The executive leadership team at Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) is honoring the promises it made to members during ACCA’s 2019 Optimize Conference: to make ACCA a better, more responsive organization focused on the needs of its members.
Sean Robertson is ACCA’s new Vice President of Membership and Business Operations, and Todd Washam has been named Vice President of Public Policy and Industry Relations.
Sean Robertson comes to ACCA with more than fifteen years of experience leading advocacy and member engagement efforts at the Alzheimer’s Association, the Land Trust Alliance, and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. In each role, he harnessed the power of peer-to-peer engagement, coordinated chapter networks, and personalized recognition to greatly scale up membership and advocacy engagement.
Robertson will oversee ACCA’s membership recruitment and member services, refocusing product development, business and technical training programs, contractor accreditation, and events to more directly serve the needs of ACCA member contractors.
Todd Washam, who has been with ACCA since 2016, previously served as director of industry and external relations. In this role, he managed ACCA’s state and intergovernmental relations activities and served as ACCA’s chief spokesperson. As vice president of public policy and industry relations, Washam will oversee ACCA’s public policy, political action campaigns, communications, and corporate programs.
Barton (Bart) James, ACCA president and CEO, said, “As part of ACCA’s strategic plan, we are realigning staff positions to ensure each member of our team is best positioned to serve ACCA members. ACCA will be focusing membership programs on building strong local and regional networks to ensure ACCA is closely connected to contractors in their communities. We are laser-focused on providing the resources, content, and personalized service that HVAC contractors need to be more productive, mitigate risk, and increase their bottom lines. 2019 is a year of change for ACCA and I’m excited to work with every member of our staff, our board of directors, and committee volunteers as we prepare ACCA to serve today’s and tomorrow’s contractors.”
The following committees now operate within ACCA:
Membership: Oversees government relations activities and member recruitment and retention efforts. Leader: Martin Hoover, Empire Heating & Air.
Member Services: Focuses on what offerings ACCA will provide to members. “If we have new affinity programs or training programs, the Member Services committee will serve as the vetting team for those programs,” Washam said, during an interview with Contracting Business. Chair: Steven Poppy, Poppy Services.
Products: Focused on ACCA technical services. This committee determines what new standards and manuals ACCA will need to develop. Chair: Rob Minnick, Minnick’s, Inc.
Partners: Focused on how to serve ACCA corporate partners and provide the benefits they need, as well as the recruitment of new corporate partners. Chair: Tim Cropp, Cropp-Metcalfe.
Events: Tasked with selecting locations for conferences, fall meetings, and how ACCA will branch out with more regional meetings, which members have said they want. They also submit other event ideas for ACCA leadership to review. Chair: Brian Stack, Stack Heating & Cooling.
Melissa Broadus has taken over ACCA’s committee structure, and now serves as committee liaison.
“Melissa is great with customer service and interactions with ACCA members, and she is doing a great job working with our volunteers on new programs at ACCA,” Washam said.
Committees meet once each month via conference calls or webcasts, and will meet in-person during a regional or national ACCA conference.
Washam said the call for more member volunteers has borne fruit, with increased offers to serve from members, but also non-member consultants from around the HVAC industry. The goal is to have just the right number of volunteers, so that meetings will be on-track and productive in a short amount of time.
Washam said ACCA is moving forward on the various elements of its 12-point Strategic Plan, as unveiled during the 2019 “Optimize” Conference.
“Right now, we’re growing our staff, to support that road map. We’re going to be launching new services, discount programs, increased MIX Group support, and revamping our corporate partner structure over the next six months. We’re investing money, time and staff into providing the daily support that our members and partners need from their trade association,” Washam said.
ACCA's “Next Level” leadership conference event will be held Nov. 5-6 in Dayton, Oh., followed by a Service Managers Forum, Nov. 7-8. Location and dates for the 2020 ACCA main conference is as yet undecided. Washam said it will feature the same high-quality Learning Labs and seminar presentations, but possibly a scaled down exhibit space. He said that is due to the fact that some manufacturers and vendors must ship a lot of product to fill up large exhibit spaces, which costs them a lot of money. ACCA wants to lead industry efforts to scale back on the number of competing events and focus on more collaboration He said ACCA has looked at co-locating the show with other organizations, but has not found the right partner that is committed to the best training programs, such as those ACCA provides.
“We are known for the quality of our Learning Labs. We hear from our members that many of the other conferences are vendor-led sales pitches, and that’s not acceptable to ACCA,” Washam said.
View ACCA’s updated staff organization directory at www.acca.org/about-acca/staff.