Practical AI: How Associations Are Putting It to Work

In the first episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare, Director of Partnerships at HighRoad Solutions and co-host of the Rethink Association Podcast, sits down with Lance Wiggins, CEO of the Automatic Transmission Rebuilders Association, and Layla Masri, Vice President of Customer and Product Intelligence, AI Strategy, and Adoption at Higher Logic, to explore how associations are using AI in meaningful and unexpected ways. Lance and Layla share their professional journeys and discuss how AI is being applied to real-world association challenges—from improving efficiency and reducing errors to strengthening member engagement. Lance highlights how AI tools have reshaped technical support and training within his organization, while Layla emphasizes the value of starting small and building confidence through early, impactful wins. The conversation also addresses the importance of using trusted platforms, like Higher Logic, to adopt AI securely and responsibly. Throughout the episode, the guests underscore how thoughtful AI implementation can free up staff time, improve service delivery, and deepen relationships with members. Check out the video podcast here: https://youtu.be/T_L5q9QcfDA This episode is sponsored by Higher Logic. Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.   Transcript Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to the inaugural episode of Associations NOW Presents Industry Partner series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, director of Partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot solutions and implementation partner, and your hosts of this series throughout the year. This episode today is sponsored by Higher Logic. Today we're excited to welcome Lance Wiggins, CEO of Automatic Transmission Rebuilds Association, and Layla Masri, VP of Customer and Product Intelligence, AI Strategy and Adoption at Higher Logic. Layla, Lance, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to be with us today. Lance Wiggins: Thanks for having me.  Sharon Pare: Well, before we dive in, I'd love for each of you to give a quick introduction for our listeners a little bit about who you are. The organizations you represent, and since we're talking about AI today, I wanna know, this is a little bit of an icebreaker here, but [00:01:00] what is one way professionally or personally that you've unexpectedly started using ai? Layla Masri: All right, so yeah. Thank you Layla Masri. So I am a new hire to Higher Logic, but come from a very deep association marketing background. Many of you in the association space know me from 20 plus years that I ran my own digital agency. Worked with tons of different membership associations doing web and app development, interactive. Capabilities and so I'm very excited to help Higher Logic, head up AI practices, and build out what is looking to be an extremely robust pipeline for 2026 and beyond. I have used AI most recently in some really fascinating ways. I have used it. To craft jokes to send to my kids really bad Dad jokes. I have used it to create the proper ratio for hanging photos on a [00:02:00] wall. I have most recently used it. I am going on vacation shortly and I used it to help me strategize my itinerary where a couple friends were joining in the middle of a trip. So I had to optimize the key sightseeing moments, but then also build in a really robust amount of things around it. Super geeky, very helpful.   Sharon Pare: Love it. How about you Lance?  Lance Wiggins: I am the CEO of the Automatic Transmission Rebuild Association. I have been with this company since 1999. The company has been in existence since 1954, celebrating our 70 plus birthday here shortly. We are the only association in an entire planet Earth that does this. We are a facility that we do research training for transmission shops internationally. We have a little over 2000 shops in the United States. From coast to coast, north to south, we have rebuilder and [00:03:00] warranties that go from Canada, all the way through, the United States. We have chapters that are in Canada, chapters that are in Latin America, chapters that are in Australia, Asia, Australia, chapters that are formulating now currently in the UK as well. Primarily our goal is to help transmission shops fix your vehicle. There are billions of vehicles out there right now with automatic transmissions in them, how to diagnose 'em, how to fix 'em, how to repair 'em, how to, and also to make sure that we are servicing the customer. We are all servants here at the association, so our culture is of that. I've been a coach for 25 years, so I know how to coach people. I