Heartland Certified Public Manager® Annual Conference

2026 Conference Overview 

Public trust is not built through messaging alone—it is built through systems. In today’s fragmented, fast-moving, and often polarized communication environment, public sector leaders face a fundamental challenge: how to design communication approaches that not only inform, but also listen, connect, and sustain trust over time. 

The 2026 CPM Conference, Communication as Infrastructure: Rebuilding Trust in a Fragmented World, builds on last year’s focus on narrative leadership. If 2025 emphasized gathering to tell—using storytelling to uphold democratic values—this year shifts our focus to gathering to learn. As the National Academy of Public Administration stresses in its 12 Grand Challenges, public administrators must strive to “build our system’s capacity to meet complex public needs by broadly engaging the public, helping facilitate ongoing intergovernmental dialogues, providing flexibility, and encouraging innovation.” 

While much of this work happens in public-facing spaces, trust is also built—or undermined—internally. The ways teams communicate across silos, how information flows within organizations, and how employees are invited to share insight and feedback all shape an organization’s ability to serve the public effectively. Gathering to learn, therefore, applies not only to community engagement, but also to how we listen within our own teams and institutions. 

In an era where residents and employees alike receive information through diffuse networks, the idea of a single, unified audience has given way to many. Rebuilding trust requires new approaches: listening at scale, engaging authentically, and creating communication that people—both inside and outside government—find valuable enough to engage with. 

This conference will explore how public sector leaders can: 

• Design community engagement systems that prioritize listening, not just outreach;  
• Strengthen internal communication practices to better understand staff perspectives and improve organizational alignment; 
• Understand how residents and employees access and evaluate information in a fragmented landscape;  
• Develop communication approaches that earn attention, convey value, and build credibility; and 
• Navigate the risks and opportunities of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.  

Through keynote presentations, interactive sessions, and practitioner-led discussions, we will focus on actionable strategies that CPM participants and alumni can apply in their daily work—whether they serve in highly public-facing roles or primarily operate within their organizations.