The Fifty-Year Career Journey

A Longitudinal Model for Membership, Professional Development, and Networking

When: October 7, 2025 | 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm ET
Where: Virtual Webinar
Rates:

• $45 for Members
• $75 for Non-members 

CAE Hours: 1 CAE Hour

Facilitated by:
James Young

Register Now

About this Webinar

The world is undergoing enormous change and most career models are rigid and traditional. The new career is no longer linear and predictable. It’s about engaging deeply with peers, building new capabilities, and operating as a perpetual learner. As leading associations, we have an opportunity to own the fifty years of a member’s career lifecycle.

The Fifty-Year Career Journey is a comprehensive, association-centric approach to professional development that spans an individual's entire working life, from entry-level positions at approximately age 22 through senior leadership and legacy-building roles at approximately age 72. Rather than treating career development as a series of disconnected events or spotty benefits, this model positions the association as the central orchestrator of professional growth, creating interconnected pathways that evolve with members' changing needs, expertise levels, and career aspirations.

The model recognizes that professionals don't simply consume career development resources, they actively participate in a dynamic ecosystem where they simultaneously learn, contribute, and invest in others. This creates a virtuous cycle where each career stage builds upon previous experiences while laying groundwork for future contributions, ensuring the association becomes truly indispensable to its members' professional success.

Longitudinal design is, ironically, a commitment to agility, idea testing, member engagement, and an investment in capabilities. This will push us to think beyond events, publications, membership, and volunteer management. Our new umbrella capability is designing, creating, sustaining, and managing journeys.

The Fifty-Year Career Journey is not a fixed model; the magic emerges as we as association professionals need to up our game and think, act, and behave differently. We need to be ahead of the curve motivating and pulling our members into new landscapes. This alone prepares us to design for readiness. This has implications for: who and how we serve, how we design and implement engagement, and how we create and scaffold knowledge, and how we build indispensable community.

Designing for fifty years isn’t a luxury. It’s our space for the taking.

What You Will Learn

• Identify and describe the need for a longitudinal model of practice for members' careers.
• Describe and explain the stages of a member career focusing on consumption, contribution, and community building.
• Address practical applications for using the model in one's association.

Questions? Call 317-328-4636 or email [email protected] 

ISAE is a CAE Registered Provider. The program(s) linked above meet the requirements for fulfilling the professional development requirements to earn or maintain the Certified Association Executive credential. Every program that we offer that has been approved for CAE credit will clearly identify the number of CAE credits granted for full participation. We will maintain records of your participation in accordance with CAE policies. For more information about the CAE credential or Registered Provider program, please visit www.asaecenter.org/cae.