Fifteen years strong and bigger than ever, the 2025 Manufacturing First Expo & Conference returns to Green Bay’s Resch Expo Oct. 29. This year’s event will be marked by milestones, including the retirement of Insight co-founder Brian Rasmussen, who has led the event since its inception in 2011, and the event’s first-ever female keynote speaker, “Destination Workplace” founder Betsy Allen-Manning of Dallas, Texas.
“I think it’s great that we’re having an amazing speaker, regardless if [they are] male or female, but looking at our 15-year history we’ve never had a female keynote,” says Ann Franz, executive director of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance, which works annually with Insight to put on the event. “So I’m excited about that.”
Franz says Allen-Manning was an appealing choice to keynote Manufacturing First 2025 because talent retention is an ongoing theme for both Insight and NEWMA, and NEWMA’s next Future of Work Summit in spring 2026 will focus exclusively on the issue.
“We’re going to be doing several events leading up to the summit, all on retention — and Betsy is really going to be kicking off that conversation,” Franz says. “We work so hard to find somebody, but now you gotta invest even more in keeping the person.”
Allen-Manning says she created her Destination Workplace program to help employers be more than just “pizza parties and ping-pong tables,” and in her consulting and speaking career she focuses on helping leaders navigate the disconnect that has resulted in about 94% of executives being unable to describe their corporate culture in a way that matches the lived experiences of their workforce.
Working with the U.S. Census Bureau and Center for Generational Kinetics, Destination Workplace conducted a national workplace trend study that identified five key employee experiences real employees have said make somewhere a “destination” workplace: supportive leadership teams, career path transparency, purpose-driven culture, sense of team and corporate wellness programs.
The study showed, Allen-Manning says, that “people are wanting to work for a purpose, not a paycheck” and that culture is the number one factor in retaining employees.
“I just thought, this needs to be shared with the world,” Allen-Manning says. “People are desperate right now. They’re not just curious; they are desperate for attracting and retaining good talent. And they just don’t know how to do it anymore.”
In her keynote address Oct. 29, Allen‑Manning will present “How Visionary Leaders Improve Engagement, Develop Talent & Build a Culture That People Love” with the goal of helping attendees take actions that help halt the revolving door that increasingly plagues the manufacturing industry.
“If you’re having any struggles at all, you’ll get some motivation,” Allen‑Manning says of her speech. “But I want to go beyond inspiring; I’m going to give very, very tangible ideas that you can go back, roll up your sleeves and put to work to make it happen.”
Along with the evolution of industry itself, generational differences remain a large component of the talent attraction and retention challenges companies face, Allen-Manning says. It’s the younger generations that are initiating shifts in the workplace, sometimes aggressively, and only some of which are embraced by older generations. Getting boomers and Gen Z rowing in the same direction is a huge challenge, she says — which explains why she hears so many people say they can’t find good talent while at the same time hearing young workers say no one will hire them.
“Gen X and boomers are retiring early because they just don’t want to deal with how to coach and mentor and do it differently,” she says. “It’s a disservice.”
Successful workplaces bridge these gaps with collaborative decision-making, opportunities for growth and mentorship, and genuine concern for well-being, and a lot of this comes down to having productive conversations, Allen-Manning says. She hopes Manufacturing First can be a place where those conversations start.
“You’re going to network with your peers who have the same challenges, and you get to brainstorm with people you know,” Allen-Manning says. “That’s where the magic happens, I believe.”
Allen-Manning’s keynote will start the day at 8 a.m. and is sponsored by R&R Insurance and Werner Electric Supply.
The presenting sponsor for Manufacturing First is, as it has been for 15 years, First Business Bank. Platinum sponsors include Acuity Insurance and the Wisconsin Technical College System.
Event attendees will have the opportunity to choose from 11 breakout sessions on topics such as using AI for sales, digital tools and automation, information systems for the plant floor, Lean practices, marketing alignment, workers’ compensation, cultural competency, electrical maintenance, rapid prototyping in tooling and facilities master planning.
The annual Power Hour networking session — with prizes — will conclude the event on the expo floor from 1:30-4 p.m., though the expo will be open throughout the day for those looking to make connections. More than 200 high school students will also be on the floor during the morning sessions to participate in special career exploration activities.
Franz says Manufacturing First is carefully designed to provide something for everyone.
“If you care about manufacturing,” she says, “whether you’re a manufacturer or you want to go and rub shoulders with manufacturers, this is the one event you have to go to.”Φ
