2025-2026 Dates and Fees

Leadership 20

The ACG Denver Leadership 20 2024-2025 Program runs from September 2025 through April 2026. There are eight (8) class sessions, and graduation from the program will take place at the last session.

2024-2025 Program Dates: September 16, 2025 - April 21, 2026
Class will meet once a month for 8 months.

September 16, 2025: 1-4 pm/ Welcome Reception 4:15 – 5:30 pm

Introduction and Achieving Excellence

Dirk Dykson

After an early career in corporate finance with Fortune 100 companies, Dirk spent a decade in sales, marketing, and organizational performance leadership roles with global and national scope. During his 18-year career with Hewlett-Packard, Dirk led a turnaround of HP's iconic Calculator business, doubling global revenue in 18 months and eliminating 85% of channel inventory. He gained extensive global experience in sales, marketing, finance, strategy, general management, customer service, manufacturing, and distribution.

Dirk is an expert CEO/executive coach, Gallup certified Strengths™ coach, certified Value Builder™, sales/marketing ninja, and leadership workshop facilitator. With deep experience in technology, Saas, manufacturing, healthcare, education, and financial services, Dirk specializes in clarifying strategy, building healthy, high-performing teams, identifying processes to enable scale, and developing the next generation of leaders.

October 21, 2025: 9:00 – 12 noon

Navigating the Storm: How to Lead Through Conflict

Lisa Smith

Managing Conflict offers vital strategies for fostering trust, understanding conflict management techniques, and recognizing the constructive potential of conflict. As a natural element of the workplace, participants will learn to identify early signs of conflict, apply resolution strategies, and encourage an environment where conflict fuels innovation. The course empowers leaders and teams to transform conflict into a catalyst for success.

November 11, 2025: 9:00 – 12 noon

Conversational Intelligence - The Impact of Your Words

Stephanie Wachman

Stephanie Wachman, CEO and Founder of Symetree Strategies is an international speaker, author, Fortune 500 executive coach and strategist who works with organizations and firms to create more efficient work environments through her coaching, training, and consulting services. She
is a recognized voice and a thought leader in the areas of business development, firm strategy, productivity and stress management. Her approach to managing time, stress, energy, and distractions produces tangible results for those struggling to make the most of their work and personal lives. Stephanie is the author of OWN your Time, a guide to managing distractions and improving productivity and Sell without being Salesy, a practical model for how to build your business by developing high-quality authentic relationships, which ranked on Amazon as one of the top 30 business books.

Symetree Strategies provides business development, leadership coaching from the perspective of neuroscience and time management training to service firms globally. Stephanie is also the founder of BASE TRAINING a live online business development training program for professional services providers.

Stephanie has been featured on 9News Denver and The Entrepreneur Pros Radio show on 560AM Denver, LawSome Podcast and published in ColoBiz and 5280 Magazine.
She was born in Montreal, Quebec Canada where she received her BA in Communications from McGill University and is past-president of the International Coach Federation, Colorado Chapter. She has coaching certifications from the Coach Training Alliance , iSEI (Emotional Intelligence) The Neuroscience of Change, Conversational lntelligence™(CI-Q) and Positive Intelligence.
She lives in Denver with her husband and two sons and enjoys outdoor activities and travel.

December 9, 2025: 9:00 – 12 noon

Business Culture

Mike Tafoya & Bill Shepard

Mike has spent over forty years as an entrepreneur. Purchasing his first retail glass company in 1977, he went on to own a successful commercial glass contracting company and then entered the business coaching arena. Mike has a broad business background with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Business Management and four decades running his own successful businesses. Mike’s specialties are aligning strategy and culture with larger family businesses. With Mike’s experience in sales leadership and finance, he loves to help his clients grow revenue and profits. In the last decade, Mike has transformed his coaching franchise into one of Denver’s leading business strategic consulting companies. Mike is passionate about his family, faith, and the great outdoors.

Bill Shepard brings a wealth of business leadership experience to his clients at Portocol Business Strategies, a Denver-area management development and consulting firm. Bill's professional focus
is singular: To help his clients achieve peak performance at all levels of management, so their businesses become among the most successful in our community.

In his career, Bill has worked directly with C-level leaders in Fortune 500, small/medium-sized business, and entrepreneurial environments as an accomplished executive, project leader, and team builder in numerous high-visibility undertakings in transportation, logistics, telecommunications, and information technology enterprises.

Bill is currently an active member of ACG Denver, where he served six years as a board member and Program Chair. Bill holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, and MBA, both from the University of Denver.

January 13, 2026: 9:00 – 12 noon

Spiral Method

Leslie Jones

A lifelong learner and entrepreneur, Leslie has started numerous businesses in her 25-year career – all based on a blend of interactive community practices that lead to personal transformation and sustainable, systemic change. Leslie is a master at uncovering the obstacles that prevent entrepreneurs, medium-size businesses, and Fortune 500 companies from performing at their peak.
As an executive coach, Leslie has had a significant impact on the lives and profitability of Fortune 500 executives, multimillion-dollar sales producers, business owners, and international innovators.

She has developed proven systems that resolve issues and create dramatic, long-term, sustainable results reliably for her clients.

Leslie has worked with thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations, including some of the most successful businesses in the world:
Microsoft, Starbucks, Wells Fargo, US Bank, Merrill Lynch, Xfinity/Comcast, Smith Barney, Wachovia, Vistage, Money Concepts, AXA Advisors

February 2026: 9:00 – 12 noon

Calm Confident Leadership

Jenae Anderson

Jenae Anderson leads the effort to expand the middle market and business banking presence of Comerica Bank in Colorado and is responsible for Comerica’s community development efforts in the state.

Jenae is a certified professional coach specializing in leadership. She has been active for several years in DEI efforts and leading Women’s groups. Jenae is currently a member of the DEI Education Council for Comerica and sits on the boards of ACG Denver and Illuminate Colorado.

Anderson holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Eastern Michigan University, a Bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University, an Executive Presence certification from Cornell and several professional executive and leadership coaching certifications from IPEC.

March 10, 2026: 9:00 – 12 noon

AI Age or Future Proofing

Josh Allan Dykstra

Josh Allan Dykstra is a futurist pioneering the field of Future Design™, helping leaders transform from tomorrow's passengers into architects of the future they want to build.

Drawing on his journey from small-town outsider to rockstar to tech CEO to futurist, Josh reveals how the same creative audacity that builds legendary artists can architect amazing futures for everyone. His unique background offers a refreshing perspective on transformation, inspiring influential leaders to fall in love with tomorrow again and helping them dare to design what's next.

Over the past two decades, Josh has served a client list of companies (Microsoft, Sony, Genentech, CHANEL, Amazon, and more) that collectively employ over a million people. Josh is the founder and CEO of The Work Revolution, and his articles and ideas have been featured by Fast Company, Forbes, and The Huffington Post. He holds an MBA in Executive Leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his book, Igniting the Invisible Tribe: Designing An Organization That Doesn't Suck, is available on Amazon and Audibl

April 2026: 1-4 pm/Graduation Reception 4:15 – 5:30 pm

Accountability: How to Create an Ownership Mindset

Alecia Huck, MAVERICK & Company

Alecia is an organizational development consultant with a wide range of fields from human behavior to linguistic theory to process science. She specializes in providing high-value, pragmatic solutions to complex organizational problems and has extensive experience helping fast growing companies build critical infrastructure and high performing teams as they grow and helping teams quickly resolve and recover from major conflict.

She founded MAVERICK & Company in 2004, a small but feisty consulting firm based in Denver, CO that works with a wide range of industries including, retail, construction, manufacturing, professional services, and the criminal justice system.