June 14-16, 2027 · Charlotte, North Carolina
Collegiate Recreation
Leadership Exchange
Leading People. Building Teams. Creating Impact.
Presented by Matrix
Three days to step away from the day-to-day and invest in yourself, alongside a cohort wrestling with the same questions you are.
The Exchange
The job changes before the title does
Somewhere between running programs and running a department, the job changes. You stop being the person who does the work and start being the person responsible for people who do.
Nobody hands you a manual for that. You can supervise students well for years and still find the jump to professional staff genuinely disorienting, because the tools are different and almost nobody says so out loud.
The Collegiate Recreation Leadership Exchange was built for exactly that stretch of a career. Three days, one small cohort, and a group of coaches who will tell you what they learned the hard way. You will leave with tools you can use the week you get back, and with a group of people you can call the next time something hard lands on your desk.
The arc is simple. You arrive supervising. You leave leading. From transactional to transformational.
What You Work On
Leading People. Building Teams. Creating Impact.
Three threads run through the whole experience. They are also the three things your department will notice when you get home.
One
Leading People
Setting expectations people can actually act on. Giving feedback while it still matters instead of saving it for the annual review. Naming a performance problem early, clearly, and without dreading it for three weeks first.
Two
Building Teams
Adapting how you lead to the person in front of you, and to the group as a whole. Building a staff where people cover for each other rather than compete, where the standard holds when you are not in the room, and where holding someone accountable does not cost you their trust.
Three
Creating Impact
Reading organizational dynamics instead of being surprised by them. Building leadership capacity in other people. Thriving in a job that asks a great deal of you, rather than grinding through it.
Who It Is For
Built for a specific moment in a career
Assistant Directors, Associate Directors, and other mid-level professionals in collegiate recreation and wellness.
This is for you if
- You are two to five years in and supervising professional staff for the first time
- You are about to be, and would rather learn it before you need it
- You have your eye on Assistant Director, Associate Director, or beyond
- You are navigating a difficult supervisor, a difficult direct report, or both
- You are the only person at your stage in your department, and it gets lonely
A few things it is not
- Not a conference. No exhibit hall, no concurrent tracks, no choosing between four sessions and hoping you guessed right.
- Not about supervising students. You have that handled. This is about the harder jump to leading full-time professionals.
- Not a lecture series. You will spend most of three days in a small group, talking, working through real situations.
- Not a beginner course. You are treated as a capable professional who is ready to grow, not someone who needs the basics explained.
Need to make the case to your supervisor?
Copy this into your request:
I would like to attend the Collegiate Recreation Leadership Exchange, June 14 to 16, 2027, at the Hyatt House Charlotte/Center City in Charlotte, North Carolina. Registration starts at $495 and includes all educational sessions and coaching across the three days, the welcome reception and dinner, lunch on both full days, breaks, and all materials. It is an intentionally small cohort built around facilitated conversation and case work rather than lectures, and it is focused specifically on supervising and developing full-time professional staff rather than student employees, which is the part of my role I have had the least formal preparation for. The coaching team is made up of current directors from institutions across North America. I will come back with a written action plan for our area and a network of colleagues at my stage that I can keep calling on.
The Three Days
Three days, one room, one group
You will spend most of it in small groups. Sessions are facilitated conversation, case work, coaching practice, and reflection rather than lecture.
Monday, June 14
Arrive, and meet the room
Check-in opens at 4:00 PM, followed by the opening session and a welcome reception and dinner. You will know everyone's name by the end of the night, which is rather the point.
Tuesday, June 15
One room, one full day
A full day of engagement together, morning and afternoon, with lunch and breaks as a group. This is the day most people end up talking about afterward. The evening stays with the group.
Wednesday, June 16
Turn it into something you will actually do
A full morning and early afternoon, closing with the action plan you take back to your institution. Content ends at 4:00 PM.
Your Coaches
People who have already made the mistakes
We call them coaches on purpose. They are not presenting for an hour and catching a flight. They are in the room with you, at the tables, in the conversations, and at dinner.
Larry Mellinger
Twenty-five years in collegiate recreation across six institutions. Larry leads a comprehensive department at UNC Charlotte and co-chairs a campus-wide wellness initiative. He is also a doctoral student researching early career competency development for higher education professionals, which is another way of saying he has spent years studying the exact gap this cohort is standing in. Within NIRSA he has served as president of the Foundation Board of Directors and faculty chair of the School of Collegiate Recreation. What he most wants to help with: balancing the structural and relational sides of leadership so individuals perform and teams hold together.
Supervision is not about having all the answers. It is about asking the right questions that help people unlock their potential and stretch their limits.
Jenny Larson
Twelve years in collegiate recreation, wellness, and staff and student development across four institutions. Jenny leads a holistic approach to wellness for students and the broader Wake Forest community. She is a trained Co-Active coach who has facilitated early career leadership experiences, served as faculty for the NIRSA School for Early Career Professionals, and, while at Elon, co-chaired the team that created an eleven month cohort experience for mid-level professionals across the university. She is a Horace Moody Award recipient, a four-time NIRSA Service Award recipient, and co-author of NIRSA Essentials: Student Development and Training. What she most wants to help with: building a network you can keep calling on long after the three days end.
You aren't going to get it right every time, but learn from every experience and invest in yourself as a supervisor.
Katie Burns
Twenty years in higher education, the last six in collegiate recreation, with earlier stops in clinical and adjunct faculty work, residence life, and outdoor programs. Katie is a doctoral student whose research treats collegiate recreation as a high-impact learning environment. She wrote Campus Recreation Essentials: Student Staff Training and Development, and within NIRSA she has served as a founding member of the Student Development Task Force, chair of the Bylaws Committee, and faculty for the NIRSA School. She is here to help you build a toolkit, on the theory that no single tool fits every situation and the more you carry the better your odds.
You have to be true to yourself. Lots of people can give you ideas on how to handle something, but if it isn't authentic to you, it won't work.
D.J. Preston
More than 15 years in collegiate recreation. D.J. leads student recreation and wellness at Radford and co-chairs the university's Health and Well-being Council. He is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in Educational Leadership. He has built a reputation for leading teams through change, earning trust quickly, and getting culture, strategy, and purpose pointed in the same direction. Within NIRSA he has served on the NIRSA Services Corporation Board and co-chaired the Emerging Recreational Sports Leaders Conference. His work has been recognized with the Juliette Moore Distinguished Leadership Award and a Montgomery County 40 Under 40. He wants to help you lead with clarity, confidence and purpose.
Things aren't always what they seem. Invest in the relationship and seek to understand before being understood.
Marc Iturriaga
More than 25 years of leadership across higher education, recreation, and community development, including leadership roles at four institutions. As Executive Director of the Genesis Centre, Marc oversaw a $120 million complex welcoming more than 1.6 million visitors a year in one of Calgary's most diverse communities. He holds a BA and an MA in Leadership, and within NIRSA he has served as faculty and as a subject matter expert for accreditation. He founded Bonobo Consulting around a single conviction: belonging in sport and recreation is built on purpose, never assumed. His starting point as a coach is that leadership is not about creating versions of ourselves.
Leading people is both the hardest and most rewarding part of the job. Like a garden, you are planting seeds and nurturing growth, and you often do not see the flourishing garden for years. But when it is in full bloom, it can be spectacular.
For Supervisors
You already know who on your team is ready
There is usually one person. Good at the work, newly responsible for people, and figuring it out alone because nobody built the thing that would help. This is that thing.
What comes back to your department
Not a feeling. Behavior you can watch for in the first month:
- Expectations set clearly enough that you stop re-explaining them
- Feedback given while it still matters, not banked for the annual review
- Performance conversations that start early instead of after the damage
- Delegation that develops somebody rather than just clearing a desk
- One more person on your staff who can carry a hard conversation without you in the room
Or nominate them yourself
Plenty of people never ask. They assume the budget is not there, or that it is not their turn yet, or that you have other priorities.
If you would rather tell them than wait for them to ask, put your name and theirs on the list below. We will send you both the details when registration opens on October 1.
Register
Premium experience, realistic price
High quality was never going to mean expensive. It was going to mean intentional. Rates are per person.
Early Bird
$495
Regular
$595
What registration includes
- All educational sessions and coaching across the full three days
- The Monday welcome reception and dinner
- Lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday, plus breaks throughout
- Hot breakfast daily, with your stay in the hotel block
- All materials, including the action plan you build on Wednesday
Registration closes May 14, 2027, and there is no late registration. With a cohort this size we cannot add people at the door, and we would rather tell you that now than in June.
Partners
In the room, not behind a table
A cohort this small does not have an exhibit hall, and it was never going to. Our partners are part of the experience: they sit at the tables, join the conversations, and in some cases lead them.
Title Partner
Leadership Experience Partners
Every Leadership Experience Partner is attached to a real moment in the three days: a meal, a session, an experience. The 2027 roster is full. If your organization wants meaningful time with the next generation of collegiate recreation leaders, we would like to hear from you about what comes next.
Where You'll Stay
Stay where it happens
The Hyatt House is both the host hotel and the venue, so there is no commute, no shuttle, and no scramble across town before an 8:30 start. Your room is upstairs from the sessions, and Uptown Charlotte begins at the front door.
Hot breakfast every morning and wifi in guest rooms and public spaces, for every overnight guest in the block.
Valet is the only option at the hotel, and the standard rate runs $45 to $55 per night. Cohort members pay $30 per night.
Room block cut-off: May 23, 2027, 5:00 PM ET
The City
A short flight from almost anywhere
Charlotte is a direct flight from most of North America, and a genuinely good place to spend three days. Walkable, full of food worth leaving the hotel for, and compact enough that you are never far from the people you came with.
Getting here is the easy part
Charlotte Douglas International is a major American Airlines hub with nonstop service to most of the United States and a good deal of Canada. In practice that means most of this cohort can fly direct from home. No connection in Atlanta, no 6:00 AM departure to make a 1:30 PM check-in.
From the airport the hotel is roughly fifteen minutes by car outside of rush hour. Charlotte traffic can stretch that, so build in a cushion. If you would rather drive, Charlotte sits at the crossroads of I-77 and I-85 and is within a day of a large share of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.
And you will not need a car once you are here
The Exchange happens entirely inside the hotel, and the hotel sits in Uptown Charlotte, the walkable center of the city. Dinner, coffee, a run, a museum, a ballgame: all of it is on foot from the front door.
The LYNX Blue Line runs from Uptown down into South End, a few minutes away, where most of the city's breweries and newer restaurants are clustered along the Rail Trail.
If you build in an extra evening
Right outside
Romare Bearden Park and Truist Field, where the Charlotte Knights play through the summer. A Triple-A game on a June evening is a very good way to spend three hours with people you just met.
Worth the walk
The NASCAR Hall of Fame, Discovery Place Science, and the Levine Center for the Arts, which puts the Mint Museum Uptown, the Bechtler, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center on one block.
One stop away
South End, for the breweries, the food halls, and the Rail Trail. It is the part of Charlotte people mean when they say the city has changed.
October 1, 2026
Be first in the room
The cohort is small, and the people already asking about it are not waiting around. Leave your name and we will email you the moment registration opens, with rates, the hotel booking link, and everything you need to get it approved.
We will not send spam, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Questions
The things people ask first
Do I have to be supervising professional staff already?
No. Plenty of the cohort will be preparing for it rather than doing it. If you are supervising students now and expect full-time reports within a year or two, you will get a lot out of being here before you need it.
How large is the cohort?
Capped at 50. The cap is the design, not a fire code. It is what makes it possible for every person in the room to get real time with the coaches, and for the conversations to get honest by Tuesday afternoon.
How is this different from a conference?
One room, one cohort, one continuous experience. No concurrent sessions to choose between, no exhibit hall, and coaches who are with the cohort throughout rather than presenting and leaving. You will finish knowing every person in the room.
What if my supervisor needs convincing?
There is a paste-ready paragraph in the supervisor section above. Copy it into your request. It covers the dates, the cost, what is included, and what you will bring back.
Is there a hotel block?
Yes, at the Hyatt House Charlotte/Center City, where the whole experience takes place. $165 per night plus tax, breakfast and wifi included, held until May 23, 2027. The booking link and group code are in the hotel section above, and booking your room is separate from registering for the Exchange.
Can I register late?
No. Registration closes 30 days out and there is no on-site option. Small cohorts require firm counts.
Leading people is hard. It is also worth getting good at.
Three days, one small cohort, and people you will still be calling in five years. June 14-16, 2027, in Charlotte. Registration opens October 1.
Leadership Exchange
Leading People. Building Teams. Creating Impact.
