Tugboat Institute® member Ashli Desai is President of Larry Walker Associates, an environmental engineering firm focused on water quality management. After founder Larry Walker’s departure, the company remained family-owned but was led by non-family executives. This divide between ownership and leadership created challenges in communication and alignment among the family, leadership, and employees.

In this Summit 2025 talk, Ashli tells her story of bridging leadership gaps, crafting a unified, shared vision for the future that brought all stakeholders together.

Watch and be inspired to think about how you might strengthen alignment in your own organization.

In business as in life, longevity often invites assumptions. When we hear about a company that has thrived for over a century, it’s easy to picture a large, slow-moving, and rigid organization. But surviving, and thriving, across generations requires quite the opposite: adaptability, agility, and a willingness to evolve.

Jayne Millard embodies this mindset as the fourth-generation leader of Turtle & Hughes, a family-run electrical and industrial distributor. Rather than resting on tradition, Jayne and her team are embracing innovation by focusing on sustainability and partnering with startups to stay ahead of industry trends. In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Jayne shares the rich history of Turtle & Hughes alongside her own unconventional personal journey, one that fuels her courage and inspires her leadership today.

Watch and discover how enduring businesses stay relevant by blending heritage with forward-thinking action.

Business leaders often rely on rules of thumb, simple tools designed to guide decisions in complex environments. But when followed too rigidly, even the most trusted rules can create blind spots. In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Dave Whorton explores this tension and offers a fresh perspective on how Evergreen® leaders might think differently.

Dave is the founder and CEO of Tugboat Institute and the author of Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last. Drawing on decades of experience, he challenges widely accepted misconceptions about growth and encourages Evergreen leaders to embrace the courage, patience, and discipline required to build enduring businesses.

Listen and be inspired to rethink familiar formulas and to lead with intention and imagination.