Project Management in Practice Conference 2026

The 20th Annual Project Management in Practice Conference (PMiP 2026), hosted by Boston University, will be a pivotal gathering for the project management field. This in-person event will take place at the Metropolitan College in Boston, USA, on October 30–31 and is designed for project managers and professionals from across the United States.

The conference theme, ‘From Classroom to Practice: 20 Years of Advancing Project Leadership,’ emphasizes innovation, transformation, adaptability and resilience in an ever-evolving environment.

In a shift from its traditional summer schedule, the organizers have moved the event to October to optimize student involvement and spotlight academic excellence. The Project Management in Practice Conference 2026 will run alongside the 4th Annual AI in Project Management Conference, exploring new tools, technologies and methodologies.

Opening Keynote

Sara Gallagher, president of the Persimmon Group, will offer the keynote, ‘AI and the PMO: Simple vs Complex’. She will explain how AI is reshaping the PMO and redefining the modern project manager’s role. Her keynote will focus on four areas:

Categorizing Work for AI: Separating project tasks into simple, complicated and complex categories. Emphasizing that simple and select complicated tasks offer the most practical opportunities for AI adoption today, while complex tasks still require deep human judgment.
The Evolution of the PMO: Moving away from rigid, traditional standardization toward an AI-accelerated model.
AI Agents and Workflow: A future where project managers utilize AI agents to draft status reports and simulate steering committee feedback, allowing the PMO to pivot its focus toward coaching stakeholder management and risk practices.
Shifting PM Roles: How the automation of routine coordination tasks by AI means organizations will place a much higher premium on project managers with strong business knowledge, strategic judgment and long-term accountability.

Closing Keynote

Karim Teli, CEO of IGLOO Pakistan, will offer the closing keynote address, ‘Lessons from the Vanguard Forum: Bridging Education and Industry’. He will discuss how universities can better prepare project managers for market realities and how businesses can leverage academic frameworks to optimize their operations. He will also share how project and business transformation can drive growth.

Organizations should adopt Generative AI & Tech Innovation by managing disruption and implementing emerging technologies within traditional business models. He will also reveal how organizations should embrace sustainability in project execution by implementing lean, long-term sustainable practices in fast-moving industries.

Tracks

Lisa DiTullio is the founder of Project Chalk Talk and Row Forward. Lisa will present ‘The Future of Project Management and Project Leadership’. Lisa will discuss how leadership is moving away from traditional command-and-control management models to a coaching mindset.

Lisa will explain how project managers can successfully stretch, develop and empower team members to boost overall performance without sacrificing day-to-day deliverables. Lisa will share practical strategies on building strong team engagement, resolving conflict and fostering psychological safety to achieve results.

She will reveal how managers can navigate complexity by making sound decisions and providing clear direction when the path forward is ambiguous or highly disruptive.

Finally, Lisa will focus on rapid technological change, particularly AI, revealing the need for leaders to cultivate presence, confidence and an innovative mindset to keep their teams.

Dr Justin Lester will present ‘AI and Human Digital Twins’ via Zoom. Dr Justin Lester will reveal how he built his own AI digital twin, explaining how he trained his AI agent using years of text, audio and book data to simulate voice and video conversations. Dr Justin Lester will discuss 3 key areas:

Data Ingestion & Training Lifecycles: How to manage large unstructured datasets, speeches and written content to build an accurate persona.
Resource Optimization & Multi-Channel Scaling: Utilizing a digital twin to scale a single leader’s availability, allowing text, phone and video engagement 24/7 without burning out human capital.
Risk & Trust Frameworks: Managing the ethical implications, security considerations and quality control of deploying public-facing AI agents.

Jennifer Christopher is an aerospace engineer and project manager at NASA. Jennifer will present ‘The Project Manager’s Real Job: Becoming the Chief Integrator’. Jennifer will explain how the project manager’s role is changing from basic coordination to high-level system and team integration.

The role should break down silos and move beyond tracking tasks and timelines to actively connecting cross-functional teams and technical disciplines. Jennifer will reveal that by introducing system-wide thinking, all separate components of a complex project will fit together seamlessly, similar to how diverse systems integrate on space missions.

Finally, Jennifer will explain that by introducing a ‘Chief Integrator Mindset’, the project manager’s responsibility will shift to communication, strategic alignment and big-picture problem-solving rather than administrative management.

Rich Maltzman is a Master Lecturer at Boston University. Rich will present ‘The Human Superior Power: Systems and Critical Thinking’. Rich will focus on how to integrate critical thinking into the evolution of modern project leadership.

Critical thinking is an essential ‘power skill’ required to navigate complex organizational structures, sustainable development and emerging technologies. Rich will reveal that traditional project management focuses too narrowly on execution processes (the how, the schedule and the strict budget boundaries). Critical thinking requires a shift toward a value-oriented leadership mindset by constantly challenging the baseline with the question: ‘Why are we doing this?’

Rich will highlight critical thinking as AI reshapes the workplace, using the human differentiator. Rich recommends that project managers avoid using technology as a cognitive crutch and approach AI outputs with an open but sceptical mind, treating its data as suggestions or a conversational peer rather than definitive, absolute truth.

Star Dargin is CEO of Star Leadership LLC. Star will present ‘You Can’t Move Up Until You Look Up: What 20+ Years of Executive Coaching Can Teach Project Leaders’.

Star will explain how Project Leaders should shift their roles from project execution to project strategy by moving past daily task management (‘looking down’) to focus on high-level business goals, stakeholder alignment and long-term vision (‘looking up’).

Star will share critical patterns and blind spots that executive coaching reveals, specifically what holds technically skilled project managers back from advancing into executive or director-level roles.

Finally, based on her coaching data, Star will provide practical frameworks project leaders can implement immediately to raise their internal profile.

Registration Details

Ticket Type	Cost
In-person and virtual	$ 135.23
Virtual	$76.54

All ticket purchasers will have access to recordings and proceedings after the event.

To register, click here

Summary

PMiP 2026 leans toward academia, with many professional speakers either currently attached to Boston University or part of the alumni.

Attendees can expect to learn how to leverage advanced technologies such as Digital Twins and Cyber-physical Systems. Leadership and team dynamics in a hybrid work environment will also be key discussion points, with a focus on fostering diverse perspectives and psychological safety in project teams.