores how technology can extend AR’s reach to executives and analysts when time and headcount can’t. This session is ideal for AR leaders making hard resource-allocation decisions that affect important stakeholders.
What you’ll learn:
- How to define where your resources end, before the ask arrives
- Why following through on small promises earns you room to decline big ones
- How to point stakeholders to viable alternatives, including technology, when AR isn’t the answer
Cathy Mullaney
Senior Director / Head of Analyst Relations @ Verizon
Why the "R" in AR is even more important in the AI Era
With so much attention on making AR more efficient with AI, have we lost sight of the human relationships at the heart of the work? In this session, Alyssa Stone explores the constant balancing act between the real benefits AI brings to AR and the things it can’t replace: personal connection, human insight, and trust-building. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of where AI earns its place in your program and where the relationship itself has to lead.
What you’ll learn
- Where AI genuinely adds value to AR workflows, and where it risks eroding relationships.
- Why human-to-human connection matters more, not less, as both analysts and vendors adopt AI.
- Ways to protect and invest in the “relations” side of AR while still gaining efficiency.
*This abstract was written by a human, not AI 😉
Alyssa Stone
Head of Analyst Relations @ Wiz
Crying Cutting Onions: Peeling Back the Layers of Gartner Peer Insights
What’s the single biggest factor influencing an online review rating? (Spoiler: It’s probably making your AR team tear up.). We sliced and diced thousands of Gartner Peer Insights (GPI) reviews across dozens of categories to get to the root of how the system really works.
Join us as we peel back the layers on:
- Eye-watering layers of nuance: Potential structural cracks in the GPI and Voice of the Customer (VOC) methodology.
- How we chopped the data: The process we used to analyze thousands of reviews without losing our sanity.
- Applying heat: How we took these findings to Gartner to push for real fixes.
- Why these insights matter for every team trying to navigate review platforms without getting burned.
Chris Burrell
Director of Analyst Relations @ Zscaler
Selina Koenig
Director of Content & Operations @ Zscaler
Information Flows in the Age of Analyst AI: Implications for Analyst Relations
AI is changing how information moves through the analyst ecosystem. Analyst firms are introducing a second audience for AR content: AI systems that ingest, interpret, and surface vendor information for analysts and their clients. Carter Lusher draws on new Lusher Advisory research with analyst firms and the AR community to examine three questions: how vendor information enters these AI-enabled workflows, what determines whether it’s represented accurately, and how AR programs need to evolve in response.
What you’ll learn
- How analyst firms are using AI to ingest and surface vendor information, based on new research.
- The factors that determine whether your information is accurately represented in AI-enabled workflows.
- Emerging best practices for adapting your AR program to a changing information environment.
Carter Lusher
Founder & Principal Analyst @ Lusher Advisory
When Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is: How AEO Is Reshaping Analyst Relations Prioritization
Cheri Hulse
Head of Market Insights & Analyst Relations @ Zoom
The analyst landscape is more crowded than ever. New firms, new report types, and the rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) have changed how buyers discover and shortlist vendors long before they talk to sales. In this session, Cheri Hulse shares how Zoom’s AR team of four and a half rebuilt its prioritization model from the ground up. The team now uses AEO impact as a core signal for deciding which analyst relationships deserve the most investment. You’ll see how a lean team moved beyond legacy tier lists and gut instinct to a data-driven framework that connects analyst influence to how buyers actually find you.
What you’ll learn
- A practical framework that layers AEO influence, social reach, and content velocity onto traditional analyst tiering, so you can defend where you spend your time with data.
- Why some independent analysts now rival Tier 1 firms in AEO impact, and how to evaluate and invest in those relationships.
- How to use forcing functions like major events as natural moments to revisit your tiers and build AEO into that rhythm.
Wrap-Up
Shannon du Pont
Senior Account Manager @ ARInsights
About ARInsights
ARInsights is the provider of expert services and the leading platform for analyst relations professionals, trusted by hundreds of companies worldwide to guide their AR journey and drive strategic impact.
Our ARchitect platform helps AR teams manage relationships, measure impact, and demonstrate ROI through intelligent automation and proven methodologies. But we’re more than a consultancy and a software company—we’re part of the AR community, built by practitioners who understand the unique challenges you face every day.
AR Engage Live represents our commitment to fostering connections, sharing knowledge, and advancing the entire analyst relations profession.
