FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CEO Update Launches Executive Advisory Councils, Bringing Year-Round Cohorts to Association Leaders
New virtual, small-group councils extend the CEO Update Roundtable experience beyond the in-person calendar, powered by a partnership with peer-learning platform RallyBoard.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — September 8, 2026 — CEO Update, the premier news and executive convening platform for association and nonprofit leaders, today announced the launch of its Executive Advisory Councils: confidential, small-group virtual cohorts that give members of the CEO Update Roundtables structured peer counsel throughout the year. The councils are powered through a new partnership with RallyBoard, a peer-learning and community platform purpose-built for associations.

The CEO Update Roundtables have long given association leaders something the market rarely offers: a vetted, confidential room of true peers. Executive Advisory Councils extend that room into the space between convenings. Rather than waiting for the next in-person meeting to test a board strategy, a reorganization, a dues model, or an AI decision, members will now sit in a consistent virtual group of 10 to 15 peers matched to their context and meeting on a regular cadence.

What members get
Executive Advisory Councils are designed around how executives actually make decisions — in small, trusted groups, on real problems, with people who have already faced them.

Members are matched deliberately. Rather than open-forum networking, CEO Update pairs executives by organization type (trade association or professional society), revenue band and industry, so that every conversation starts from shared context. Each council operates under a confidentiality expectation, with a facilitated agenda that puts members’ live challenges at the center rather than a speaker at the front of the room.

The councils will roll out across all three CEO Update peer groups — the Association CEO Roundtable, the Association COO Roundtable and the Association CCO Roundtable — with the first councils convening this fall. At launch, participation is available exclusively to current Roundtable members, by application, preserving the vetting that members have come to expect.

The councils also answer a request CEO Update has heard consistently from its own advisory board of association leaders: chief executives want the peer-learning experience available not only to themselves, but to the senior leaders around them — the COOs, communications chiefs and other executives carrying enterprise-level decisions.

Why RallyBoard
CEO Update selected RallyBoard after evaluating how the platform is already being used inside some of the most respected associations in the country.

Most association community platforms were built for open forums: large membership directories, discussion boards, and content libraries where participation is optional and uneven. RallyBoard was built for the opposite. It powers personalized member cohorts, handling the matching, scheduling, facilitation support, and engagement measurement that have historically made cohort programs expensive and difficult for association staff to run at scale. Since inception, RallyBoard has worked with leading organizations including the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), AIIM, and INFORMS.

That operational backbone is what makes the councils viable as a durable member benefit rather than a pilot that strains a small team. It also gives CEO Update the data to see which conversations are landing and where participants need more support.

“Our CEO Update Roundtables have always been built on a simple but powerful idea: association leaders make better decisions when they can speak candidly with peers who truly understand the stakes,” said Brittany Carter, CEO of CEO Update. “Executive Advisory Councils bring that trusted counsel into the moments between our in-person convenings when a CEO or senior leader is weighing a difficult board issue, organizational change, growth decision, or emerging technology question. With RallyBoard, we can scale that experience through consistent, thoughtfully matched, year-round conversations while preserving the confidentiality and caliber our members expect.”

"RallyBoard was inspired by my own formative experience in an executive mastermind group," said Jackson Boyar, Co-Founder and CEO of RallyBoard. "At a time when professionals are inundated with AI-generated content and finely tuned social algorithms, CEO Update's Roundtables offer something genuinely unique to the association community. We are thrilled to play a role in the launch of the Executive Advisory Councils."

Availability
Sign-ups for the inaugural Executive Advisory Councils go live in August 2026, open exclusively to current members of the CEO Update Roundtable, the Association COO Roundtable and the Association CCO Roundtable. Members will receive application details directly from CEO Update. Association executives who are not yet Roundtable members can learn more about joining at ceoupdate.com/roundtables.

About CEO Update
CEO Update is the trusted source of news, intelligence, and executive peer connection for association CEOs and senior leaders. Through essential reporting, executive data, live events, and executive forums, CEO Update helps leaders navigate the high-stakes decisions shaping their organizations—from strategy, governance, and financial resilience to talent, advocacy, innovation, and member value. CEO Update is part of CBIS’s family of mission-driven brands serving association and nonprofit leaders. Learn more at ceoupdate.com. 

About RallyBoard
RallyBoard is a peer learning and community platform built for associations. RallyBoard handles the matching, scheduling, facilitation, and engagement insights behind small-group member cohorts. Where traditional online community software optimizes for open forums, RallyBoard optimizes for the small, matched groups that sustain year-round engagement. Founded in 2024, RallyBoard was co-developed with leading associations like Project Management Institute and HFMA. Learn more at rallyboard.com. 

Media Contacts
CEO Update / Columbia Books & Information Services
Erin Murphy, VP of Marketing · emurphy@columbiabooks.com

RallyBoard
Jackson Boyar, Co-Founder and CEO · jackson@rallyboard.com