Nadia Harlow-Mensah has worked in association management for 19 years, starting as a membership coordinator for a regional engineering society and moving into her current role as membership director of a statewide professional association with about 9,400 members.

When she took the role in 2016, the association renewed 74 percent of its members each year and could not say why the rest left. Nadia moved renewal reporting from an annual spreadsheet to a monthly dashboard broken out by career stage, chapter, and first-year activity. The data showed that members who attended no events and opened no emails in their first six months renewed at 41 percent, while members who attended a single chapter event renewed at 86 percent. The association rebuilt onboarding around getting every new member to one event, and renewals reached 88 percent by 2019.

She has also worked on governance, helping two boards separate strategic oversight from committee operations and rewrite bylaws that had not been revised since the 1980s.

Nadia holds a master’s degree in public administration and the Certified Association Executive credential. She teaches a graduate seminar in nonprofit management and serves as treasurer of a Columbus youth soccer league.