Two decades ago, the American Council of Engineering Companies’ annual convention looked more like an old-style wedding than an event from the hard-edged trade association and smoothly running lobbying machine the ACEC is today. Back in the day, the convention consisted of the organization’s volunteer leadership dressed in tuxedos on stage with their wives—who also held organizational positions—“while the rest of the members sat in the audience; it was the strangest thing,” recalls David A. Raymond, who retired in July as ACEC’s president and chief executive after 20 years of service. Despite holding demanding senior positions at engineering firms, the volunteer leaders controlled all aspects of ACEC. For example, the treasurer “dictated to the staffers how the books should be kept,” Raymond says. “We cleared all that out. We just bulldozed all these vestiges of some earlier day that was no longer the way a modern business association should function.”
Raymond set out to turn what he calls the de facto “social club” into a “hard-hitting fighting group on the legislative front.” He started by elevating existing staffers from “note takers and arrangers of tea and coffee” to leadership roles. He compensated them accordingly, too.